Back in the swing
BRYCE ALDERTON
Muffin Spencer-Devlin is slowly regaining the urge to return to a
game she walked away from four years ago.
She is also eager to start living again.
The last four years haven’t been easy for the former LPGA Tour
player, who now resides in Laguna Beach and who chaired a charity
golf tournament that raised $21,000 last month at Mesa Verde Country
Club in Costa Mesa.
There was the constant struggle with manic depression, or bipolar
disorder, an imbalanced thyroid and the remnants of a 10-year
relationship that broke apart.
In 2000, after 21 years and three LPGA Tour victories,
Spencer-Devlin had had enough.
She walked away from the tour and said goodbye to golf.
Four years later, she still wrestles with the decision to walk
away from a game she began playing at age 5.
“I still don’t know why I walked away, but it was a relief,” said
Spencer-Devlin, the honorary chairman of the Mental Health Classic at
Mesa Verde, which raised $21,000 for H.O.M.E.S. Inc., a nonprofit
with a small office in Newport Beach that provides housing for people
suffering from persistent mental distress. Homes or apartments have
been provided in Fullerton, Orange, Anaheim and Midway City.
Spencer-Devlin, 50, was first diagnosed with manic depression 30
years ago and takes medication to lessen its effects. The disease
causes sufferers to have severe and unexpected fluctuations in mood.
The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that more than
two million adults suffer from manic depression.
For Spencer-Devlin, the disease was at an all-time high at the end
of 1999.
“I had a manic episode at the end of 1999, going into 2000. It was
one of the worst ones I’ve ever had,” Spencer-Devlin said.
With that, golf became a distant speck on her radar, the furthest
thought.
“I really haven’t played golf since,” she said. “The only contact
with the golf world I’ve had is the golf tournament.”
For the last seven years, Spencer-Devlin has been the tournament’s
honorary chairman after Bill Hagerman, the founder, died in an car
accident involving a drunk driver.
“I was looking for a charity that was specific inside the mental
health field and didn’t care which one as long as it provided for the
mentally ill,” Spencer-Devlin said. “It seemed like a great match.”
Helen Cameron, executive director of H.O.M.E.S. Inc., is in her
fifth year with the organization and has seen Spencer-Devlin fight
through the tough times and embrace the pleasurable ones.
“She has been so ill, she actually went to the hospital and, other
years, like this year, I’m very pleased to see her on her
medication,” Cameron said. “We’ve seen, over the years, her stable
one moment and at different times she hasn’t been. It is a lesson to
many participants of the dramatic impacts the illness can bring.”
To say the last four years have been a struggle would be putting
it mildly.
Two months ago, Spencer-Devlin didn’t know what she wanted to do.
“The last four years I struggled to find my legs in the real
world,” said Spencer-Devlin, who lives with her mother Patricia.
It was Patricia who gave her daughter a pep-talk, if you will, two
months ago.
“She sat me down and said, ‘You need to get a job,’ ”
Spencer-Devlin recalled, laughing. “That was a big part of it right
there.”
A golf course, of all things, came to mind and Spencer-Devlin has
her compass creeping in that direction. She wants to teach the swing.
She has only golfed once -- about two years ago -- in the four
years since she stepped away from the tour.
“My swing, when I left the tour, was better that it had ever been
in my entire career,” Spencer-Devlin said. “Because of Jamie Mulligan
[head pro at Virginia Country Club in Long Beach], I feel I know
enough about the actual mechanics of the swing to teach it.”
Spencer-Devlin went through a swing overhaul she credits Mulligan
with instilling, shortly before retiring.
It has started with a few friends and Spencer-Devlin is in
negotiations with different facilities to set up a teaching schedule,
hoping to build a substantial client list.
Her thyroid has stabilized and she eagerly awaits analyzing the
golf swing.
“It’s only since the thyroid problem have I considered teaching as
a career,” Spencer-Devlin said. “My dream is to teach [golf part
time]. Teaching golf is more realistic than painting, but there is a
certain Zen-like and rehabilitative quality to painting.”
Muffin, whose real name is Helene, paints the inside of homes for
a contractor and recently began working five days a week. Her
grandmother coined the name “Muffin,” after noticing the marks on
Spencer-Devlin’s forehead at birth resembled those on a muffin when
released from a pan.
Life for Spencer-Devlin is slowly regaining a sweet scent.
“In terms of my self-esteem and self-worth, it was embarrassing to
me that for 21 years on tour I thought, ‘If you can’t juggle six
balls, you’re not going to make it,’ ” Spencer-Devlin said. “I
haven’t been able to juggle any balls the last two years. I forgot
how to get along. Because of this teaching thing and painting
contractor, I am beginning to earn a living again. I didn’t earn a
living the previous four years.”
Welcome back Muffin!
*
Steve Rhorer added a second senior club championship trophy to his
mantle after shooting rounds of 71-76 -- 147 at Mesa Verde Country
Club April 3-4 to win the gross division title.
Rhorer, a longtime Costa Mesa resident, won Mesa Verde’s men’s
club championship in 2002 and teamed with head pro Tom Sargent in
last year’s Jones Cup. The duo finished one stroke behind Will Tipton
and Bob Lovejoy from Big Canyon Country Club.
Rhorer won 11 club championships at Virginia Country Club in Long
Beach.
Ken Passon won the net division in a one-hole playoff over John
Steinmeyer. Passon parred the first hole of the sudden-death playoff.
He shot 69-74 -- 143.
Here are other gross and net winners from different age groups:
50-59 gross -- Dale Willetts, net -- Bryan Rolfe; 60-69 gross -- Dave
Tanchuck, net -- Steinmeyer; 70-79 gross -- Gordon Cannon, net --
Hank Aihara; 80-89 gross -- Al Wells, net -- Bird Cross.
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