For Paul Goydos, life or death has much deeper meaning
Mike Dudurich
Posted 2009-05-20
Let’s start with the bottom line:
No one is perfect. We all have our faults and our warts will eventually show.
But every once in a while, we come across someone who warrants our respect and admiration.
Meet Paul Goydos.
Despite the fact that he’s won a pair of PGA Tour victories and nearly $9 million, Goydos has quietly been a member of the PGA Tour since 1993. But that’s not what’s admirable about him.
For the entirety of that career, Goydos not only has battled par and the best players in golf, but demons and a personal tragedy that eventually wrecked the Long Beach, Calif. native’s home life earlier this year.
Even before marrying his wife, Wendy, in 1989, Goydos was aware of the migraine headaches she had. They were migraines of the magnitude, that for a long time, the only relief was for her to lie quietly in a completely dark room.
As she got older, they got worse, ironically spiking at about the time he started playing PGA Tour golf. She became a recent visitor to the emergency room for the headaches, many times getting Demerol for pain and Vistaril for the naseau that would surely follow.
The frequency of the visits increased, the resolution of the pain issues was less and less successful and the Demerol became more and more of a depressant. At some point, she crossed over from over the counter drugs to crystal methamphetamine and the spiral worsened and deepened.
Their 10-year marriage, which included stints with Wendy serving as Goydos’ caddie, crumbled when Wendy became pregnant with another man’s child. The ensuing divorce resulted in Goydos being granted full custody of his daughters, Chelsea and Courtney, who were 11 and 9 at the time.
In the midst of all of that turmoil, Goydos had recorded one of his two victories, the 1996 Bay Hill Invitational. The other didn’t come until the 2007 Sony Open in Hawaii.
After the split in 2003, Goydos made one of those decisions that command respect and admiration: he decided to take the 2004 PGA Tour season off so that he could dedicate himself fully to caring for his girls.
“I can sit here and claim I made an altruistic or courageous decision not to play golf so I could be with my girls,” Goydos said later. “But Wendy made one herself, by not fighting to have them and walking away so she could take care of herself and wind up a better mother. That's pretty strong, too.”
Goydos’ play showed marked improvement in 2005 after the divorce became final and he picked up that second win in Hawaii in January of 2007.
All of those years in relative anonymity on the PGA Tour came to an end at the Players Championship in 2008. Wearing a Long Beach State University “Dirtbags” hat he bought at an airport, Goydos found himself in a playoff with Sergio Garcia. The playoff started on the island green 17th and ended there when Goydos’ tee ball found the water and Garcia hit the green.
He came back to Ponte Vedra Beach earlier this month, knowing full well that he was going to be the center of attention because of being last year’s runnerup, but also of the events that jolted his world once again in January.
He had missed the cut at the Sony and had taken the red-eye home. He was sleeping when his phone rang, his ex-mother-in-law was calling to tell him Wendy had died at age 44 from a suspected overdose.
"I have a problem telling the story," he said. "I have a problem reading the story. The more I think about it, the more tragic it becomes. Telling my children, I'll never forget that.
"I'm a professional golfer," Goydos said. "I think there's a lot of people who would love to have that job. I've got two wonderful kids who I'm more proud of every day. The person who had it rough, I would say, is my ex-wife. My wife had an addiction problem, but the hardest thing to do is trying not to be an addict. She spent the last years of her life trying not to be an addict. That's difficult. It's a lot easier standing on the 17th hole at TPC in a playoff. You can't compare the two.
"To equate the troubles and dealings that I've had to the dealings that she had to deal with is completely unfair to her, and to some extent, ridiculous."
It was easy enough to criticize Goydos, his game, his will to win when he had leads late in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and the Valero Texas Open but failed to hold on to win.
But knowing all that has been going on in Goydos’ life maybe allows for giving the veteran a pass or two.
He had a one-shot lead with two holes to go in San Antonio but bogeyed in.
Would you believe that the final round last week was four months to the day since Wendy died?
His final mistake Sunday was a muffed chip shot on 18, keeping him out of the playoff.
He joked about playing well for 70 holes, but on the occasions that he’s given interviews on the subject, Goydos repeats one theme over and over.
"This was a person who tried hard not to be an addict," Goydos said. "She was a person who had a health problem that got away from her and ultimately beat her. I'm just as guilty as everybody being judgmental about this issue. This is a disease we need to take more seriously."
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About Mike...
As a sports writer for over 35 years, Mike Dudurich has seen a lot of great things, covered spectacular events, but his passion is, and has been golf.
He recently ended a 29-year career at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and will now be a frequent contributor on GolfGearReview.com.
Mike hosts a weekly golf radio show on 1250 ESPN in Pittsburgh from the beginning of April through the end of August.
The show airs Saturdays from 8-9 a.m. and can be heard online at http://stations.espn.go.com/stations/espnradio1250/show?showId=insidepghgolf - Listen to Mike Here!.
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