Steve Elling's Short Game | CBS Sports.com
Three years ago last month, Jim McLean was attending a major league baseball in game at San Diego's Petco Park when his cellphone rang. He recognized the number immediately.
The reasoning behind the call was less obvious.
At the other end of the line was Erik Compton, lying on a hospital bed in Miami, and he was calling to say goodbye.
There was not a lick of melodrama to the call, either. Compton, a friend and student of McLean for years, was about to be wheeled in for his second heart transplant. Despite many advances in transplant medicine, Compton was in dire condition and the outcome was hardly assured.
That was in May, 2008, and it certainly didn’t mark the end of the inspirational Compton story. Only the beginning.
Within four months, Compton was miraculously back at Qualifying School, making cuts on sponsor exemptions in PGA Tour events, while jointly raising awareness for transplant recipients and organ-donor programs globally. The journeyman pro, whose first heart had given out after a near fatal attack, was again trying to find a foothold in the professional game.
His compelling story was told on HBO's Inside Sports, ABC News and by more online and print outlets than anyone can count. It was quite a comeback story: No other two-time transplant recipient was audacious enough to be attempting to derive a living as a professional sports figure. After finally making it to Q-school finals last fall, Compton has been playing this season on the developmental Nationwide Tour, where he played for several years before his first transplanted heart gave out.
Sunday, he climbed the metaphorical mountain in more ways than one.
Compton won his first career Nationwide event with a closing 65 in Mexico City, where the air is thin and the result was just as dizzying. He moved to second on the Nationwide earnings list, virtually locking up a card for 2012 on the PGA Tour, realizing a dream that three years ago seemed more like a medically induced hallucination.
"He's been through more and over come more than anyone I have ever known," said McLean on Monday from Doral Golf Resort & Spa. "I remember visiting him in his hospital room and the doctors told him he was pretty much through with professional golf."
Would you believe it? He was just getting started.
"I mean, regardless of what he did yesterday, he has already achieved more than anyone could have expected," McLean said.
As Compton waited for his next transplanted heart to become available, he chatted with doctors and friends about what his future would hold outside the game, including possibly working in the fishing profession. Compton, who received his first transplant at age 12 and became a national junior star, had other ideas, even though his wife was expecting the couple's first baby and he had no health insurance.
"His comeback, it's unreal," McLean said. "Just playing a professional sport itself is unreal, but winning is a monumental, incredible achievement."
Plagued by rain delays, Compton, now 31, soldiered through. Even he could see how apt the circumstances felt.
"This tournament has kind of summed up my life," Compton said Sunday night. "There was a lot of adversity to overcome in this tournament, just like what I’ve dealt with personally. To win this is everything to me. I never thought I’d play golf again, at least not at this level.
"I proved to myself I’m more than just a guy with two heart transplants."
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