sleepyangel30
04-28-2004, 07:26 PM
a professional golf player with ic, I thought this was a interesting story.
Greg Hardwig: Myers is taking a swing at First Tee
By GREG HARDWIG@naplesnews.com
April 29, 2004
Terry-Jo Myers has given up.
She won't play professional golf anymore. She has quit.
Well, quit isn't the right word.
Myers has been anything but a quitter. Most other people would have done exactly that, faced with any of what she has been through in her 17 years as a professional.
For years, she suffered in silence with interstitial cystitis, a painful bladder disease that caused the need to urinate frequently and had her thinking of suicide. She also had a pair of back surgeries, injuries to her shoulder, and a list of nagging illnesses and injuries. It was one thing after another. Each time, Myers would bounce back. And come out on the other side.
But when she suffered another shoulder injury last year, she wondered if she had enough left to get through it.
"I think I just reached a point where I got a little too tired to deal with another injury and come out on the other side of it," Myers said Wednesday.
So Myers has retired. But not from the world of golf. That would be too easy. And that wouldn't be her.
Myers, 41, is part of a group in Fort Myers organizing a First Tee program, a golf-based effort aimed at getting underprivileged youth to come out on the other side through learning the game.
The facility would include an 18-hole golf course and a driving range.
"We're in the process of securing land," Myers said excitingly about the undisclosed 680-acre site.
The Fort Myers native won five Southwest Florida Junior Golf Association championships, and won the Southwest Florida Women's Amateur as a 20-year-old in 1983. She's contributed to the game in the area ever since. What better way to do that now than with the First Tee, which is affiliated with the PGA Tour.
"This just seems to fit exactly what I'm all about," she said.
For years, Myers was about filling a desire to compete among the best in the world. And for many of those years, she struggled with interstitial cystitis.
Until 1997, when Myers started taking a drug called Elmiron that alleviated the symptoms.
Finally playing golf without dealing with thoughts of the disease, Myers won three times that year. She was named the winner of the 1997 Heather Farr Award by the LPGA Tour for perseverance, and won the 1998 Ben Hogan Award from the Golf Writers Association of America for the same reason.
Then the injuries started and never ceased. She was rehabilitating her shoulder to get ready for the tour in 2004, but a lengthy virus sapped her strength.
"I just feel like I accomplished all I could with the resources that I had available to me, meaning my body," she said. "I'm not one that will ever look back and wonder 'Gee, what if I was healthy? What if that didn't happen?' I will not look back.
That's just who I am."
Now Myers is all about making sure the First Tee comes together the right way. That involves phone calls, letters and e-mails.
"I would like to see it up and running in two years," said Myers, who can be contacted at 910-3730. "I think that's a very reasonable timetable."
She can't wait to come out on the other side of this one.
Greg Hardwig: Myers is taking a swing at First Tee
By GREG HARDWIG@naplesnews.com
April 29, 2004
Terry-Jo Myers has given up.
She won't play professional golf anymore. She has quit.
Well, quit isn't the right word.
Myers has been anything but a quitter. Most other people would have done exactly that, faced with any of what she has been through in her 17 years as a professional.
For years, she suffered in silence with interstitial cystitis, a painful bladder disease that caused the need to urinate frequently and had her thinking of suicide. She also had a pair of back surgeries, injuries to her shoulder, and a list of nagging illnesses and injuries. It was one thing after another. Each time, Myers would bounce back. And come out on the other side.
But when she suffered another shoulder injury last year, she wondered if she had enough left to get through it.
"I think I just reached a point where I got a little too tired to deal with another injury and come out on the other side of it," Myers said Wednesday.
So Myers has retired. But not from the world of golf. That would be too easy. And that wouldn't be her.
Myers, 41, is part of a group in Fort Myers organizing a First Tee program, a golf-based effort aimed at getting underprivileged youth to come out on the other side through learning the game.
The facility would include an 18-hole golf course and a driving range.
"We're in the process of securing land," Myers said excitingly about the undisclosed 680-acre site.
The Fort Myers native won five Southwest Florida Junior Golf Association championships, and won the Southwest Florida Women's Amateur as a 20-year-old in 1983. She's contributed to the game in the area ever since. What better way to do that now than with the First Tee, which is affiliated with the PGA Tour.
"This just seems to fit exactly what I'm all about," she said.
For years, Myers was about filling a desire to compete among the best in the world. And for many of those years, she struggled with interstitial cystitis.
Until 1997, when Myers started taking a drug called Elmiron that alleviated the symptoms.
Finally playing golf without dealing with thoughts of the disease, Myers won three times that year. She was named the winner of the 1997 Heather Farr Award by the LPGA Tour for perseverance, and won the 1998 Ben Hogan Award from the Golf Writers Association of America for the same reason.
Then the injuries started and never ceased. She was rehabilitating her shoulder to get ready for the tour in 2004, but a lengthy virus sapped her strength.
"I just feel like I accomplished all I could with the resources that I had available to me, meaning my body," she said. "I'm not one that will ever look back and wonder 'Gee, what if I was healthy? What if that didn't happen?' I will not look back.
That's just who I am."
Now Myers is all about making sure the First Tee comes together the right way. That involves phone calls, letters and e-mails.
"I would like to see it up and running in two years," said Myers, who can be contacted at 910-3730. "I think that's a very reasonable timetable."
She can't wait to come out on the other side of this one.