Warren gets his game back on course

As much as the game has ignited a dream, that was never the intent. No, their original design, they concede, was more basic.

"Essentially, we used the golf course as a sort of day care," said Terry Lombard.

It was at Gorham Country Club in Maine where Shawn Warren was introduced to golf at age 9 and if at first the game proved confounding, it was clear the youngster had a passion.

"We'd drop him off at 7 and pick him up at 5," said Lombard, who married Warren's mother, Cherryl when Shawn was 7. "He'd play as many as 45 holes. When we'd get him home, he was ready to eat and go to bed."

Fourteen years later, Shawn Warren is ready for something else. Namely, the demanding challenge to make it in professional golf.

"It's all I've thought of for the last few years," said Warren. "I've loved the game since I first played it and when I finished playing in college [in the spring of 2007], I knew it's what I wanted to do."

He had advanced in so many appropriate ways, calculated and traditional, that it was easy to admire the foundation Warren was pouring. The two-time Maine State Junior champion, he won the Maine High School state championship in 2002, the East Coast Amateur in 2003, then in 2004 he became the first amateur in 33 years to triumph in the Maine Open. Success continued when in 2006 Warren not only won the Maine State Amateur, but qualified for the US Amateur. Throw in the fact that Warren became just the second player in Marshall University history to lead his team in scoring average all four years, and you have the makings of a promising career that was unfolding with such a vision.

But then the dream got sidetracked with a brutal ferocity that no one could have seen coming.

"We were absolutely floored by what occurred," said Lombard, still shaken by the events of a year ago.

His stepson only three weeks earlier had concluded his collegiate career at Marshall by shooting 70 -216 to finish fifth in the Conference USA championships when he was attacked outside of a bar in his hometown of Windham, Maine.

"I had never even seen them before," said Warren. "Wrong place at the wrong time."

He had accompanied a friend, an off-duty police officer, into the bar. It is speculated that a group of men had had a previous run-in with the officer, but Warren doesn't know. Nor does he care to talk too much about the incident, only to confirm that when he and his friend left the bar, the group of men were waiting outside and had them outnumbered. In the ensuing melee, Warren was severely injured. The fractured nose and jaw and crushed cheekbone were painful enough, but the broken orbital bone is what had generated the most fear.

"Very well, his burgeoning career could have ended right there," said Lombard.

For several weeks, the pro career that Warren had only recently launched was the least of anyone's concern. All worries revolved around the vision in his left eye and the various head injuries. So passionate about golf for so many years, Warren concedes that as he recuperated and pondered the senseless attack, a profound sense of his surroundings settled in.

"I used to worry about a double bogey or a hole I didn't birdie," said Warren. "But then I can always think of how close I came to never playing again and it gives me a better sense of perspective."

There were attempts to play later in 2007, at the Greater Portland Open and at the Maine Open, but mostly Warren got healthy and took care of the reconstructive surgeries that were required. He also became determined to finish his studies at Marshall, which was one of the lone positive byproducts of the attack. He said he probably wouldn't have completed his degree had he not been sidelined from golf "and it's something I'm glad I did."

John Feaganes wasn't surprised that Warren spent his idle time back at Marshall.

"He's always been determined and focused on being successful," said Feaganes, for 36 years the head golf coach at the Huntington, W.Va., university.

Instead of languishing at home while he recovered, Warren returned to school. "He lost a lot of weight, got in shape, and more or less said, 'The college partying days are over,' " Feaganes said.

What is underway is a pro career at the most humble of events. Over the winter, Warren achieved status on the Hooters Tour and after missing each of the first four cuts, he's cashed checks with a T-14 and T-34 in back-to-back tournaments. He returned home to shoot 76 and make it through a Mass. Open qualifier Tuesday at Shaker Hills GC in Harvard, then, in ultimate minitour fashion, Warren and Lombard drove down to Olde Barnstable Fairgrounds in Marstons Mills to get in an 18-hole practice round in preparation of the 54-hole Cape Cod Open, which began yesterday.

"Just snuck it in, too," said Lombard, who caddies for his stepson. "His spirit really carried him through all of that. But he's absolutely doing what he's been dreaming about for years."

Darkness was falling at Olde Barnstable, and the two-rounds-at-two-courses day had left golfer and caddie tired and hungry. Yes, they were standing as far from the PGA Tour glamour as one can get, but that didn't mean they couldn't see the way, starting with Round 1 of the Cape Cod Open.

But first, there would be Warren's reward for a long day of golf. He would eat and go to bed.

Just like the old days.