A family always on the road

By Debra Minor Wilson
Times West Virginian

BRIDGEPORT July 13, 2008 01:40 am

— For pro golfer Tim O’Neal and his wife Melody, “road trip” is more than a jaunt to the supermarket.
It’s a well-planned, smoothly running, weeks-long way of life that takes them from their home in Savannah, Ga., across the country from tournament to tournament.
Last week, it took them to Bridgeport’s Pete Dye Golf Club, where he was one of 144 golfers vying for the top prize at the Nationwide Tour Players Cup.
If he makes the cut, he has a chance at snagging that $180,000. If not, he’s out. Either way, his family will be with him to cheer him on and be by his side.
Melody has traveled with him all 10 years he’s been a pro golfer — in the beginning, full time.
“If you’re going to spend time with someone, you have to travel with them,” she said.
“It’s the same thing now, just different.”
Different ... thanks to their children, Jordan, 6, and Jayden, 2.
O’Neal will play 30 or more tournaments a year, and they’ll be with him as often as they can. So far this summer the four have traveled to Tennessee, North Carolina, New York, Canada, Maryland and West Virginia. Next week they’re off to Missouri and then Ohio, and then home for a breather.
Typically they’re on the road for four or five weeks, then home for one. And then it starts all over again.
“I can’t think past two or three weeks ahead,” she said with a laugh.
They drive to almost every place he plays.
“We drove from Georgia to Canada in 20 hours. We’ve driven overnight twice in the past two weeks. If you finish on Sunday and you have to be at a Pro-Am Monday eight states away ... .”
You just don’t have much of a choice: It’s the roadway or no way.
Flying isn’t always quicker, cheaper or easier, she said.
“Besides, with a plane there are too many restrictions. And with a 2-year-old, a plane is not always the best for me ... or the other passengers,” she said, laughing again.
So they pack up the SUV, gas up the tank and hit the road.
“I don’t have to worry about what I can or can’t pack. I just throw it all in there and go.”
Her secret is three words: Keep it simple.
“We’re pretty minimalist when it comes to traveling. The more you have, the more chance you have of losing it. We lost a Croc shoe the other day. We searched three hours for it. When you bring just two pairs of shoes, you have to find it. And if we need something, there’s always a Target or Wal-Mart somewhere.”
Jordan and Jayden are allowed one kiddie suitcase each — Dora the Explorer for her, Spider-Man for him. And that’s it.
Jordan’s in charge of packing the all-important “Toys to Keep the Kids Happy” suitcase. Even that’s pretty basic: some books, just one electronic game, puzzles for her, little cars for him. They can watch a movie on the SUV’s DVR, nap and then watch another flick.
“By then, we’re probably where we’re going,” she said.
“I just don’t think kids need as much as we give them. In any kid household, kids have way more than they need, no matter what it is ... clothes, toys, junk food, everything.
“They really don’t need all that stuff. When we were little, we didn’t have all that stuff and we made car trips just fine.”
It’s all a matter of making smart choices, whether it’s what to pack or where to eat or what to do.
Life on the road for the O’Neals isn’t a leisurely, scenic tour of the Lower 48. It’s a “gotta get there as fast as we can” business trip. Golf is his job. Taking care of him is theirs.
They might get to their hotel by 3:30 a.m. He’s up at 6:30 to practice on the greens. They have breakfast together, and then Melody, Jordan and Jayden “play tourist” until lunch back at the course. They eat. He practices some more, and then he’s done.
“When he leaves the course, he leaves the course. It’s straight family time,” she said.
He needs this, she added.
“He plays better when we’re there. If he’s having a bad day, he gets off the course and lets it go. If he were by himself, he’d go back to the hotel and mope and think ‘I shoulda, coulda, woulda.’
“When we’re on the road with him, we just try to make it as easy as possible for him.”
She said he played very well during the three years she and Jordan traveled with him full time. When their daughter started kindergarten, she and her mom stayed home.
“He totally bottomed out. He said, ‘I wish you guys were back on the road with me.’”
They might return as a full-time traveling golf family one day.
“But there are some things we need to accomplish first,” she said. “It would mean home-schooling.”
For the most part, the little ones like traveling with Mom and Dad.
“Jayden sometimes asks to go home because he wants his room and more of his toys. But Jordan, when she was young, she never cared as long as she was with us. She didn’t need one thing. But she’s a lot different. She’s our straight-A child. And Bubba, he’s our wild child.”
When they’re home in Savannah, the two children get to spend time with grandparents. Then it’s time to pack it up and head on out again.
“It works out just fine,” Melody said.
Time on the road is good for the two, she added.
“I think they get so much more being out in different places. They’re well-behaved most of the time in public. They have to be. There’s too much people traffic. But when we’re in the hotel, we let them let it out.
“I like taking them hundreds of places at the age they’re at. They’ve been to more places now than by the time I was 22. Places Jordan learns about in school, she gets to see.
“I like showing them things we don’t have in Savannah, like snow and mountains. We live on a flat beach land. Not a hill in sight.”
