“My boyfriend called, you know, on the landline back in the eighties. He said, Oh, my car won’t start. Do you mind if I pick you up on my motorcycle? And I’m 19. Oh, sure.”
Deborah Smith – tough love and second chances
Anyone who plays golf soon realises that occasionally we get a bad bounce, or once in a while, the ball will end up in a bad lie, even after a good shot. Likewise, life doesn’t always give us exactly what we deserve. So we can either stop, or we can move on, with an attitude that views the situation as an opportunity to learn. Call it perseverance, call it resilience, call it tenacity, call it whatever you like, but Deborah Smith has it in bucket loads and boy has she needed it.
Deborah is a survivor and embodies the term to its fullest. Surviving a horrific motorbike accident, hepatitis C, an amputation, depression, survivor’s guilt, and several bouts of cancer, is evidence that Deborah is made of strong stuff. And for the first 18 years, life had ticked along like a fine Swiss-made watch, never missing a beat, one mini success following the next, the stuff of a life well-lived.
As the eldest of four girls, Deborah grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and later lived in Iowa and North Carolina. Both of her parents had small businesses. Although the entrepreneurial couple had busy lives, they still made time to ferry Deborah to the usual round of after school activities. Dance lessons from the age of four, helped Deborah develop the passion for moving and then by the age of ten golf came into her life. “Mum and Dad were avid golfers and they signed me up for a series of golf lessons at the Rockford Park District”. Quickly golf took hold, “For my birthday I asked my parents to get me a summer pass for unlimited range balls at the golf course. So I would ride my bike there almost every day and I would hit a just huge, huge bucket of balls.”
As is the way, soon Deborah improved her skills and found herself on her high school golf team. It wasn’t long before she became the captain of the team which would compete in the state tournament. In the late 1970s, there were not many girls playing, so Deborah was fortunate to be at a high school that had enough girls good enough to compete, but she had already inherited her parents’ work ethic which she applied to golf, “As I took lessons, what I found was diligence, perseverance and practice were really the key to playing and having a consistent…
..
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Ladies European Tour…