Simpson aiming for win - hands permitting
CLEVELAND - Some guys are bad bets with a case of the shakes. Surgeons come to mind. So do pro golfers. Some people are betting on Tim Simpson anyway. Or hoping at least.What's your handicap? you ask a golfer. You gotta be kidding, says Simpson. How about your hand shaking so badly, you couldn't hold a drink if you wanted to. Just the thing for a 3-foot putt.
Take the first part of the 1990s. First there was the Lyme disease, courtesy of the deer tick from a hunting trip, a disease that left him unbelievably weak and hurting. Then came a thing doctors call “benign essential tremors,” a medically cold way of saying that somehow, the brain starts to misfire and is sending little signals that sets off the shakes that no amount of wishing or believing would stop. It was in both hands, but mostly the left. By 1997, he had sunk into depression, lost his marriage and retired from golf.
Doctors had to do some radical surgery. They ran a wire deep inside his brain, then ran it down under his scalp, down his neck and then to his chest, where they hooked it to the little electrical regular, like a Pacemaker, that they'd installed. He can't go near magnets. Airport security must be a lark. But his hands stopped shaking. This would be pretty funny if it weren't so damn sad, but every once in while, Simpson needs a tune-up, as he did before he left home in Georgia and headed here for the Senior PGA Championship at Canterbury Country Club. His doctor back home was out of town and so had him pull in at the Cleveland Clinic, where doctors hooked him up to some gadget that beeped when they poked at it, and they gave him a Styrofoam cup and told him to hold his hand out, and when it finally quit shaking, they all smiled and disconnected him. Tune-up complete.
Check the oil?
Well, it keeps the guy from bawling from pain and frustration and deep doubt, the way he has been for years, after the deer tick and the mysterious brain thing went about the business of almost ruining a flowering golf career, to say nothing of a normal life that should have its share of light and laughter.
Simpson, 53, got a goodly measure of light and laughter in meeting Michael J. Fox, 47, the wonderfully forever Back-to-the-Future kid who has matured sadly in the world's eyes as a victim of Parkinson's disease. Fox shakes and he can't stay still. They played together in the recent Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am, Fox having taken up the game just to teach the Parkinson's a lesson.
“I can honestly say I've never met a person in my whole life that affected me the way he did,” Simpson said. “It was truly life-changing. I mean, this was the most incredible human being you've ever seen. The epitome of somebody who won't give up.”
They will play together again, and fight the awful shakes together.
“I feel like I'm turning the corner,” Simpson said yesterday, and golf-wise, he truly did. After two early bogeys, he birdied the 10th and 11th, then the 14th and 15th, and hauled himself up the leaderboard with a 68, which tied him for fourth, two off Michael Allen's lead going into Sunday's final round. In his earlier life, Simpson won four times on the PGA Tour, and was just getting rolling when the Lyme disease hit in 1991. What with the brain surgery and all the rest, he pulled himself together and joined the Champions Tour in 2006, and has won some $2 million since. But a victory would be nice, he allowed.
“I fought hard the last four years to get in position to win,” Simpson said. “And pretty much every tournament, at some point, I'm on the leaderboard. It may be the second round, first round, whatever. Whether it's this tournament or the one down the road, I'm knocking on the door.”
Hands permitting, he added.
NOTES - Michael Allen, looking for that first win after 334 starts on the PGA Tour and in his first start on the Champions Tour, took a one-shot lead with a 67-207, 4 under for the tournament … Allen is bidding to become the 14th player to win his Champions Tour debut as well as the 23rd player to win the Senior PGA Championship on his first attempt … Can he win finally? “I truly believe I can,” Allen said. “That's my thing, that I draw on, is I feel I am ready. I got to have some heart” … Jeff Sluman (70) and Tom Kite (69) are tied for second at 208; neither has won a senior major … Said Sluman, a two-time winner in his second year on the tour: “If I can drive the ball like I have been, I really like my chances” … Said Kite, a 10-time winner: “I really feel good about everything, and I'm putting quite nicely. So I'm pleased with my position, and I wish it were better. Wish I hadn't bogeyed the last two holes” … Jay Haas, the defending champion, and Loren Roberts, as pre-tournament seers, figured a 4-under total of 276 would win; they seem dead-on … Six of the last seven winners of this tournament have come from behind on the final day … The most difficult hole on Saturday was the par-4 No. 4 with an average score of 4.416 (+.416).
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