U.S. Senior Open: Chris Smith honors late wife's memory

SOUTH BEND – Standing over the first tee shot of the 40th U.S. Senior Open early Thursday morning, Chris Smith could feel his emotions getting the best of him.

Hearing USGA starter David Jacobsen announce his name along with his hometown of Peru, Ind., was almost too much for Smith to process.

“When I heard that, I was like, ‘Whoa,’” Smith said after opening with a 6-over-par 76 at Warren Golf Course. “I really honestly thought I was going to start crying. I was not ready for that. I’m really proud of Indiana.”

He figures Friday will be a little easier for him, but then again maybe not. Dozens of friends and family members again figure to be in his gallery after making the 90-minute drive up U.S. 31 to lend support.

This whole week has been a challenge and a blessing for Smith, who turned 50 in April and qualified last month for his PGA Tour Champions debut.

A member of both the Ohio State Athletics and Indiana Golf halls of fame, Smith saw his career turn south after his only PGA Tour win in 2002. Then, a decade ago this month, his whole world went dark.

On Father’s Day morning 2009, after Smith had missed the cut at a Nationwide Tour event in Fort Smith, Ark., a fiery car accident on Interstate 69 near Angola claimed his wife Beth. Daughter Abigail, then 16, was driving the family’s SUV back from a visit with Beth’s parents in Toledo while younger brother Cameron, then 12, was riding in the back seat.

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Abigail lost control of the vehicle and skidded across the median, where a speeding bus struck the Smiths’ SUV in a head-on collision. Beth Smith was 42.

Gary Nicklaus, Smith’s freshman roommate at Ohio State, was a teammate and close friend when the couple started dating in Columbus. Beth earned a mechanical engineering degree but put her career on hold to raise a family.

“She was a great wife and a great mom,” Nicklaus said. “I mean, what he had to go through I can’t imagine. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. What happened, I can’t imagine what his daughter had to go through.”

Out of the fog

Neither of Smith’s children were in Thursday’s gallery, but that’s only because their lives are so busy.

Cameron, 22, graduated last month from the Kelley School of Business at IUPUI and is going through training at WestPoint Financial Group in Indianapolis. Abigail, 26, graduated that same week from law school at IU; she is studying for the Indiana State Bar exam.

Abigail, who has worked in the state prosecutor’s office and the office of state attorney general Curtis Hill, has mused about going to medical school after she passes the bar.

“She’s a go-getter,” said Rebecca Smith, her grandmother. “She’ll come up with something.”

To see the Smith children now is to marvel at the human spirit.

After the accident, Cameron was in critical condition with burns over nearly 20 percent of his body; he spent more than two weeks at Fort Wayne Lutheran Hospital recovering from abdominal injuries and fractures to multiple limbs.

Abigail mostly avoided burns, but it still took months for her broken pelvis and other wounds to heal. Repairing her psyche would take much longer.

“We all went through a lot,” Chris Smith said. “They both have gone about moving forward in different ways. They both have come out of the fog and out of the darkness pretty good. I’m extremely proud of them and the people they’ve become.”

Like so many golf wives, Beth was the one who kept things running smoothly so Chris could focus on his game. She was the scheduler, the accountant, the chef, the shuttle driver, the psychologist, the disciplinarian.

“She was raising the kids,” Rebecca Smith said. “She was lovely. She was a small, blonde, beautiful girl and really nice. She had a beautiful smile and was really into golf and very supportive. She was just always … there.”

‘Part of my fabric’

Last Friday, on the 10th anniversary of Beth Smith’s passing, Chris and Cameron played a round of golf together at Rock Hollow. Abigail was working in the pro shop.

“People ask, ‘Does it seem like it’s been a long time or does it seem like it’s been a short time?’” Chris Smith said. “There’s parts of my life that it feels like it was two hours ago and there’s parts of my life that it feels like it was a totally different life.”

He shakes his head.

“The whole thing has become part of my fabric,” he said. “There’s things that are still kind of raw and still very recent and there are other things that have softened up considerably that you can look at them in a more upbeat kind of way.”

Amid the greatest loss imaginable, Smith tries to maintain a feeling of gratitude.

“It took me a little while to learn this, but if you open your eyes and ears there’s always something going on every day,” he said. “There is something good put in front of you. Even when I was in the worst place I could have been and I was confused and I was messed up and all those things, there were still amazing things that were happening. The simplest things.”

Thursday morning, making the short drive from his hotel to the fresh start of his 50-plus career, Smith looked again to the east and was overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude.

“I got to watch the sunrise driving into the golf course today,” he said. “It was great.”