Virginia Golfer July / August 2015 | Page 19

“After swinging a three-pound hammer every day, it really does help with my strength in hitting a ball out of the rough,” he says. “And If you think there’s pressure to sink a 3-foot putt, that’s nothing compared to the pressure of having to nail a shoe into a horse’s hoof. ” VICKY MOON round 82 left him tied for 18th among 45 fellow-competitors, still a highly satisfying accomplishment. VanSant also took full responsibility for getting rattled in the final round. “I need to deal with it better the next time,” he says, adding that in no way was he trying to make excuses for his worst round of the week. STORY OF SUSTENANCE VanSant clearly has plenty of patience in his day job. Just think about trying to fit a fractious filly with a horseshoe, then make it safe and snug using a hammer and sharp nails. This is a man who also taught himself how to play golf by reading a Ben Hogan instructional book, then whacked hundreds of golf balls in empty horse pastures at Trappe Hill before he ever set foot on a real golf course. He grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania near Delaware and was an accomplished high school baseball and soccer player. His father trained horses “and I knew what that life was like,” he says. “I was going to either do it myself or move into a something more settled.” VanSant spent nearly a decade in his 20s working the New York and Florida racing circuits, serving as an assistant trainer for big-time conditioners like John Veitch and Barclay Tagg, and working as a barn foreman for Hall of Famer Mack Miller, who trained for philanthropist billionaire Paul Mellon. Approaching 30, VanSant decided it was time to move in a different direction. “I loved racing,” he says. “Between (ages) 21 and 30, I had nine good years of meeting lots of great people and working with a lot of nice horses. But there’s more to life than that.” w w w. v s g a . o r g One day in 1996 at Laurel race track in Maryland, he ran into Russell Jones, a bloodstock agent he’d once worked for, and told him he wanted to get away from racing and settle down. A few days later, VanSant got a call from Bruce Smart in Upperville, who was getting into the steeplechase aspect of racing in Virginia Hunt country. Smart told VanSant that Jones had recommended him for a farm manager opening. “It’s been 19 years now, and that’s a long time in the horse business,” VanSant says. “And the Smarts are two of the finest people I’ve ever known.” When VanSant and his wife, Leslie, were married in 2000, “Bruce and Edie called us up to the house and said, ‘What will happen to you two if we got hit by a bus?’ ” VanSant recalls. “I told them I’d always wanted to go to farrier school. I’d worked once for Dr. William Wright, a veterinarian in Chesapeake City, Maryland. He raised his horses barefoot, and when I was there, I did the (hoof) trimming. “The Smarts paid my way. I’d get up in the morning, do my work at the farm, drive up to Washington County (Maryland) and go to school, drive back and do more work at the farm, then do it all again the next day. I did that for four months. It really helped that I was a horseman, liked horses and felt comfortable underneath them.” Working as a blacksmith has also been beneficial to his golf game, even in subtle ways, aside from gaining some serious power off the tee. “After swinging a three-pound hammer every day, it really does help with my strength in hitting a ball out of the rough,” he says. “And if you think there’s pressure to sink a 3-foot putt, that’s nothing compared to the pressure of having to nail a shoe into a horse’s hoof. If you’re off by 1/64th of an inch, it can mean everything.” VanSant usually plays golf once a week when his busy schedule allows it. He used to carry his clubs in his pick-up and occasionally stop at a nearby driving range to practice between appointments. Now, between 8-year-old daughter Beatrice enrolled an Middleburg’s Hill School, his work at the farm and his farrier practice “it’s kind of hard to do that.” He’s also a huge fan of the VSGA One-Day program, which features events for golfers of all ages and abilities and are conducted at some of the premier layouts throughout the commonwealth. He tries to enter as many events as he can because “it’s such a gateway to serious competition,” he says. “You play on great golf courses, many of them private, that you wouldn’t be able to get on any other way. You have to hole every putt and play by the rules. It’s real, live, competitive golf, and there are some pretty good players out there.” VanSant obviously is one of them. At age 50, his game continues to improve and he thrives on competition wherever he can find it. Clearly, in golf, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with having the “tooch” of a blacksmith. A longtime sportswriter for The Washington Post, award-winning journalist Leonard Shapiro is a regular contributor to Virginia Golfer. J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 | V I R G I N I A G O L F E R 17