Golf Has a Place in His Heart : Westlake’s Zambri Swings a Speedy Return From Surgery

Chris Zambri’s round was off to a disappointing start, and it was getting uglier with each successive--and unsuccessful--swipe of the club. After playing the first five holes 3-over par, Zambri hit a tee shot on the sixth that caromed down a cart path, eventually landing in the deep rough, under a tree, near the lake of an adjoining hole.

Where the shot came to rest looked more like quagmire than posh country club. Even the ducks quacked menacingly, baring their bills. Like the old joke, Zambri was playing military golf: Left, left, left-right-left , otherwise known as the scenic route. He must have wondered whether to use a six-iron or a scythe.

Zambri, 16, wound up missing a four-foot putt on the hole, taking a bogey and blowing another chance to get well. But he rallied from his slow start in the match against Dos Pueblos and toured the remaining 12 holes at 1-under to finish with a 75.

“Like his brother and the other guys on the team, the kid’s a great player,” said Mike DiMaggio, an assistant pro at North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, where the team plays its home matches. “But he’s different from the others. He’s got more guts, knows how to go after it and how to get what he wants.

“The more you get to know the kid, the more you realize that he’s a real battler. He’s got a lot of heart.”

In actuality, though, Zambri has less heart than your average high school junior: In December of 1985, to help correct a deteriorating congenital defect, Zambri had a section of his aortic valve removed.

Ten days after his chest was shaved, split and sewn by a surgeon at UCLA Medical Center, Zambri was back on the course, trying to shave a few strokes from his short game. Days later he was playing with the team. A year ago this month--just five months after major surgery--Zambri tied for second individually in the Marmonte League tournament. This year he won it with a 72-hole total of 287, including a 2-under-par 69 in the final round, his best competitive round ever.

The heck with saving bogey from the boondocks, holing out from Sahara-style sand traps, delivering a deft touch on delicate chip shots or even draining downhill 30-footers to salvage par. You want the ultimate bad lie? Try flat on your back in a hospital bed, with a few dozen stitches or tubes across your sternum.

Coming back in 10 days from open-heart surgery? Now there’s a recovery. Shoot, and he barely missed a beat, so to speak.

“It really didn’t surprise me that he came back so fast,” said Mike Zambri, Chris’ brother and a senior on the team. “He never really seemed to worry about it. He was on the putting greens practicing nine or 10 days afterward, and he rejoined the team after three weeks.

“That’s just the way he is.”

It was the way he was that was causing problems. While the family has a history of heart murmurs, Zambri was diagnosed to have sub-valvular aortic stenosis at the age of 9. While not considered life-threatening at the time, the ailment--which restricts blood flow in the heart--was serious enough that one doctor feared that an artificial valve might have to be installed.

“It was treated as pretty routine,” said Mike Zambri, Chris’ father. “But it’s not like getting your tonsils out. The bottom line is that you don’t want to be the one in a 100, you don’t want to be the percentage that throws the equation off. As a parent, when doctors talk percentages, you want to hear, ‘This is 99% safe,’ but what we hear is that there’s a 1% chance.

“You really don’t want to hear about odds.”

Nobody ever quoted a betting line about Zambri’s term of recovery, but if they had, 100-to-1 would have seemed like a pretty safe wager against him playing so soon--or so well.

“I think we’ve got a very solid team again,” Westlake Coach Lorin Maygren said. “We match up very well with the team we had last season. If we are any stronger this year, it’s because our Nos. 1-though-4 players are better.”

The Zambris have been front and center in Westlake’s fab four. The two have been alternating at No. 2 and 3 for much of the season, often waging their own private competition. The Zambris finished 1-2 in the Marmonte tournament, with Chris edging Mike by two shots. Zambri and Westlake compete next in the Southern Section finals at Industry Hills on Tuesday.

Of the two, Chris is clearly the more volatile. One look at what’s left of his golf bag gives a good visual example of the younger Zambri’s competitiveness. The bottom of his blue and orange team bag--the apparent target of a few good belts with an offending club--is held together with electrician’s tape.

“And these are new bags,” teased teammate John Darin.

The younger Zambri prefers to view it as a tempered temper, the product of a desire--if not a need--to win. And it’s easy to see Zambri’s will to win is part and parcel of his will to live.

“I don’t like to lose, I don’t like doing things halfway,” he said. “My temper is a flash. I’ll get mad in the middle of a round and have an outburst, but it doesn’t last. That’s the good thing about my temperament on the course. I can forget about it, I don’t let things eat at me.”

