LIVE BATES
By Pat Bates with Jeff Hopper

No one likes to wake up to a nightmare.

In 1999, after what should have been routine surgery, I did just that. Only my nightmare was real. And I was all but certain that my golf career was over.

I suppose, though, that my story begins sometime before that unforgettable spring. I had been raised in a Catholic family, which meant that I had a very good sense of right and wrong. This was something that my parents and my church instilled in me, and it turned out to be a good thing.

While I lived with my parents, I made a lot of right moral choices, because they were there watching out for me. In high school, I did well academically and played a whole lot of golf. I didn’t get into much trouble.When I went off to college at the University of Florida, however, the moral center that my parents gave me at home wasn’t there. Since I did not have a relationship with Christ at that time, I didn’t have anyone to motivate me toward making positive choices--and many of the choices I made were certainly not positive. I started to party and I dated freely. None of that is very unusual for a college student, but it was something I did all through college, and with the moral background I had, I knew when I graduated that I was not right with God. I just knew that I was not doing the right thing with my life.

In January 1992, I was preparing to leave for the South African Tour, and I was staying with my friends, the Alfieris, in Boca Raton, Florida. I had known the Alfieris for years, but not long before this, they had made a decision to follow Christ. It was a decision they shared with me, and it changed my life.

They started talking to me about Jesus and spiritual things, and together we watched the movie, Jesus of Nazareth. I asked some questions and they gave me some answers. Then they asked a question of their own, “Pat, do you think you’re going to heaven?”

I said, “I don’t think so.” But in my mind, reflecting on the way I had lived in college, I thought, No way. Definitely not.

That night I lay in bed actually afraid. I wondered what I would do if something happened to me. I wanted to go to heaven, but I didn’t know how to get there.

When I woke up the next morning, I went to breakfast, and I told the Alfieris what I was feeling. “I’m afraid,” I told them.

“That’s OK,” they assured me. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” With that in mind, I knew that a new beginning was right around the corner. That same night I prayed to receive Christ and begin my relationship with Him.

What this meant more than anything was that I was no longer guessing about how to live my life. I could go to the Bible everyday and learn straight from God how I should follow Christ. I already knew that there were many things that the world could offer, but so many of these pulled you away from a relationship with Christ. I just didn’t want to give into those things any more.

Golf, however, was a place where I still knew God was leading me. And I continued to pursue my career. By 1995, I had qualified for the PGA Tour, and I had also had a chance to share the testimony of my life in Christ with a number of people. So that year, when the Fellowship of Christian Athletes organized its Easter sunrise service at Hilton Head Island, they asked me to speak. I was rather overwhelmed at the invitation, because in my mind I figured they could have asked Tom Lehman or Bernhard Langer or someone more recognizable like that, but I soon found out what God had in mind.

In the crowd at the service that morning was a young woman who had already been told to keep an eye out for me. Her name was Kristi Tewell, and her father Doug played the Tour with me. Now, I was a single guy and there were a couple of wives of Tour friends who were always on the lookout for the right woman for me. One of these was Bonnie Jones, Steve’s wife, and the other was Amy DiMarco, whose husband Chris had been a college teammate of mine. During the week at Hilton Head, both Bonnie and Amy had talked with Kristi and essentially said the same thing: “I have a guy you really need to meet.” That guy was me.

So that morning at the Easter service, when they introduced me to speak, Kristi turned to her dad and asked, “Who’s that guy?”

“Pat Bates,” Doug told her.

“That’s the guy I’m supposed to meet!”

After the service, they came down to the front so I could meet Kristi. I thought she was gorgeous, but I didn’t really think a whole lot of it at the time because I figured she lived in Dallas and I was traveling on the Tour. But two weeks later Doug gave me her phone number, and early in 1997 we were married.

By 1997, though, I was off the big Tour, and I was making my living--or trying to--on the Nike/Buy.com Tour. On the golf course, things were not moving ahead too quickly. But they sure were at home! Our son Spencer was born late in 1997 and our daughter Kendall was born a year-and-a-half later. All of this meant that I wasn’t playing golf only for myself anymore. I was trying to support my family playing this game.

Ironically, it was an incident with my family that nearly ended my career in 1999. In March, I hurt my neck while working out on a new type of machine. For about two weeks, my neck was really killing me, and although I tried to play in a tournament, I could hardly swing a club.

