Smith takes first step in return to golf after tragic accident
By Melanie Hauser, PGATOUR.COM Correspondent
There were times Thursday morning when Chris Smith pressed pause and wandered away from the grind of professional golf.
He forgot about his swing, his score, the shots and club selections. The putts. The scenery. Instead, he bowed his head and let the enormity of the moment wash over him.
"You could tell,'' Jason Gore said, "where his mind was going.''
To his wife Beth. To Father's Day when she was killed in a tragic automobile accident and his children, Abigail and Cameron, were critically injured. To the last eight months when golf hasn't mattered one bit. To a time when his job has been to cope with loss, grow into the role of single father and help the kids get stronger -- physically and mentally -- every day. To how blessed he is to have good friends.
To taking the first step toward reclaiming his career he thought at one might be gone and the one life his kids have always known.
To finding normalcy where there was none.
Not a day goes by when Smith doesn't think about the day that changed everything. As he says, "it's a never-ending thing." At the same time, he and the family are focused on moving forward.
It was the kids who pushed him to get back into golf and the kids who chattered away on the telephone with him before he went to the range at the Mayakoba Golf Classic at Riviera Maya-Cancun to prepare for his first tournament round in eight months.
"The kids wanted me to play at the end of last year and they wanted me to think about playing in q-school,'' Smith said after an opening even-par 71. "Golf totally wasn't on my radar. To be honest with you, I wasn't sure I'd ever play again because my priority was taking care of the kids.
"It's not that I didn't want to play. They hounded me and hounded me to play. After weeks of thinking about it, I realized it's been a big part of my life, big part of the kids' life and it would probably make me a better person if I'd go play a little bit. It would make me better around the house. I might as well commit to a couple of tournaments. I probably won't get in. Then what do you know, I get in the first one I commit to. Then I panicked because I realized I had to go play golf. ''
He laughed. The minute he hung up from the phone call from Mayakoba tournament director Larson Segerdahl, Smith started having stomach aches.
"It was like omigosh,'' he said. "I hadn't played golf for eight months. There's a foot of snow on the ground and it's 15 degrees and I have no where to practice and nothing to do and I'm like Holy cow. But once I got through that, I realized the bigger picture and what we were trying to do, which is moving forward. Do some things to get back to a normal life and once I realized that, then we all got excited about it.''
The timing couldn't have been more perfect. As he says, he's flying under the radar this week at the tournament in Mexico. An opposite-field event. Golf's spotlight is in Arizona at the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship and Ponte Vedra Beach, where Tiger Woods spoke for the first time in months.
Smith is comfortable here. His close friend Jerry Kelly, who lobbied for Smith to get a sponsor's exemption, is here. So are Joe Durant and Cameron Beckman, two other good friends. They all played a practice round Tuesday to ease him back into the flow. And then he drew Gore, another buddy from way back, in his pairing for the first two rounds.
"It was fabulous,'' Smith said. "I got my pairing and I don't know how it could have been any better. (Gore) smiled all day. Great attitude, great spirits, laid back. We played good, too.''
They all did. Durant leads after 18 at 7 under. Beckman is one shot back, Gore shot 5 under, Kelly shot 3 under and Smith got it up-and-down from the water at the eighth -- his 17th hole -- and birdied the ninth to shoot even par.
Smith, who won the 2002 Buick Classic and five Nationwide Tour events, had to knock the rust off his game at the start of the day. He had played only 30 rounds in the previous eight months and 23 of those were in a Wednesday group at his club back home.
He was 3 over after six holes and feeling his way back. Then, on his 10th hole, things changed. He hit an approach to 5 feet and made the putt. A bogey and a par later, he was on his way.
"Almost every shot I hit after that felt like a real golf shot,'' he said. "I just kind of needed to get my head clear, I needed to get the rust off and hit one or two good shots. After I did that stuff I felt pretty good ...
"I felt definitely there was a lot of support and a lot of better things at work today and I think that got me through. I shot a round I'm proud of."
For the past eight months, Smith has been Mr. Mom. He's been there as Abigail and Cameron got stronger and started taking their lives back. She will be 17 at the end of the month and is a varsity cheerleader as a junior. He is 13 and on the seventh-grade basketball team.
This spring, Abigail will play tennis while Cameron plays golf. Cameron basically went from a wheelchair after the accident to crutches, then to basketball practice, where he plays forward and center.
"So he was real slow and sore at the start,'' Smith said. "And it got better as the year went on. He looked good running up and down the course and was doing some good stuff."
And dad? He said watching his son on the court "was phenomenal and made me cry every time I watched.'' That was about three times a week.
After the accident, Smith threw himself into making home a home again. He learned how to juggle laundry and dishes and school and cooking. His focus? His kids.
"I really load and unload a mean dishwasher,'' he said chuckling. "I do two or three loads of laundry a day and sweep the floors and get the vaccum out. Take care of the dog and make breakfast and dinner every day. I can do it all. I think I'm a domestic diva.''
He laughs. His friends are in awe.
"It's tough to watch the scene unfold, but it's been incredible watching how he's handled everything,'' Kelly said. "It's been really inspiring -- how he interacts with them and how open they are. It's really cool to see a guy step up for his family like that.''
The kids are staying with Smith's mother, Rebecca, this week and his father Terry is on the bag. The kids are a phone call away and, he swears, Abigail probably had one eye on his round through her morning classes. And Smith? The outgoing 40-year-old spent two hours with different media requests after his round.
A busy season for Smith going forward will be about 15 events. He hopes he'll get into the Puerto Rico Open presented by Banco Popular and perhaps get a few other sponsor exemptions this spring.
"I think it's something I need to do, I think it's something the kids need me to do,'' he said.
Kelly and Gore agree. They're happy to see him back on the course; happier to see him smiling and enjoying the game and people he loves.
"He's come to grips and now he just wants to get on with life and be a golfer again because he's a good one,'' Gore said.
Smith is taking this one step at a time -- the same way he's taken the last eight months. He'll ask for a few exemptions, keep family and friends close and see where life takes them.
He'll also press pause from time to time and step away from the grind -- to remember and to let this moving forward thing sink in. And to embrace days -- and big steps -- like he did Thursday afternoon.
"It's nice to some things that feel normal,'' Smith said. "I don't really know what normal is anymore, but it's nice to feel something that means normal."
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