Fuente: © PGATour.com
http://www.pgatour.com/

GOLF: PGA TOUR: Harston adds new meaning to the word perseverance

/noticias.info/ Editor’s note: This is another in a series of articles about the 33 players who survived the Champions Tour qualifying school. Those players will now be able to compete in weekly qualifiers for spots in Champions Tour events.

By Lauren Deason
PGATOUR.com Editorial Coordinator

Sometimes one day is all it takes to change your life.

When Buddy Harston was in school at Lipscomb University, he was a star baseball player, playing on three NAIA World Series teams. He wasn’t drafted straight out of college, as he had expected, which crushed his life-long dream of playing Major League Baseball. Harston spent some time in a summer league but, heartbroken and hopeless, he chose to walk away from the game.

That was on a Saturday. The very next day, after his former team played a doubleheader, his coach, who had tried desperately to talk him out of quitting, was met by a MLB scout. The scout inquired after a Buddy Harston, but was told by Harston’s coach that he had quit the day before.

That’s too bad, the scout replied. I have a contract here for him to play in the big leagues.

“If I had played for 24 more hours I might have had a chance,” said Harston. “It’s a great life lesson that still hurts but it teaches you a little bit about perseverance.”

That lost opportunity might have been a blessing in disguise, though. For one thing, Harston would later face situations that called for perseverance. And, on the other hand, he might never have found his calling in the game of golf.

He’d played golf growing up, though his life-long passion had been baseball and his future job aspirations had involved a bat, not a club. Once his career ended on the diamond, he turned back to the game his family loved and decided his new goal would be to make it to the top and compete against the very best in golf.

“My mother, brother and father all played a lot and they needed a fourth, so I started with them and the more I did, the more I realized I wanted to be around it every day,” Harston, a native of Nashville, Tenn., explained. So he became an assistant pro in Florida, then a club pro for over 20 years at Lexington (Ky.) Country Club.

He continued to work on his game and in the meantime created a family, with his wife Julie and daughters Palmer and Taylor.

In April of 1995, though, one day changed his life again, adding new meaning to the word perseverance.

His wife and daughters were on vacation when they got into a serious car accident, one which left Palmer permanently confined to a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury caused paralysis in her legs. Harston has drawn motivation over the years from his daughter, who hasn’t let what she can’t do stand in the way of what she can.

“Being in a wheelchair, a lot of people thought she wouldn’t be able to do the normal things but she has just really stepped up. She was the captain of her cheerleading squad in high school, student body president, a 4.0 student and goes to a very prestigious college, Vanderbilt University, on an academic scholarship,” the 54-year-old Harston said. “She is definitely an inspiration, to see her get in her wheelchair and do whatever she wants to do.”

The 20-year-old Palmer is a junior now at Vanderbilt, while his younger daughter Taylor is a freshman at the University of Mississippi. And Harston himself returned to his alma mater in June 2006 to serve as the head coach for the Lipscomb University men’s and women’s golf teams.

“It’s great getting back. It’s my home as well as my wife’s home. We met at Lipscomb and everyone was in Nashville with us; it was a perfect fit and perfect timing,” Harston said. He will put his coaching priorities first during the teams’ seasons from March to the middle of April, but plans to try to qualify for Champions Tour events in January and February as the circuit moves through Hawaii and Florida. Harston will return to qualifying in mid-April through the summer months.

His protégés have mixed emotions on their coach trying to make it in the pros. “Some of them are excited, some are a little disappointed since I’ll be gone more than they want Coach to be gone. For the most part, they are excited. The entire athletic department is very supportive and thinks it is very neat to have the opportunity to get on TV.”

This was Harston’s fifth time in Champions Tour q-school, but his first making it past regionals. After over 25 years of perseverance trying to make it in the professional golfing world -- he has played in 10 Champions Tour, three PGA TOUR and two Nationwide Tour events in the past without much success -- his hard work finally paid off when he finished tied for 27th in the four-day event.

Harston credits Dr. Bob Rotella with helping him deal with the pressure that accompanies q-school finals, since the two talked every night during the tournament. Harston will have to apply those pressure-coping principles again, as this year the top-30 and ties (33 players) from Champions Tour q-school did not automatically earn exempt status but will have to compete to make it into each tournament through a weekly qualifying event. A maximum of nine spots will be available through these qualifiers, with Harston and the other q-school finalists competing against former tournament winners and veterans who are trying to make the tournament as well.

But these are circumstances that teach perseverance and Harston has become quite familiar with the term through the years. So that’s why he will be prepared to face the daunting task of trying each week to make it onto the Champions Tour.

“One of my goals is to qualify and to play well in enough tournaments to be exempt in the following year,” said Harston. “That would certainly be a successful year.” notas_de_prensa_archivo