Masters is dear to Compton's hearts

Erik Compton is comfortable talking about his hearts. He’s lived with donor hearts more than twice as long as he had his original, so that story tracks him wherever he goes. He never takes the miracle of his tale for granted, but retelling it over and over is the routine of his golfing life as much as the pills he takes every day to stay alive.

But Compton falters when trying to articulate something outside that routine – something he was once certain was destined to be an unrequited dream. There is unexpected emotion in his stammering attempts to explain the enormity of competing in the Masters Tournament.

This is off-script material, an unrehearsed chapter in a remarkable story of three lives fused into one.

“I don’t think words can really describe what it means to me and what it means to my dad and coach and family,” Compton said. “Now that I’m going to be able to do that and I’m healthy … I really won’t know until I’m there. I know there’s going to be a lot of emotion for the family.

“For me, the Masters is this huge thing because it symbolizes the accomplishment of just being able to be in that arena.”

The Masters is frequently associated with dreams – from small boys fantasizing on putting greens to teenagers competing in caddie yards from Texas to Argentina, to grown men fulfilling career ambitions. Every one of those dreams, at some point, was both audacious and improbable.

No dream, however, was more improbable than Compton’s. Lying in a hospital ICU after surviving a heart attack and subsequent second transplant operation, Compton said goodbye to the dreams he’d once held, just as he’d said goodbye to friends and family he wasn’t sure he’d ever see again.

“I pretty much had come to grips that I wasn’t ever going to play golf again,” Compton said.

It was a reasonable assumption. After a dismal season in 2007, Compton had no status on any professional tour. He’d sold all of his golf equipment. He was teaching others the game at Miami’s International Links. He’d achieved all he could before time ran out on the 15-year-old girl’s heart he’d received when he was 12 – junior stardom, collegiate success, a Walker Cup, a few professional wins in Canada and Morocco.

Compton’s mental inventory of his professional life, however, was coming up short. He never earned his PGA Tour card. He never competed in a major championship. At 27, he was sure he never would.

“When you’re sitting in a hospital and you’re replaying a lot of things in my life that I didn’t accomplish in golf – one of my dreams was to play in the Masters,” he said. “You know, you never really put yourself into that emotional state until you’re in a bad situation. You know, ‘I wish I could have told my daughter this’ or ‘I wish I could have told my wife that.’ Well, I wish I could have played in the Masters and been able to walk up 18 and experience that in my lifetime.”

That wish materialized last June with a runner-up finish in the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2. For 10 months, Compton has experienced something he consciously avoids – anticipation.

“There’s a lot of expectation going into the Masters for all of the players,” he said. “I’ve always been good at compartmentalizing that, not making it too much of an expectation. In the back of my mind I know that Augusta isn’t until April and I don’t know if I’ll make it to April. That’s how I live my life. I have a ticket to the Masters, but I’m not there right now. You know what I mean? I know that’s hard for people to understand, but that’s how I live my life.

“But I do know when I’m standing here now and realizing that I have that ticket to get there. Like I said, it’s something that I dreamed about to go there and play in the Masters. It’ll be, it’ll be …”

COMPTON IS UNIQUE among the thriving University of Georgia contingent on the PGA Tour and the five others in this Masters field. He always has been – and not just because he’s a double heart transplant recipient.

“I was a city guy from Miami and most of the guys were all good ol’ boys,” he said. “I had to learn the good ol’ boys. It was an eye-opening experience. It was a whole different perspective that I’d never experienced.”

The Bulldogs weren’t steeped in the Donnie Brasco dialogue that Compton and his Miami friends adopted. But the lingo he brought to Georgia stuck, just like his nickname “Foo” – short for “fugazi,” which means fake. Fourteen years since he left, coaches and players are still using Compton catchphrases like “worry about it.”

“It’s fun to see they still have that lingo,” Compton said. “I hear it from some of the younger players that are coming out.”

He was an unlikely fit in Georgia’s program that included stars such as Ryuji Imada and Bubba Watson. He was a talented late bloomer, but he had a different perspective having survived the cardiomyopathy that ravaged his heart at age 12.

“There’s no doubt when you bring in a guy like that who has to get up every morning and take 14 pills and go over to Emory and get biopsied a couple times a year, your initial impression is to treat that kid with kid gloves,” Georgia coach Chris Haack said. “What you find out quickly with Erik is he’s just a normal kid and wants to be normal and do everything. You literally forget pretty quickly after a month that he’s any different than anybody else.”

