Phil Mickelson rallied from six shots behind to win for the fourth time at Pebble Beach, a final round made even more memorable by the guy in a red shirt who was among the first to congratulate him Sunday on the 18th green.PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Erik Compton sees himself as more dreamer than role model, more of a grinder than an inspiration.
In reality, this 30-year-old golfer from Miami fits all those descriptions.
He’s a 5-foot-9, 150-pound father and a survivor of two heart transplants who wants to make a living playing golf.
He’s one of 156 players in possession of what he calls a Golden Ticket – a tee time this week at Pebble Beach to play in the U.S. Open.
“I’m a dreamer,” Compton said Monday after playing a practice round with Nick Watney and Ben Crane. “So I have dreamed that I could get another heart and I could come back out and play.”
He is a little more than two years removed from his second heart transplant, both operations necessitated by a disease called viral cardiomyopathy, which inflames the heart and leaves it unable to pump as hard as it needs to.
When Compton was first diagnosed with the disease at age 9, he was the fastest kid at school and the best athlete.
His first transplant came when he was 12, but instead of settling for a sedentary lifestyle for their son, Peter and Eli Compton encouraged him to get back out there and try something.
Golf was the answer.
“To our surprise, he kept getting better and better,” Peter Compton said.
Compton kept winning – won his way to a spot on the team at University of Georgia and a place on the Nationwide Tour and Canadian Tours in the early 2000s.
Three years ago, as Compton was wrapping up a day of fishing, he started feeling pain in his chest. His left main coronary artery was failing. He was having a heart attack. He drove himself through the detour-riddled streets of Miami and made it to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where doctors saved his life.
About seven months later, he had his second heart transplant.
“When I was laying there in the ICU and after the transplant, I pretty much had come to grips that I wasn’t ever going to play golf again,” Compton said. “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.”
