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After all this time, exactly five weeks later, Tom O’Brien’s emotions still get the best of him at the fearful thought of what could have happened to his daughter.
Never mind that Kristi O’Brien’s 1-under 72 enabled her to move into second place behind Sarah Prascsak in the Women’s City Golf Tournament at Brookwood Golf Club. That’s nothing. More than a month since his 19-year-old daughter’s accident while driving to Indianapolis, Tom O’Brien dabs both eyes with his sleeve, fights back a few more tears, then says, “She’s lucky to be alive.”
On June 14, the Sunday afternoon before Father’s Day when she was returning to IUPUI, where she will be a sophomore next semester on the Jaguars’ golf team, is when Kristi O’Brien lost control of her 2000 midnight blue Toyota Celica on I-69, about 20 miles outside of Indianapolis.
She veered too far left in the passing lane, overcorrected to the right, then to avoid another car, overcorrected to the left and wound up flipping the car three times before it came to rest in the grassy median.
“I remember everything while it happened,” said Kristi O’Brien, whose two-day total of 146 has her two strokes behind defending champion Prascsak going into today’s final round. “It was like slow motion. I was like, ‘When am I going to get knocked out? When am I not going to remember this? When am I going to die?
“I remember rolling the second time, and the windows were already smashed in, and I kind of looked over and the glass was scraping me.”
Bruised, scraped, bloodied, but miraculously OK, she climbed from the car, saw her cell phone in the grass and called home.
She was all right, she assured everyone.
After she got to her home in Indianapolis, she told her dad, “I think my golf clubs might be OK.”
“The next day went and got a crow bar to open (the trunk), and the golf clubs never moved,” Tom O’Brien said.
Oh, how the golf clubs moved Sunday at Brookwood.
Kristi O’Brien, the former Bishop Luers standout, finished with birdies on the 16th and 17th holes and closed out with a par to finish with her 1-under 72.
Prascsak, who had a 4-under 69 Saturday, came in with a 2-over 75 Sunday.
“I thought I played OK,” she said. “I just didn’t make as many birdies (Sunday).”
Megan Kiley had a 2-under 71 Sunday to go with her first-day 77 and moved into a third-place tie with Camie Mess. Both have 2-over 148 totals, and four-time champions Michelle Smith and Michelle Gerbasich are five strokes behind Prascsak with 3-over 149s.
Of course, Kristi O’Brien has winning her first tournament in her sights, but she won’t be bitterly disappointed if that doesn’t happen.
“It put a lot of things in perspective,” she said. “Instead of getting mad at my golf game, I’m thankful that I’m here.”
