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By: Bob Harig
Gritty PGA tour pro Rocco Mediate is bringing his game to Naples.
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"It was awful,'" he recalls of the procedure. "When I woke up, I thought I was going to die."
It took nearly two years for Mediate to recover, which is why there was a big lull in his career in 1994 and 1995. But by 1996, Mediate was playing well again. He had four top-10 finishes and was 40th on the PGA Tour money list. Mediate turned into a steady performer, winning more than $1 million in prize money four years in a row.
But none of that matters much to Mediate. He is far more concerned with being a number-one husband and father, he says. Last year, he took big chunks of time off to be at home with his family. He is so protective of his sons that he does not list their names in the PGA Tour media guide. And if they are not mentioned in stories about Mediate, that's fine by him.
"I don't want my boys to grow up on the road," he says. "That's not what I want and that's not going to happen. Like I've said before, it's fantasy land out here. I don't want them to think it's always fantasy land."
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