The result of the surgery is something that doesn’t appear to gnaw at Zambri much, either.

“It’s really no big deal for me now. You can’t tell by looking at me that I had anything done with me, and there aren’t any real restrictions or things I can’t do. The only thing left is the scar.”

But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some serious apprehension prior to the operation: Zambri was a mere 14 when the operation was performed.

“Sure, I was very concerned,” he said. “You can’t help but have negative thoughts. I mean, this isn’t something that happens every day to someone my age. But I tried not to think about it too much. I knew it was coming, it was just a matter of when. I think I handled it pretty well, considering.”

He has other things to consider. Zambri still faces the prospect of surgery at a later date. While the operation cleared the blockage in the valve, there is some residual leakage of blood, which doctors feel will demand surgical correction eventually.

“As my heart grows, what with the damage from the blockage and leakage it already has, it could deteriorate,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “They may have to go back in, in five, maybe 10 years. They might have to install an artificial valve. I try not to think about it.

“They thought initially that I’d need an artificial valve at the first operation, but we got a second opinion. I’m glad they didn’t put one in. That would have meant taking blood-thinning drugs, and those mechanical things supposedly make a lot of noise. Besides, I already have pins and piano wire in there. That’s enough metal.”

Perhaps Zambri’s mettle is best capsulized by his desire to see an operation like his own performed live and in living color. Whereas most would feel squeamish, Zambri welcomes the opportunity to see what he has already survived, yet faces again.

“I’d like to see an open-heart operation,” he said. “Just to see what they do in there. I know it might be a little weird and I might feel a little uncomfortable, but I’d like to know what goes on. I can handle it.”

He also handled the recovery faster than expected. Doctors urged Zambri to try to resume a normal routine as soon as he felt comfortable in doing so, and he started playing long before that.

“There was quite a bit of pain at first,” he said. “A month or so after the operation, I was having some trouble swinging the club and stuff. I really felt it, but I wanted to play pretty badly.

“One day, about a month later, I was in the middle of a round with my dad, and I decided to just let one go and swing away. It felt pretty good. I actually was swinging really bad to that point and I shouldn’t even have been out there. After a while the pain went away, and luckily it didn’t screw up my swing.”

It didn’t mess up his head much, either, although there are a few things about the affliction that still get under his skin. He must handle the inevitable whispers, something he’d rather not have to worry about. He’d be happier if everybody thought of him as one of the boys. Understandably then, Zambri doesn’t advertise the fact that the surgery was performed.

Jeff Raymond, Dos Pueblos’ No. 2 player, wondered aloud why a reporter and photographer were following Zambri’s foursome during what seemed like just another routine, nonleague match.

“Him? Open-heart surgery?” Raymond said as he eyed Zambri’s tee shot on the second hole. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Raymond’s reaction isn’t unusual. The scar, which runs approximately 15 inches from the navel to his neckline, is virtually the only visual reminder of his brush with the real bogey man. In the 75-degree weather of the Dos Pueblos match, Zambri kept three of the four buttons of his team shirt fastened, while teammate and playing partner Jimmy Chang opted for the open-collar look.

“That’s about the only thing that really bugs him about the whole thing,” his father said. “Right now there aren’t too many places he feels comfortable enough to take his shirt off. He’ll be OK, though, when he gets a little older and some chest hair starts growing.

“Chest hair runs in the family, too.”

Zambri’s personal growth, however, is much more important than any growth of hair. Chest hair can’t hide emotional scars.

“This helped me more than it could ever hurt me,” he said. “It made me look at things a little differently, the things you see going on around you or on the TV. It makes golf meaningless when you think about it. Why get upset over playing bad golf? You know, when you’re mad, you’re mad, but I feel like an idiot sometimes when I get upset.

“It’s dumb. I think about what I have and I’m complaining about golf. Other kids don’t have anything. I have food and clothes and am a member at this course. It’s pretty stupid to complain about little things, like going home bent out of shape about missing a couple of putts. At times, I used to feel bad about not playing basketball, but then I’d see kids who couldn’t even walk.

“Big deal if I can’t play basketball: I can run and they can’t even walk.”

Besides, even if Zambri doesn’t sprout a huge hank of hair to hide his scar, it’s no big deal. His father is a clothing manufacturer.

Meanwhile, Zambri and his Westlake teammates will continue to beat the pants off the competition.