Boner ‘Blessed’ to be Back in the Game After Freak Accident

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For Brett Boner, the 4-hour drive from Charlotte, N.C., to this week’s U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Kiawah Island (S.C.) Club will truly be a blessing. It’s a miracle that the 49-year-old is competing at all, considering the bizarre accident that nearly took his life two years ago.

On the evening of May 10, 2021, Boner was making the routine trip to pick up his son at soccer practice. The weather was idyllic for late spring. A Jimmy Buffett tune was playing on his radio.

What happened next wasn’t “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”

Out of nowhere, a large tree tumbled onto the street. Although Boner slammed on his brakes, it was too late to avoid contact. Instinctively, Boner closed his eyes as loud noises and chaos engulfed him. The limb had slammed through his SUV’s windshield and rammed the right portion of his chest, creating a fist-sized hole.

Moments later, there was a knock on the passenger-side window.

“Are you OK?” a man asked.

“I think so,” responded Boner. “He said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t look down.’ That’s when I noticed a big limb sticking through the windshield right over my steering wheel.”

The man called 911 and asked Boner if he needed him to dial anyone else. Boner’s wife, Lindsay, didn’t recognize the incoming number, so she didn’t pick up. An ensuing text brought news that no wife wants to receive.

By the time she reached the scene, first responders already had placed a protective blanket on Boner to keep the shards of glass and metal from contacting his body as firefighters use the “jaws of life” to extricate Boner from the vehicle.

Boner’s brother-in-law – and partner in this week’s championship – Stephen Woodard and his wife, Carrie, had sat down to dinner when the call came from Lindsay. Carrie went to support her sister-in-law at the accident scene while Stephen drove to Brett’s home to await the arrival of son Henry, 15, and daughter Fran, 12, from after-school practices.

“I was in shock for about 20 minutes,” Boner recalled. “Then the shock started wearing off and the pain set in. I was hurting. Once they got me out, they put me on a hard board to get me in the ambulance. That was the roughest part. It hurt everywhere.”

Once inside the emergency room, Boner said it was like a movie. Staff used scissors to cut off his clothes. Simple questions – name, date of birth, had he been drinking – followed while he was rolled on a gurney into the operating room. Before the anesthesia took effect, he even asked a police officer to have his wife cancel his next morning’s breakfast appointment, a remark that drew laughter because of his awareness at such a dire moment.

The 2018 U.S. Mid-Amateur runner-up had a collapsed lung, four broken ribs, liver and spleen damage, shredded pectoral and latissimus dorsi muscles, a torn bicep and permanent nerve damage. He stayed in the hospital 10 days so the collapsed lung could heal, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Boner’s children couldn’t visit. Zoom calls didn’t raise his spirits much.

One silver lining is that the limb avoided severing the main artery that runs from his right arm to his chest by mere inches, saving Boner from bleeding to death.

Long Road To Recovery

“The next two weeks were tough,” said Woodard. “[Brett’s] arguably my best friend and four-ball partner. We play at the same club (Carolina Golf Club). I am thinking things are going to be really different going forward. At the time, you’re not thinking about him playing golf again. It was just wanting him to get through this. It was surreal.”

Boner, a former standout at Auburn University who played professionally for nine years before regaining his amateur status in 2008, coped the best he could. The next few months were filled with physical therapy, but the mental strain was tough.

Nearly two months after the accident, he and Lindsay went on their first date at their favorite Italian restaurant, Aqua e Vino, in Charlotte. They noticed a couple a little younger than them; the husband was in a wheelchair and enjoying a normal conversation.

“I could tell he was paralyzed from the neck down,” said Boner. “I looked at Lindsay and just lost it. The fact that I could still be here and do all this, I should never take anything else for granted.”

Still, Boner desperately wanted to play competitive golf again. He could make golf swing motions but a condition known as frozen shoulder cropped up. His doctors tried various forms of therapy, but nothing worked. A year or two of rest was recommended, and Boner sought a second opinion.

Having grown up in the Birmingham, Ala., area, he knew surgeons at the world-renowned Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopaedic Center founded by Dr. James Andrews, the surgeon whose clients include the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Michael Jordan, Roger Clemens, Drew Brees and Bo Jackson.

Dr. Lyle Cain delivered the news Boner wanted to hear. Surgery would get him back on the golf course within 3½ months. And sure enough, the doctor’s promise came to fruition.

Some things were lost because of the accident. Boner’s swing doesn’t produce the same speed or power, and parts of his right arm are completely numb from the nerve damage. He’s trying his best to not have unrealistic expectations, with his competitive nature battling the perspective that he’s lucky to able to play a game that nearly was taken from him.

At their U.S. Amateur Four-Ball qualifier last October at The Cardinal by Pete Dye in Greensboro, N.C., Boner held his own for 17 holes, making pars when his partner got into trouble. But the side only produced three birdies, all by Woodard, until No. 18, when Boner knocked his wedge approach to 12 feet and converted the downhill putt for a round of 67.

That  score got the duo into a playoff, and they qualified for their second U.S. Amateur Four-Ball – they also competed in 2016 at Winged Foot – with two consecutive pars.

“That competitive fire has not left since the accident,” said Woodard of his partner. “Once we started competing again, it came back. He’s surely disappointed when he has a bad round, but living through what he went through, there’s more to this [than golf]. When [the round is over] he has his kids and wife and friends to hang out with. Golf is not the be-all, end-all.”

Family Ties

Woodard, who grew up in Charlotte and played collegiately at Southern Methodist University before turning pro in 1996, first met Boner when the two were toiling on mini-tours in the Southeast. When Boner stayed at Woodard’s Charlotte home during an off week, Lindsay, then enrolled at the University of North Carolina, came home for the weekend.

“He never mentioned he had a sister,” said Boner.

Boner asked her out, and the romance turned into marriage. Boner was able to Monday-qualify for a pair of PGA Tour events in 2006, but when he failed to advance out of Q-School that fall, he opted for a more stable living as a financial advisor. Woodard, who won three times on the Canadian Tour, left professional golf around the same time, going into commercial real estate and regaining his amateur status in 2009.

Playing at the same club with similar skill levels, the two made for a natural partnership in four-ball events. In 2017, they were runners-up in the prestigious Anderson Memorial at Winged Foot, then won the event a year later.

In 2018, they both qualified for the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Charlotte Country Club, with their home club serving as the stroke-play co-host. Boner had a week to remember, defeating 2016 champion Stewart Hagestad in a memorable semifinal that drew a large gallery. He would lose the 36-hole final to Kevin O’Connell the following day, but it didn’t diminish his special week.

Woodard, who turned 50 in April, has qualified for five different USGA championships: U.S. Junior Amateur (1990), U.S. Amateur (1996), U.S. Open (2016), U.S. Mid-Am (2018) and two Four-Balls (2016, 2023). Boner has competed in two U.S. Amateurs, four Mid-Ams and the Four-Ball.

The pair made a reconnaissance trip to Kiawah Island a few weeks ago, and a Carolina Golf Club member is lending them use of his island home. Cookouts are planned ahead of the competition, which begins May 20, giving it the feel of a buddies’ trip disguised as a USGA championship.

“Four-ball is a lot more relaxing than an individual event, and we’ve had great success together,” said Boner. “He’s a great partner… I’m just going to enjoy the walk and have fun and we’ll see what happens.”

David Shefter is a senior staff writer for the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.