I went home, and without thinking--as you so often don’t when you’re playing with your kids--I picked Spencer up onto my shoulders. I bent down with his weight on my shoulders, and I hurt my neck all over again. This time it didn’t get any better.

I waited two weeks, and when I could feel no improvement, I went in for an MRI. It showed that a disk in my neck,between the C5 and C6 vertebrae was totally herniated and was protruding into the spinal cord. It was causing so much weakness in my right arm that I struggled even to lift a dinner plate. And I had only been able to sleep for about two hours a night!

Neck surgery is nothing you rush into, but after four different doctors had looked at the MRI results and concluded that surgery was the only solution, that’s where I was headed. The plan was to pull the disk off the spinal cord and fuse the bones between C5 and C6. This could result in a slight loss of mobility, but nothing too restricting for a golfer.

Kristi had a friend who could perform the operation, so we went to Little Rock, Arkansas, to have it done. When the surgery was finished, the doctor walked out of the OR and told Kristi, “Everything went great. He’ll be up in an hour.”

In an hour I was up all right—as in awake. But beyond that, something was seriously wrong. I could not move my left hand, and I could not walk. If you are a professional golfer, it is precisely the nightmare you cannot afford to wake up to.

Leading up to the surgery, the doctors had told me that I would be chipping in 6-8 weeks and swinging a club fully again within three months. Now, with this surprising paralysis pinning me down, the doctors were anything but sure. They had no idea how much strength I would get back. They were not very optimistic about a full recovery.

But when you follow Christ, you sometimes have an advantage over the doctors. It wasn’t that I could see the future. No one can do that. But I knew that my future was in God’s hands. I had given Him complete control of my life, and He had removed my doubts. Not my doubts about golf--I was actually pretty sure during those days that I would not play professional golf again. I mean, a lot of things run through your mind, and you wonder what God could be trying to do in your life when it looks like your life as you have known it is suddenly all but gone.

After I wrestled with all those thoughts—and what else was I going to do lying there unable to get out of bed?—a peace came over me. It was God’s peace, and it spoke to me in this way: If I don’t ever play professional golf again, my life will be fine. I’ve got a wonderful family, and I’ll find something else to do.

At that point, golf ceased to be my idol. It was something I could walk away from.

In the days to follow, God did some marvelous things in my body. The paralysis ended, and within five days I could walk. After a week I was able to go home. That was seven days later than the original same-day prognosis, and my body was still a mess. But at least I was well enough to leave the hospital.

Kristi and I took the kids to her parents’ house, and we moved in for a while. The Tewells were so helpful. Doug had his own golf career to think about, but he would take me to therapy every morning, even tying my shoes for me before we got in the car.

I continued in therapy, five hours a day, five days a week for three months before I could open and close my hand again. It was all so slow.

Six months after the surgery, we were in Massachusetts, where I had lived as a child. I went with my brother and some friends to Brookline for the Ryder Cup, and I started to swing and practice again. I could only hit the ball 210-220 yards off the tee, because my left hand was so weak. But I continued to practice, and I continued with therapy, and by early 2000, when the Buy.com Tour began in March, I was ready to play competitively, which I was enabled to do through a medical extension.

I didn’t play especially well. But a couple of solid finishes late in the year got me through the season.

Barely.

When the 2000 season came to a close, Kristi and I were on the financial edge. We had some heart-to-heart discussions, trying to figure out whether professional golf was where I still belonged. We decided to give it one more year.

I said, “Honey, I can promise you that I’m going to love you. I can promise you that I’m going to be faithful. But I can’t promise you that we’re going to be on the PGA Tour.”

That’s a hard thing to say as a man, because you want to be able to accomplish things for your family. As believers, we were happy, but we had also watched a lot of our friends continue on to the PGA Tour, and we had stayed on the Buy.com Tour all those years.

But we had also been honest with God. We told Him that we didn’t really want to make it to the PGA Tour until we were ready. We had seen quite a few guys go up to the big Tour and then drop right back down again. We didn’t want that to happen. So we asked God to make us ready mentally, physically, and spiritually. It was a weird prayer, I’ll admit, but we felt through that prayer that when the time came to get back on the PGA Tour—actually, the first time for Kristi and me together—we would be ready.

