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Finally, time was right to turn pro

By GARY SHELTON
Published February 27, 2005

LUTZ - In your next life, perhaps you can be a rock star.

Don't sweat the gray hair. You can still climb Everest. So what if there is an AARP card in your pocket? You can still ride that motorcycle. Your birth certificate is carved in stone? Hey, you can still master the trapeze.

It isn't too late for your dreams. Just ask John Harris, who at the tender age of 50 ran away from a happy home, a successful business and a normal existence to join the circus known as the Champions Tour.

And bully for him for doing so.

Oh, there are days he has been happier about the decision. A golf tournament got away from Harris Saturday, and at the end of the day, he was recognizable by the steam rising from his collar.

For most of the day, Harris was in position to own the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am. Never mind that he might have been the least recognizable face on the course. Harris was on a roll, the way he was when he was the best by-gum amateur golfer in Minnesota.

Then Harris hit a shot into the water here, a shot into the sand there, and before you knew it, he had taken a swan dive from the leaderboard. He went from first to tied for 19th, and just that quickly, you could glimpse the competitiveness that sparked him to become a pro athlete as his sixth decade began.

"I played poorly," Harris said. "I had an opportunity for a high finish, and I didn't take it. I just didn't play well."

There were the back-to-back double bogeys. There were the two bogeys in his last three holes. There was the edge to Harris' voice that hinted he still hadn't forgiven the sport for his suffering.

At one point, Harris had been 7 under, two shots ahead of the field. On a gray, sloppy, marathon of a day, he was in great shape. Then the course turned on him, the way it does in this game, and he began to slide. When it was over, a first-round 65 (the final seven holes Saturday morning) had been joined with a second-round 75. Talking about it, Harris' voice carried the irritation of an athlete who can count how much better his day could have been. Who knows? Maybe the old hockey player in Harris was coming out.

Herb Brooks would have recognized the anger. Brooks was Harris' old hockey coach at the University of Minnesota. Face it: Herb would have been a little ticked on Harris' behalf.

Yeah, there was a bit of Brooks' voice rattling around in Harris' head last week, the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviets. Four years earlier, Harris had played forward, and pretty well, for Brooks at Minnesota.

"He was a very unique coach, very driven," Harris said. "He was the perfect coach for an Olympic team. He was a great college coach. He would have been a great pro coach, too, but he got in too young and the game wasn't ready. He was a master psychologist."

Had Harris been born a little later, he might have been among the Minnesota players who made up most of the Olympic team.

"I wouldn't have made that team," Harris said. "It was too good for me. Besides, everything is about timing. I don't have any regrets."

For Harris, the timing never seemed quite right for professional golf. Harris turned pro in '76, then amateur again in '83. Three times in those years, he tried to get his PGA Tour card. He failed by a total of four strokes. If that happened to most of us, we would never watch another tournament without wondering how we would compare.

"That's probably part of the reason why I'm out here now," Harris said. "Trying to get over that."

Harris laughs softly. "Nah," he said. "The PGA never kept a good player off. If you're good enough, you'll make it."

Instead, Harris became a dominant amateur, winning four Minnesota titles, five mid-amateur (over 25) titles and the 1993 U.S. Amateur at age 41. He had great kids. He built a successful insurance business. He had a lot of friends in amateur golf. He was a member at Augusta National. Life was good.

Then Harris turned 50 in 2002, and he decided to give professional golf one last chance to write him a few checks.

No, he says, it wasn't an easy choice. But what other one could he make? Harris had been a competitor. How could anyone pass up a chance to get that back?

"It's everyone's dream to play," Harris said. "It's a challenge. I love competing. I enjoy golf. Today was a hard day for me, but the good days make up for it.

"My time will come."

Perhaps. His game is good enough. His stroke is good enough. Perhaps his first win comes soon, perhaps it comes here next year. Perhaps it will come on a gray day with a sloppy track. Perhaps Harris will conquer the Outback, after all.

After that, who knows?

Maybe he can still play hockey.

[Last modified February 27, 2005, 00:13:19]