As his wife fights on, Hart fights to regain career
By Art Spander, Special to PGATOUR.com
AMATEUR/TEAM SCORES: Third-round results
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- It's out there, the real world, the one that engulfs the pros as it does everyone else, the one full of tragedy and mystery which makes us understand there things worse than a missed putt or a pulled 5-iron.
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Things like a tumor growing in your wife.
Things like trying to take care of triplets when you should be taking care of your practice schedule.
Things like those that happened to Dudley Hart.
He's tied for first place after three rounds of AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Dudley Hart and Vijay Singh are at the apex of the leaderboard, with 9-under-par scores of 207.
With Vijay we are not surprised. With Dudley Hart, after a year of struggle and worry, we have to be.
Hart is 39, and it would be unkind to refer to him as a journeyman, although that word is in no way disrespectful for a worker of skill and dedication, a golfer who during 17 years on TOUR has won two tournamrents and more than $10 million.
Let's say he's a contender.
Not that anyone expected him to be one at this AT&T. After a forced absence from the game of many months while he had to be a house-husband and, as he can say with a smile now, appreciate what the wives and mothers of the world go through day after day.
It was the Wednesday of last year's PLAYERS Championship, in May, and Suzanne Hart, home in Buffalo, had what was presumed to be a bad cold but then was diagnosed as pneumonia. Until an X-Ray was taken.
"They found a softball-sized mass in her lung,'' Hart explained. "She ended up having a tumor. I went home, and she basically spent a month in the hospital, having the tumor and two-thirds of her lung removed. On her birthday. Happy birthday.''
Hart is playing this year on a Major Medical Exemption. He has 15 events to earn $485,931, which, with the $299,249 he earned in 2007 before the year fell apart, would give him $785,180, equal to 125th on the money list. In effect, he's coming off the disabled list, even if it was his wife who had the ailment.
What Dudley had were the scares. And the education.
The surgery was done in Pittsburgh. But Suzanne wanted the kids, not then 6, to stay in their nursery school in upstate New York. Daddy took over.
"It definitely opened my eyes up to what my wife goes through on a day-to-day basis,'' said Hart.
What he's going through in the AT&T, a tournament where with Raymond Floyd's son, Robert, he won the pro-am section back in 1994, has been reassuring.
After months off, after babysitting and carpooling and all the family items Suzanne had done, Hart is back doing what he does best, breaking par.
His 68 Saturday at Spyglass Hill came after a 70 Friday at Poppy Hills and a 69 Thursday at Pebble Beach.
"No matters what happens,'' he said philosophically of his play, "I've done some good stuff already this week I can build on.''
He did a great deal of good stuff last year, when the only building was by a contractor.
"Everything was a blast,'' he says now. "It was stressful at times. During this time I also had to pack up. Anyone with wives, if you can imagine having to pack -- because we went from a rental house to a two-bedroom apartment for two months when our house wasn't done. Try to pack for your wife for three months. That was the scariest part of all, I think.''
He went to Bed, Bath & Beyond, bought eight huge bins and "threw just about everything in.'' By the time the new home was ready, Suzanne had recovered.
"But it was very scary,'' said Hart. "Until they got it out, we didn't know for sure ... You know you have a lot of negative thoughts. What if something crazy happens? It opens your eyes to what's truly important.
"I kept looking at the kids, and I'm like, I can't imagine, God forbid when they get that tumor out it comes back bad and something happens, and they don't have their mom around ... You have a lot of positive and negative but the negative ones reallhy scare you.''
For a month after surgery, Hart didn't play any golf. Then he competed a couple of times against his caddy. "I didn't practice for three months.''
To obtain a medical exemption, a golfer must miss four months of tournaments. When it was time to return, it was also time for the FedExCup, for which Hart wasn't eligible.
"At that stage, after having five months off, (it wouldn't be worth it) to play three tournaments in the fall and having two more months off, I said, I'm just going to start back up in January fresh and go from there.''
He's gone from there. He's owed a very good year. So is Suzanne Hart.
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