As the 2001 season began, it seemed more and more like that time might never come. But God’s calendar doesn’t have dates only, like ours often do. He knows well ahead of time just what will fill each of those days. And as I headed off to Gainesville, Florida, to start the season, the day things would take a big turn was actually much closer than I might have imagined.

I got into the tournament at Gainesville through a sponsor’s exemption. Being a former Florida Gator didn’t hurt. I made the cut, finished 17th, and picked up a check for $5,376. I wasn’t rich, but I could pay the bills for awhile, which was better than I would be able to do over the next several weeks.

The following week I made $3,200. The week after that, it fell to $1,800. And then I missed two cuts. It was like the law of diminishing returns. It had come to a critical point: make cuts or call it quits.

 For the next seven tournaments through mid-July, my game was on again, off again. I missed two cuts, but I tied for twelfth at Knoxville and seventh at Wichita, so I made nearly $30,000 over those two months.

 Then came the Siouxland Open. It was the first tournament I had ever won, actually, way back in 1994. So I guess you could say I was doubly confident: history was on my side, and so was my recent play at Wichita. I carry a little notebook around with me, like a journal. In it, I wrote this: “My game feels good. I feel like I’m ready to win.”

 I opened 67-66, and the tournament was mine to lose. Or win.

 On Saturday, I shot 70, and I had one-shot lead. If there’s anything you want to do in the final round of a closely contested tournament, it is to start well. Sure enough, I birdied three of the first six holes. I was able to play steadily the rest of the way, and on the last hole, I needed just a two-footer to win. I made it.

That was the most emotional I have ever been after winning a golf tournament. I just broke down and started crying. I was shaking so much that I could hardly sign my scorecard. It was all so overwhelming. Only the people close to me understood all that I had gone through to get back to this point.

I’m sure a lot of people didn’t realize how big a win the Siouxland Open was for me. It’s easy to say, “Isn’t this just the Buy.com Tour—you know, the Triple A of golf?” But for me it was incredibly huge. It was such an encouragement.

For one thing, the check was certainly my biggest ever, $76,500. I could pay all the bills! But more than that, I knew that I could compete again. And, God still willing, I had that chance to get back to the PGA Tour.

I had three solid tournaments in August and September, and I was in great position to finish among the top 15 money winners on the Buy.com Tour. A top-15 finish qualifies you for the PGA Tour the following year.

With two tournaments to go in late October, the Tour moved to Shreveport and this time I couldn’t seem to stop making birdies. I shot 20-under, 268, and won again!

Now I was in a most unusual, most wonderful position. Heading into the last tournament, the Buy.com Tour Championship, I was assured of a top-15 spot and a place on the PGA Tour. But if I could win, it would be my third victory of the year, which would give me a full exemption.

Oh, how it is all in God’s marvelous hands!

The tournament was at the Capitol Hill Golf Facility in Prattville, Alabama, along the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. The course was so hard that on Friday more than a third of the field shot 78 or worse. And these were the best players on the Tour, including two guys who had already won three times in 2001!

But, you see, I had known much greater tests than this.

I had been down and nearly out spiritually when I left college. But God used a wonderful family to bring me into His kingdom.

I had been down and nearly out physically when I lay immobile on that Arkansas hospital bed unsure whether I would even have a next step, let alone what it would be. But God used those hours to reset my focus on Him, then He gave me back my ability to walk, to swing, and to compete.

And I had been down and nearly out financially early in 2001. But God had used Kristi, who had told me that she would fully support me as I tried to give it all I had this one last year. And He had used His Word when He reassured us through Matthew 6:33 that if we sought His kingdom first, He would provide all we needed.

With all that to look back on, I guess pars weren’t as hard to come by in the Tour Championship. I shot 4-under par and won by three.

Standing on the 18th green with the other 14 qualifiers at the conclusion of the tournament, my mind kept repeating a passage from James 1 that described the good and bad of my life over the past two years: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Without question, our prayer for readiness had been answered. God had caused me to wait to get back to the PGA Tour until I was prepared in the way He was preparing me. I really believe that in Christ I lack nothing.

This article originally appeared in the Links Letter, February 2002.

PAT BATES

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