But as much as they like life on the road, “We still love to go back home,” she said.
Probably the toughest thing is keeping the children from getting bored, she said. They keep track of what every city they visit has to offer. Knowing they’ll probably be back again next year, this time they’ll visit one attraction and save another for next year.
“We keep it simple. Maybe we’ll take rides through the country so they can see things they’re not used to seeing. At this age, they’re pretty easy to amuse. We can go to a toy store for two hours — which we’ve done — and that will pacify them for a while. The next day, we might spend the day at the course or grab a movie.”
If Tim makes the cut, the family will stay until Sunday. If he doesn’t, it’s back on the road again.
He’s a good golfer, she said. And although he’s been in only four or five tournaments this year, he improves each time.
“But a lot plays into it. It’s timing. It’s having the right caddy and instructor. Golf is a game of inches. That’s all that matters.”
Jayden pops up at her elbow, holds out an electronic game and whispers in her ear.
“We don’t have the monster truck,” she gently tells him. “You have to wait til we get to the car to get it, OK? Now go back with Sissy.”
He sighs a deep little-boy sigh and returns to his sister, who is sitting on a plush couch in the women’s locker room at the Pete Dye clubhouse.
A real estate agent in Savannah, Melody admits the wife has to sacrifice a lot to travel the golf tournament circuit.
She’s caddied for him but probably won’t again.
“It’s a great way to cut expenses and to spend more time with him. But the only way I would caddy now is if the course had child care or something happened to our caddy.”
She knows enough about golf to suit her. She’s not bad at it, either, but it’s just not for her.
“I just distance myself from it. I separate our lifestyles. My work is my work, and his golf is his golf.”
They’d been to Pete Dye before, but she had to pause a few seconds to make sure.
“We’ve been to so many places they all get bungled up in your head,” she said, laughing. “You forget which city you’re at until you pull up and see it.”
Jayden’s back again, wanting another game.
“This is all you have. You can either play this or just go sit down,” she quietly but firmly tells him. He mulls it over and decides to play with what he has.
“Parenting 101,” she said, laughing.
They used to be part of a big circle of the same tournament families.
“It would be one big Fourth of July cookout every night,” she said. But as golfers moved up, down or out in the standings, faces changed and that circle’s gotten smaller.
A typical week has them leaving on Sunday, arriving on Monday, him practicing on Tuesday, in a Pro-Am on Wednesday and (hopefully) in the tournament until Sunday. Then it starts all over again.
She’s the driver, the navigator ... and the warden, she said. In other words, she’s the mom.
She likes being the driver.
“It keeps him well-rested. He’s working. We’re just hanging out. I can always rest later. He can’t. He has to work, and when he’s not working we’re not happy,” she said with a laugh.
“I’d much rather be on the road than at home working 9-5. If you’re a homebody, you wouldn’t like this at all. But if you’re an adventurous person, you’ll love it.
“I love to get in a strange city and just go where we go and see what there is to see. It’s an adventure.”
Like at the tournament in Maryland, when she took the van and drove Jayden down to D.C. They drove around, saw the sites and returned the next day on the Metro for some shopping.
“People who lived there said they never did that. It was fun.”
What isn’t fun is tanking up the SUV. The only thing worse would be if they’d bought the RV they originally wanted.
“Gas is outrageous,” she said. “We’re filling up on $130 a tank, and it might take us four tanks to get to the next city, one way. You’re pumping out $400 in a single day to get somewhere. It’s a lot cheaper than four plane tickets, yes, but it is still a lot.”
Tack on hotel rates, food bills and incidentals, and “It’s wild. Our expenses in a year are usually more than a couple would make.
“We pretty much are doubling what we spent two years ago on gas. It’s crazy. It took at least $450 to get from Maryland back to Georgia. I don’t want to know what it took to get to Canada. You just swipe the debit card and keep moving. You don’t want to think about it.”
All of this pays off for the winning golfer, who will take home $180,000 at Pete Dye.
“But if you’re the last man on the totem pole, you will probably walk away with $1,200,” she said. “It depends on where you are in the finishing field. So you could be on top or just break even or even be in the negative.
“If you’re doing this as a professional, this is your job. You won’t have time to do anything else. At home, Tim still hits 18, 36 holes every day. And he still loves it. When you stop liking it, you need to stop. You’re not going to get anywhere if you aren’t enjoying what you do. That’s true for any job.”
Her husband is “one of the happier golfers,” she said.
“He’s very down-to-earth and is thankful for what he has. So even if he doesn’t play as well as he wants to, he’s still lucky enough to be out there playing period.
“Even on a bad day, things could always be worse. We see a hitchhiker or homeless person. We could complain about a hotel, but at least there’s a bed and a roof over our heads.”
E-mail Debra Minor Wilson at dwilson@timeswv.com.

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