For three years, Compton worked the UGA range, socializing and hitting everyone else’s clubs but his own, and wearing a rut in the clubhouse sofa, where he slept more than in his own apartment. They still laugh about the time he and roommate Brad Garner lit their apartment on fire trying to impress dates with candlelight, or his karaoke rendition of Bread’s If in front of Natalie Gulbis and the Arizona women’s team.

“Erik’s dad was a singer on cruise ships,” Haack said. “He didn’t get his dad’s genes.”

He left an indelible impression. One of his medications, Sandimmune, unleashed such a foul, sulphuric smell when he took it out of the foil wrapper that Watson would shout “Sandimmune!” in anger on the golf course instead of profanity.

While Compton enjoyed the collegiate experience, he wasn’t interested in using up the allotted minutes on his heart sitting in a classroom listening to lectures. Average life expectancy of a donor heart was 11 years, and his lasted 16.

“For me it felt like I was losing my time of really getting to do the things I want and enjoy doing,” he admitted. “I wanted to spend the times I was feeling good outside and hitting golf balls and being competitive. I knew that was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, whether it was teaching or whether it was helping out with kids or whatever. When I was 18, my only thought was that I was going to be on tour.”

Said his father, Peter Compton: “He’s always been in a bit of a hurry because of his situation.”

His impatience was hastened in 2000 when he received a sponsor’s exemption to play his hometown event at Doral. He made the cut as an amateur and finished 72nd.

“I had a taste of it,” he said. “So when I came back to school I was trying to tell the guys in college, now that I had a taste of playing on those courses and being around the other tour pros, going back into a classroom was like torture. I wanted to be out there more and learn from the best players.”

So, despite being a preseason player-of-the-year selection, Compton left Georgia in 2001 with two years of eligibility left hoping to stake his claim in the pro game.

“With Erik, I couldn’t blame him,” Haack said. “He said, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever make it to the age where I can get out there and have a chance.’ ”

Compton reached the final stage of Q school to earn conditional status in 2002 on what was then called the Buy.com Tour, but he missed 12 cuts in 15 starts.

He won three Canadian Tour events in 2003-04, leading the tour’s money list in 2004. He lost a playoff in Wichita on the Nationwide Tour in 2004 and earned his largest check with a tournament-record score in winning the Hassan II Golf Trophy in Morocco in 2005. He played at least 19 events on the Nationwide tour each season from 2005-07, but never came close to graduating to the big tour.

“I think there was some disappointment, expectations I put on myself early and when I was in my early 20s that I was going to come out and play and be a star on the tour,” he said. “Realistically there’s only been a few guys that have sustained that and maintained that, and those guys who are doing that are really healthy guys. I had a double-edged sword on that. I was young and I always had that obstacle of the transplant.”

AFTER MISSING his 12th cut in 19 Nationwide starts in 2007, Compton was at home in Miami fishing when he had a heart attack. He drove himself to the hospital, calling family and friends along the way in case he didn’t make it.

“Coach, I’m letting you know I’m on my way to the hospital and I don’t know if I’m going to make it. I just wanted to let you know that I love you.”

“I just started bawling,” Haack said. “I said, ‘C’mon Foo. You’re gonna be fine.’”

In May 2008, Compton received a second heart – this time from a 26-year-old men’s volleyball player from Ohio who died in a motorcycle accident. His biggest thrill was simply waking up from the 14-hour operation.

In the months after his transplant surgery, Compton focused on bigger bucket-list items than golf. He married his girlfriend, Barbara Casco. He experienced the beating, healthy heart of their daughter, Petra, who was conceived before Compton’s transplant and born four days before the anniversary of his first transplant.

“I did not know that things were going to turn out, that I would be getting a heart as strong as I did as quick as I did,” he said. “It was the start to a new life, for sure.”

This literal new lease sparked a rekindling of discarded dreams. As he did when he was 12, he turned to golf to fulfill his ambitions – teaching others while honing his own skills.

“He’s been a fighter his whole life and had a chance to give up several times and never did,” said his father. “I can’t think of how many times he’s picked himself off the mat. Certainly this last time we didn’t expect him to play his way back into golf, let alone be on the tour or qualify for the Masters.”

By the fall of 2008 he was strong enough to make it through the first stage of Q School. Given a sponsor’s exemption into the aptly named Children’s Miracle Network Classic at Disney, he finished 60th six months after his surgery.

His courage and perseverance earned him the Ben Hogan Award in 2009 from the Golf Writers Association of America, bringing him to Augusta for the presentation at the annual banquet. For the first time since 1999 while in college, Compton visited the Masters.

“Maybe one day,” he said.

Suddenly his game found the trajectory it was lacking the first time around.

