Evan
Miracles don't really happen on golf courses. Sometimes shots go in; sometimes they don't. Sometimes you win; most times you don't.
For Phil Mickelson , the real miracle wasn't a putt falling on the 72nd green at Augusta National. It was what was waiting for him behind it. It was a son in the arms of a mother.
That they were there at all is a miracle Mickelson is thankful for every day, and it washed over him when he made eye contact with Amy before going to sign his scorecard. All he ever really wanted was standing right in front of him.
"It means so much for me to see her standing there holding Evan," Mickelson wrote in his book, One Magical Sunday. "After almost losing them both, here they are sharing in this wonderful, almost miraculous moment. And I realize that winning the Masters, as great as it feels, isn't the most important thing in my life."
On March 23, 2003, while his peers were slogging through a storm to finish the Bay Hill Invitational, Mickelson was in a much darker place.
This was going to be a great day. Amy - three weeks past her due date - would have her labor induced. The whole family packed the delivery room at 8:30 a.m. to laugh and joke until it was time to move outside and wait for Evan to arrive.
"Bye, Amy! Bye, Evan! We'll see you in a few minutes."
Minutes turned into hours. The light mood in the waiting room dimmed. Amy's mother, Renee McBride, sensed something was wrong.
A few minutes later, dozens of doctors and nurses started running in and out of the delivery room. The next thing they saw was newborn Evan being rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit, trailed by Phil's screams from inside the room.
"Breathe, Evan, breathe!"
Evan was essentially stillborn. He didn't draw his first breath for seven minutes.
Amy's situation was worse. Scar tissue from her previous two pregnancies caused a tear in the main artery in her uterus during the delivery. She was losing too much blood and went into shock. She was rushed past her whole family to the operating room where, as luck would have it, a specialist would arrive in only a few minutes, having been in the vicinity of the hospital on his way to dinner.
Mickelson was lost in the middle. At opposite ends of a sterile hallway, his wife and son were fighting for their lives. He paced between the two rooms before finally sitting on a bench with his head in his hands. He was no longer in control of his world. It was not a position he was used to.
"It was hard to see him that way," said Mickelson's older sister, Tina. "I couldn't bring myself to go down to the end of that hallway, because I couldn't do anything to make it better."
At that end of that hallway, Mickelson experienced the most agonizing hour of his life. He heard nurses whispering: "Isn't it so sad that those children are going to grow up without their mother."
As anyone might do in that desperate situation, Mickelson prayed and made promises with God.
Those prayers were answered. Amy's artery was repaired, and she slowly came back. Evan was breathing on his own and showed no adverse signs from his traumatic entry into the world.
But an experience like that changes people.
"There's always been an appreciation for Amy and the kids, but now it is heightened when you didn't know it could be," Tina said. "Having to think about what he would do without her - his life would be over. Done. I wouldn't want to witness the extreme pain he would be going through without Amy."
Mickelson couldn't talk about it for months. He still can't, really. He prefers not to be asked about it and quickly diverts the subject.
"We certainly had a tough time for a while. Stuff like that may affect you," he said. "It didn't take something like that for me to appreciate what I have. I knew how lucky I was with Amy. I knew how lucky I was with our kids. I didn't need that experience to slap me in the face."
He also didn't feel the need to share the details of Evan's birth with the rest of the world.
Mickelson had withdrawn from The Players Championship, skipping the entire Florida swing to be at home with his family. On Tuesday in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., an upbeat birth announcement from Mickelson's agents was distributed to the media saying that mother and baby were fine. There was never any hint of the trauma.
"It was an especially, personally hard time for us, and people didn't know," Amy said. "It was an incredible, life-changing thing that had occurred to us."
By the end of 2003, Mickelson had no victories, no top-30 money earnings, no points in five Presidents Cup matches. By his own admission, it was his worst year on tour.
But he had his family, and together they started a new outlook that would rewrite his professional fortunes. No more looking back, only forward.
"We really made a commitment to each other to just start fresh," Amy said.
Now 2 years old, Evan plays with his sawed-off golf clubs on the practice green outside his grandparents' house and refuses to come in for meals. Just like his father.
Whatever promises Mickelson made, the miracles keep coming.
| See Phil Mickelson From All Sides | |
| The happiest player ever to win a major | |
| His colleagues | His family |
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| His journey | His moment |
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