Blackford, Watson paths cross — again
By PHIL COBB Publisher
Nate Blackford, center, and PGA champion golfer Tom Watson meet again during the May 14 dedication of the Watson 9 hybrid golf course at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park, 32 years after Watson visited Blackford while he was a patient at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.
There is probably not a sports enthusiast in the country who hasn’t jumped for joy when a favorite athlete has a memorable, championship-winning moment.
Just as certainly, there are not many golf fans around who have failed to react similarly when their favorite tour player launches a rocket off a crucial tee or makes an “unsinkable” putt to lock up a win.
Athletes circling the bases, or the 18th green, with their arms held skyward in elation is not an uncommon sight nowadays.
But how many times has a British Open champion tossed his club in unbridled excitement over a golf shot — that he didn’t make?
Try May 14, when five-time Open champion Tom Watson was unable to control his emotions after 10-year-old Connor Blackford got down from an uncommonly difficult lie on No. 6 during the opening round played on the Watson 9 hybrid golf course at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park.
And that’s probably it.
But that will be enough for Connor and his family.
“Connor, I’ll always remember your great chip in …” Watson said in a personal note to the Maryville youngster that arrived less than a week after the opening round.
The note, by the way, was handwritten — on an Augusta National Masters Golf Tournament flag.
“It was a lot of fun, and Tom — Mr. Watson — gave me a lot of tips,” Connor said last week, recounting his day with the golfing great who designed the new short course at Mozingo Lake that bears his name.
“He coached me mostly on my putting,” young Blackford said. “He showed me how to walk the green and feel the ups and downs with my feet. Read it with my feet.
“When I got ready to hit my first tee shot, he came over kinda quiet and asked me if I was scared.
He told me not to be nervous, and he said he always takes two deep breaths.”
That advice must have worked because the Horace Mann Laboratory School fifth-grader had more than one good shot during the round.
“I think I shot a 45,” he said.
Watson, who recounted “almost outdriving Arnold Palmer when he got to play with him when he was 15,” carded a 29, playing with Connor, 8-year-old Alayna Pargas of Savannah, and former Missouri University golf All-American Ryan Zech.
“I didn’t ‘almost outdrive him,’ but I tied him on one or two holes, and we both birdied 6,” Connor said proudly.
During that memorable day, Connor and Watson also visited a bit about something else they have in common, besides golf.
When Connor’s life crossed paths with Tom Watson’s last month, the pair talked about an earlier encounter when a Blackford met Tom Watson — under totally different circumstances.
That first meeting came when Connor’s father, Nate Blackford, then 9 years old, was a patient at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City struggling to survive the life-threatening effects of Tetralogy of Fallot, a rare, congenital heart defect that, at the time, was more often than not fatal.
A long-time supporter of Children’s Mercy, Watson visited Nate during the two weeks he was hospitalized following the third of five heart surgeries.
“Tetralogy of Fallot affects 1 percent of the population,” Nate Blackford said, “and infants in my generation were the first to survive. I was a lab rat, that’s all there was to it. They were just trying to figure out how to fix it back then.”
Blackford underwent his first surgery, “a life-saving procedure,” when he was eight days old.
“My first open-heart surgery, when I was 18 months old, was ‘life-prolonging,’” he said, “and what I had when I was 9 was a first attempt at a ‘permanent fix.’”
Additional open-heart procedures followed when Blackford was 17 and again when he was 20.
When Blackford showed Watson a photograph of that initial meeting during Watson’s day in Maryville last month, the golf great assured him, “It’s great to see you made it.”
“I’m confident lots of kids he has seen in those kinds of situations didn’t make it,” Blackford said later.
Nate Blackford’s father, Jim, remembers Watson’s hospital visit all too well, and has his own story about it.
“Back then, there was this popular television personality in Kansas City who did sports and he was with Tom Watson that day,” the senior Blackford said. “It was Gordon Docking.
“When things settled down, and I asked Nate if he remembered who came to visit him in the hospital, he was quick to say, ‘Sure, Gordon Docking.’”
During the past 25 years, Watson has generated more than $12 million for Children’s Mercy, primarily through charity golf tournaments in and around Kansas City that have included fellow golfing greats Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Phil Mickelson, and others.
In the years since that initial meeting, Blackford, too, has maintained connections with Children’s Mercy, personally and professionally.
“We still support them periodically,” Nate said. “I try to take every opportunity to give back to the organization that gave me so much.”
And the relationship became even closer when Nate’s wife, Andrea, was 25 weeks into her pregnancy with Connor.
“Because Tetralogy of Fallot is a congenital heart defect, we wondered if it could be inherited by Connor,” Blackford remembered. “And, believe it or not, the same Children’s Mercy cardiologist who had read by pictures, read Connor’s, 30 years apart.
“Thankfully Connor was fine, and we have both sets of drawings of our hearts’ conditions,” he said.
In his career, Nate Blackford remains closely connected with the health care industry, serving as vice president of MPact Health, a collaboration of St. Louis-based Mercy Hospital, St. Joseph-based Mosaic Life Care, and Columbia-based University of Missouri Health Care.
And the connections with Tom Watson continued to emerge.
During a 1998 internship at Children’s Mercy, Blackford was involved with the Tom Watson golf tournament, and later, while employed by Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, he worked with Tom Watson’s daughter when she had an internship there.
Readily admitting that his lifelong medical experiences “changed me, made me a more compassionate person,” Nate Blackford said he “sees God’s hand in all of this.”
“The story is a blessing, but it is nothing we did intentionally,” he said. “Mr. Watson has just shown up in a couple of instances.”
And made a lasting impression on the Blackford family — and all of Maryville.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Nate Blackford and Tom Watson first crossed paths in 1984 when the legendary Kansas City golfer visited then-9-year-old Nate while he was a patient at Children’s Mercy Hospital following a third heart surgery to correct Tetralogy of Fallot, a rare, congenital heart defect. Nate’s mother, Bev Blackford, who was at her son’s bedside during Watson’s visit, recently got to see her grandson, Connor Blackford, golf with Watson during the May 14 opening of the Watson 9 at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park.
