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Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
by Tom Kelley
This past weekend one of my favorite golfers finally won a golf tournament after almost fifteen years without winning. Joey Sindelar is one of the honest-to-goodness nice guys on the Professional Golfers Association Tour. He had not won a golf tournament since 1990. The riches of the upper echelon of the tour's elite had escaped him. Yet, at age forty, he's still out there plugging away at what he loves.
Joey Sindelar is from Horseheads, New York, a community nestled in the Southern Tier of Upstate New York. His college days were spent at Ohio State University where he was a solid force on an outstaning golf team. When he turned pro following college many predicted that he would be a contender week in and week out. He was...for a little bit. Competition is tough on the tour.
Joey has been one of the non-entities over the past ten years. He has been able to remain on the tour through grit and determination even though the younger, stronger, longer golfers have passed him in ability. His win this past weekend is as much a testimony to perseverance as it is to his ability to swing a golf club. You don't play on the PGA Tour unless you are among the 150 best in the world. And you don't win unless you beat the other 149 any given week.
I met Joey briefly back in the early eighties in Johnson City, New York, at a shoe store. He was surprised to even be recognized. He was a very polite and unassuming young man back then. The only reason I knew him was because I was following the OSU golf team at the time. I asked him if he was going to turn pro following college. His response was interesting. "If the good Lord lets me," he replied. "You never know." If the good Lord lets him.
"Come now you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit'; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." James 4:13-15 'Nuff said.
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...He was the Minister of the Minorsville Christian Church located near Stamping Ground, KY.
...Becky and Tom have three children; John, single and in worship ministry in Nicholasville, Kentucky; Sean, married (Jennifer, elementary school teacher) with twins (Grace and Patrick, b.d. 10/31/04) and regional director of Papa John's Pizza in Central KY; Kara, married (Vince Taylor, prison guard) and working with Hospice East in Winchester, KY.
...Tom went to be with the Lord on November 13, 2009 after a lengthy battle with cancer. If you have been touched by Tom's writings please send an email to Tom's son at jkelley@catalystchristian.net
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