Ames' game reflects his drive to live life at his best
BY GIL LEBRETON Fort Worth Star-Telegram
20 May 2006
FORT WORTH, Texas - Regrettably, the yellow band on Stephen Ames' wrist is not meant to be a fashion statement.
"Live strong. Believe in life. Attitude is everything."
The message of the yellow "livestrong" wristbands, made famous by Texan Lance Armstrong, has seldom seemed more poignant.
Ames is currently the 10th-leading money winner on the PGA Tour. His season found another gear when he won The Players Championship, routing the so-called "best field in golf" by six strokes.
Through two rounds of the Bank of America Colonial, Ames has 12 birdies. His second-round 66 on Friday left him 9 under for the tournament, one stroke behind leader Rod Pampling.
Somehow, in a sport where failure feasts on distractions, Ames is playing the best golf of his life.
Despite what his yellow wristband means.
Almost exactly one year ago, Jodi Ames went to see a doctor for what she thought was an intestinal ailment. Doctors found tumors in her left lung and lymph nodes - lung cancer, though she does not smoke. In July 2005, after Stephen returned from the British Open, surgeons removed half of Jodi's left lung.
The Ameses have two sons, ages 9 and 6. As his wife recovered at their cabin in British Columbia, Stephen Ames returned to the tour, this time with both boys in tow.
The typical tour golfer goes into a fit of rage if even a single camera shutter flutters on his backswing. Yet, think of what Stephen Ames has been going through, each time he stands over a golf ball.
After Friday's 66, Ames tried to explain his recent golf.
"I think it's because I'm working with someone mentally that is letting me play to my abilities - seeing and playing shots," said Ames, who turns 42 in eight days. "Before it was very much a mechanical thing, trying to put it into the mold rather than just hitting it into the mold."
His psychologist is Alan Fine, and Ames clearly believes in him.
"It's been a big factor for the last three years, actually," he said. "2004 was when we started working together, and that was a big breakthrough there with the top 10. And then 2005 was a complete write-off with the situation at home. It was very difficult to play golf.
"And then I came back out this year and started working on the exact same things again."
At home, Ames reported, things are getting better.
"Jodi is doing very well," he said. "The last couple of weeks she's actually started back in the gym. She's trying to push herself a little bit more."
It was his wife's idea to get the yellow bracelets.
"She went ahead and bought, I think, 50 of them," Ames said. "And she gave them out to all of the friends and family at home in Calgary.
"We've all been wearing it for the last couple of years."
"We believe in life," begins the Manifesto of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. "We believe in living every minute of it with every ounce of your being.
"We believe in energy: channeled and fierce. We believe in focus: getting smart and living strong."
Before his wife's illness, Ames was roundly regarded as one of the most outspoken players on the tour. His fellow pros may chuckle at the polite euphemism.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Ames moved to Canada after meeting Jodi. Golf in Trinidad is said to be a game played mostly by senior citizens, and not even remotely as popular as soccer and cricket. Nobody missed him when he left, Ames himself has suggested.
He seems engaging, but his blunt tongue has gotten him into trouble, most spectacularly with Tiger Woods at the Accenture Match Play Championship. A miffed Woods ran the table on Ames, beating him by a mathematically perfect 9 and 8.
People also took it the wrong way when, in the afterglow of his six-shot victory at The Players Championship, Ames said that he was going on family vacation, and not accepting his automatic invitation to the Masters.
He went to Augusta, after all, and then the Mickey Mouse people gave the Ames family six days of VIP treatment at Disney World.
Nestled high on the Colonial leader board, Ames was asked Friday if he ever expected to be playing this caliber of golfer.
"No, my belief has changed," Ames said. "My belief was you had to have a perfect golf swing to be out here. But you don't have to have that golf swing."
His psychologist Fine helped him to play to his abilities, Ames said.
"He said, `You're playing mechanical golf. You're not playing feel golf, which is what you're supposed to be playing,' " Ames recalled. "In a sense, I had too many mechanical thoughts going through my mind.
"I had to cut my head off and play with nothing."
Attitude is everything, his yellow wristband reminds Stephen Ames.
In golf, in life.
