Being healthy is the most important thing. "The golf course is flat, and I've been practising hard, doing cardio every day, punishing myself to get ready for this season. "I want to walk, that's what it's all about," he said. Every day seems to bring a personal milestone on his return to fitness – two weeks ago he reportedly broke down in tears after completing a one-mile run – and here in the desert will herald another. To the outsider it may seem cruel of the European Tour not to allow Compton to use a buggy this week but he knew that was in the tour's constitution and it is his plan to start walking anyway. His story figured on the main network bulletins and the end-of-year awards duly came his way.įast-forward a few months and his recuperation is struggling to keep up with the progression of his fame. But by now Compton was big news in America and when he made it to the weekend in the Children's Miracle Network Classic – the first PGA Tour cut he had made since 2005 – he was positively prime-time. "Hardly anyone, typically nobody who has had a transplant survives a heart attack because your heart literally explodes."Īlas, the day-time movie plot stopped there as he missed out on advancing to the final stage by a single shot. "The comeback was great, but it was nothing compared to the comeback I made getting myself to the hospital and surviving the heart attack," he said. Golfing legend already shows that he recovered after three rounds of 76, 75 and 77 to shoot a 68 in the howling wind to leapfrog 50 players to make it through. Compton was, and still is, on medication morning and night and in an attempt to soothe his sore bones – caused by his ribs being prised apart – he would have regular half-hour showers. Still, I don't think there was any doctors who believed I could do it after five months."Ī few things made it possible for Compton to make it to that first tee in Florida last October, not least the dispensation he would receive from the PGA Tour to use a cart and, of course, the exclusion from the drugs tests he would obviously have failed. And you know, I just thought that Q-School was right there at home and I could play. It's a skill and I think if you have your hands and your eyes working, you can play the game. I even was able to shoot 66 three months after the heart attack, and I could barely even get out of a golf cart to get on to a tee box. We're trying to hit a golf ball in a hole. "It's not like we're out here boxing in an arena. Could he resume his vocation? "I just couldn't see why not," he said. Yet he started to practise and the temptation grew. Initially, Compton wondered whether scrabbling around on the golfing dollar-hunt was the best way in which he could spend time that suddenly seemed that much more precious. Despite advice to the contrary, Compton set out to show it could also be an active life. "I felt like I had such a great life, and I owed it to her," he told the American magazine Golf Digest last year. For years, Compton would write letters to the girl's grandmother. A transplant was necessary but also by no means inevitable until a 15-year-old girl was killed by a drink driver. Aged nine, Compton had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, an enlarging of the heart that hinders its ability to pump blood. It has always been thus for Erik Compton, ever since, at the age of 12, he became the youngest heart-transplant patient in the history of the Jackson Memorial Hospital in his home city. Just one more apparently insurmountable hurdle cleared. Following all the medication he has had to take over the years, Compton was not sure he could ever father a child. "I'll play Dubai, go back, have the baby, and play Honda," he laughed. He has also been invited to play in next month's Honda Classic and in between these two prestigious events he is due to experience yet another life-changing moment. Compton will be attempting to take many opportunities in the foreseeable future and even for a professional who has not just undergone the most invasive surgery known to man, his next month would appear demanding.
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