“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
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