CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA | Brett Boner remembers all of it.
The clear, nice evening on May 10, 2021, when he was within two miles of home on a busy south Charlotte street, on his way to pick up his son from soccer practice.
The flash of movement he saw out the right side of his windshield.
The massive branch from a Bradford pear tree that crashed in front of him and, when his SUV hit it, jammed through his windshield and deep into the right side of Boner’s chest, creating a fist-sized hole in his body.
His wife, visible through the windshield, on her knees watching from a distance, as emergency personnel used the “jaws of life” to free him from his mangled car.
An emergency-room doctor telling him the blessing amid the carnage was how an artery, dangling outside his arm, was somehow fully intact, saving his life.
Boner also remembers the dueling emotions of accomplishment and frustration from his runner-up finish in the 2018 U.S. Mid-Amateur in Charlotte, where he lives.
“I feel blessed to be able to play, but I’m way too competitive to just be thankful to play.”
Brett Boner
Those two storylines will intersect this week during the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Erin Hills, where the 48-year-old Boner, 18 months removed from his brush with death, will tee it up in search of a title he came so close to winning four years ago.
“I feel blessed to be able to play, but I’m way too competitive to just be thankful to play,” Boner said over lunch at an Italian restaurant recently. “I’m going to try to figure it out, and I want to get back to playing good competitive golf, but I have to be patient. My wife (Lindsay) said you have to give yourself some serious grace here because you’ve just started back. It might not be this year but you know you can still play the game.”
There was a time when Boner was good enough to play a couple of PGA Tour events. He turned pro in 1997 after finishing college at Auburn and had some success on mini-tours, but he never advanced beyond the first stage at tour qualifying school. Like others, he fell victim to the pressure he put on himself to succeed.
When Boner won on the Hooters Tour in 2005, he thought his breakthrough was coming. Instead, less than a year later he had surrendered the fight and accepted a job with Carroll Financial in Charlotte.
“It was hard, but when you’re 31, it doesn’t get any easier,” Boner said. “Your body is not any younger. The travel is hard. You have more doubts, more snakes in your head than when you were 23.”
He remembers what former tour player Ed Humenik told him after a Golden Bear Tour event years ago.
“He said, ‘You’ve got what it takes, kid. You have all the confidence you need,’ ” Boner recalled.
“That dwindles when you’re 31.”
A decade later, with his two children growing up, Boner began to play more competitive golf again. Good finishes in some Carolinas Golf Association events refueled his competitive fire. He and his brother-in-law Stephen Woodard, who also played professionally for a time, qualified for the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball in 2016, reinforcing Boner’s return to high-level competition.
Knowing that the 2018 U.S. Mid-Am was coming to Charlotte Country Club, Boner had his target. He reached the final, losing to another North Carolinian, Kevin O’Connell, 4 and 3.
The good news is that his family got to see him play and come within one match of earning a Masters invitation. The downside was that Boner put pressure on himself again, this time to validate his runner-up finish, which put him on the 2019 invitation list to such prestigious amateur events as the Crump Cup, the Coleman Invitational and Thomas Invitational.
“I put a ton of pressure on myself,” Boner said. “I finished third at L.A. (the Thomas Invitational), but the other two, the Crump and the Coleman, I played terribly in.
“It was one of those things where I want these guys to know I’m good enough. I’m thinking about all the wrong things. I’m thinking about the outcome rather than the process, and that took me back to my mini-tours.”
All of that went away in an instant.
Four broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a shredded pectoral and latissimus dorsi (back muscle), a torn bicep and permanent nerve damage in places were the most serious injuries Boner suffered in his accident.
“For the rest of last year, none of us knew what this looks like in the future,” Woodard said. “We were so grateful he was alive and starting to get healthier.”
Boner remembers the driver of the car behind him coming to his aid immediately. Boner lowered the passenger side window and the man, after looking at Boner’s injury, asked whom he should call.
He called 911 and Boner’s wife, who didn’t initially answer because she didn’t recognize the unfamiliar number. So, the man sent a text.
“Please pick up the phone. It’s about your husband.”
Boner was trapped in the car, and by the time his wife arrived, there were three fire trucks, two medical vehicles and multiple police cars. He was losing blood, too.
“I was trapped in the car,” Boner said. “This big limb ended up on my door frame, so they couldn’t get me out for 30 minutes. I could see (Lindsay) through my windshield, and it was very emotional because she was on her knees. I said, ‘Do not let her come down here.’ She followed the ambulance to the hospital.”
He spent more than a week in the hospital and another two weeks at home before he began physical therapy three times a week. A few sessions into therapy, Boner was making golf-swing motions again, but his right shoulder began to hurt.
Boner had developed a frozen shoulder. He could have trusted it would improve with therapy but that could take a year or longer. Instead, Boner opted for surgery, a significant step for someone whose only previous experience with surgery was in the immediate aftermath of the accident.
The surgery was performed in January, and Boner was playing golf again in May.
“He had gotten to the point of, ‘I’m going to be OK, but I want to play good golf again,’ ” Woodard said. “The decision was pretty monumental. There was fear in that for him.”
Boner has played a couple of events prepping for the Mid-Am and feels the competitive fires burning again. This is the last year of his exemption into the event via his runner-up finish, but he is appealing for one more year because the accident prevented him from playing last year.
There have been blessings within Boner’s recovery. He spent 10 days in the hospital during COVID, which meant he could communicate with his family only via FaceTime. He remembers his daughter, Fran, asking if he could have been in heaven instead of with them.
“It’s awful he had to go through this to realize that, but every day and every year he’s that much more grateful for today,” Woodard said. “There is just a massive appreciation for every day. I know there were some low days there until early March this year. You’re thinking, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Will I ever get well enough to do something I love to do?’ ”
After the Mid-Am, Boner will play in the Crump Cup at Pine Valley in late September. Beyond that, the competitive calendar is open, and he’s OK with that.
“While it was a tough situation, it was almost a blessing,” Boner said. “It really was. A lot of perspective. That kind of woke me up to how unimportant (golf) is in the big picture. I still want to play and enjoy it – my friends and especially my son – but I need to realize I don’t have to play in the Crump or the Coleman at Seminole. I don’t have to have that stuff. I’d like to, but it’s not going to make or break me. It’s not going to define me.”
The scars Boner sees every day are all the reminders he needs.
Top: Rescuers extract Brett Boner from his SUV, which was trapped under a fallen tree on May 10, 2021.