The Game of Golf and Life
by Joe Maxwell
Viking Classic Director (and former pro golfer) Randy Watkins had always taught his son Thomas golf. But in 2004, the two began learning some new lessons together about the game of life.
When Randy Watkins was 15-years-old, he won the 1977 PGA National Junior Championship.
When his son Thomas was 15, the Watkins family wondered if the teen would ever play golf again.
"Thomas didn't even start playing until he was eleven," Randy recently recalled. "He came to the game a little bit later than some." But from 2001 to 2004, Thomas showed shades of his father's aptitude, including uncanny mental toughness.
Then devastating news came just as Thomas planned to play as an eighth-grader on Madison Central High School's varsity golf team. Severe scoliosis was attacking Thomas's back.
Quick, major surgery was necessary, and still Thomas might be crippled for life.
A St. Louis specialist worked 8 hours putting titanium rods and screws in the boy's back, and then he added 80 stitches circling Thomas's body, to boot.
Randy recalls: "Carol and I both went through a myriad of emotions because we were worried about him on a physical level. Real questions existed about what his life was going to be like afterwards. We didn't know what the future held for him and if he was going to live a normal life."
But "to Thomas¹s everlasting credit," Randy now says, his son was undaunted, enduring an agonizing year of therapy as a 15-year-old.
While Thomas's friends hoped to break par, Thomas wondered whether he'd ever lift a club again.
All his life, Thomas had idolized his dad. Who wouldn't?
Randy Watkins, now director of the Viking Classic and owner/operator of several Mississippi golf courses, is a household golfing name. He was most valuable player on his Ole Miss golf team three of four years. He won the individual SEC Championship, was SEC 1st Team, and was named NCAA All-American--all in 1982. In the fall of 1983, he qualified for the PGA Tour. In 1984 he won his full golfing privileges.
Eventually, he returned home. He started having children "and my priorities shifted," he says with a smile. One of those priorities was a little boy named Thomas, whose father still loves to teach him the game of golf.
Which brings us back to 2004.
After a grueling year of therapy, Randy and Thomas traveled to St. Louis to hear the verdict on Thomas¹s back. Doctor's diagnosis? Amazingly, Thomas could slowly work back into the game he loved.
The drive home that day from St. Louis passed like a song. Then the elated twosome stopped at a gas station. Just beyond it was an open field.
It was too hard to resist. Randy looked at Thomas: "You want to take a swing?"
"Yeah," his son replied.
Randy grinned: "Fire away."
With that, Thomas teed up a ball, pulled out his driver, and stroked the most beautiful shot ever‹straight and long.
"It was great," recalls Thomas. "It felt weird swinging the club but I hit it good--that was the surprising part."
Today, Randy professes awe as his son plays near-scratch golf. "It has been an amazing comeback," Randy says.
In fact, Thomas even beats his dad once in a while. "He's beat me, sure has. And it won't be the last time. I get a kick out of that."
But Thomas still gets the biggest kick. That's because each weekend, the two still share a morning, of nine holes--a father, a son and the game they love. "That's the thing I look forward to most," the 17-year-old says with a grin. "We go out and play at Annandale together, and then he gives me a lesson."
In actuality, the two seem to be teaching each other--and doing a fine
job of it. SS
joe@thesportingspirit.com
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