“Most golfers really don’t make it until their early 30s, if they haven’t quit already,” said Compton, 35. “I thank God I had enough heart to keep me going until I could reach the average tour age.”

In 2010 he made it through a playoff after a 36-hole qualifier to make it into his first major at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. An HBO documentary crew followed him as he missed the cut.

His momentum carried him through Q School, where a tie for 100th regained Nationwide Tour status for 2011. He finished 13th on the money list, winning in Mexico and earning his first PGA Tour card for 2012. He’s maintained his card four consecutive years, improving from 137th to 99th to 64th in the season-long points list.

“When I came back after the second transplant I was healthy and mature and understood how to play golf,” Compton said. “My swing has gotten better. Started working with Charlie DeLucca when I was out of the game teaching and learned a little bit more about myself and how to play golf. I don’t want to say I was guilty of being overanalytical in my early years, but I never caught that break early in my career where I went out and won a Nationwide event right away. It was just hard work. Everything was hard work.”

NONE OF THAT building success, however, forecast what happened at Pinehurst last June. Once again Compton survived a qualifying playoff to earn his second appearance in a major. That was a victory in itself.

“The excitement I had with my caddie to call my parents just to say that I had qualified for the U.S. Open,” he said. “The excitement to get there and the excitement to play well was unbelievable.”

This time Compton shut out the distractions that revolved around his story.

“I remember how hard it was to play at Pebble Beach because it was all about my heart,” he said. “Pinehurst was totally under the radar. I was in a bubble. I went to the golf course and back to the hotel with my coach and shut everything down. I literally tried to sleep and get up and do the same thing every day. Played the same song on the radio. It was definitely a self-motivating song.”

After a modest 72 on Thursday, he was tied for 50th. A 68 the second day had him tied for 14th heading into his first weekend of a major. On Saturday, he and Rickie Fowler shot 67 – the only sub-par rounds of the day – to move into second place.

On Sunday, with the crowds urging him on around the course, Compton was the only player to get within four strokes of runaway winner Martin Kaymer. Four bogeys in the last 10 holes left him playing for second place, which he secured with a sand save on 18 by sinking an 8-foot par putt.

“I had never gotten this far along in my story,” an emotional Compton said after the round. “It’s a career-opening thing for me. For me to put myself on the map and prove to the world that I’m not just the guy with two heart transplants.”

He didn’t realize until his post-round interview what his finish accomplished.

“For me it was a huge feat,” he said. “At that point in my career, making the putt and doing what I did was a very satisfying feeling. … You really have to enjoy those moments and reflect on the good memories. That’s a putt that got me into the Masters.”

In January, Compton had his best chance to win a PGA Tour event. In a three-way tie entering the final round of the Humana Challenge, nothing went right from the start and he faded to 10th.

“I’ll be honest, I think even if I had won at Humana, finishing second in a major might have outshined it,” he said. “I know that’s crazy, but majors are so heavily weighted. I’d like to win any PGA event, but majors are such a big deal now. Top finishes in majors sometimes feel just as good. I don’t know what it’s like to win a PGA event.”

TEN MONTHS IS a long window of anticipation for Compton. It’s complicated by his immune system and infections and anti-rejection drugs that are part of his life.

“Hopefully during the Masters, I’m healthy,” he said. “That’s all I can really pray for and try to do the things I can do to prepare and I’m healthy to play in the event and things go my way.”

Back in 1999, when Comp­ton was a redshirt freshman at Georgia, he joined the team on its annual winter trip to play Augusta National. It’s as close to the dream as most players get. On the scheduled day, Compton was dealing with infections and running a fever of 103 degrees.

He played anyway, not knowing if it would be his only chance. He shot 76.

“I wasn’t going to miss it,” he said. “I remember walking up 18 and I could barely get up the hill. I had the chills and everything. I remember feeling like crap more than I remember how I played.”

How he plays Masters Week isn’t an issue either. That he’s playing at all is enough.

“I’ve been in some pretty dark places and I’m not going to be completely overwhelmed, because that’s not my M.O.,” he said. “But to be able to walk up 18 and know my dad and those who are watching me, that’s an accomplishment – to be able to be there.”

As the reality of that accomplishment sinks in, this new element of Compton’s script into uncharted corners of his once-discarded dreams sparks his emotions.

“At the end of the day – at the end of the day, with what I’ve been through,” he stammers, “it’s still golf. God doesn’t make any more holier ground than the foot that’s underneath you right now. So putting that in perspective, I understand my health and family and heart is the most important thing. So Masters or no Masters, it’s just nice to be here.”