By Bruce Berlet
PGATOUR.com contributor

NORTON, Mass. -- Ian Leggatt returns to his "home course" this week with his golf game on the upswing and his perspectives still very much in order.

Leggatt will be playing about 30 minutes from his native Cambridge, Ontario, in the Canadian Open, having retained his perseverance and regained some of the confidence that enabled him to survive failing the PGA TOUR qualifying school eight times and overcome debilitating carpal tunnel syndrome in his left wrist that led to three surgeries since he won the 2002 Touchstone Energy Tucson Open.

"My career was finally going as I had hoped, then it got really painful and frustrating," Leggatt said at the Deutsche Bank Championship, where he tied for 30th after a tie for sixth in The INTERNATIONAL about two months after he began working with a new coach, Mike Owen. "I started having problems at the end of the year that I won, kept playing and the wrist and hand just never got any better.

"The second and third surgeries, which were done at the same time (Jan. 10, 2005) after I came back from playing in Australia, were career threatening. My wrist and hand would not have been the same, and it felt like that after rehabbing. I put my hands on the club, and it just didn't feel the same."

That seemed an eternity after Leggatt had finally appeared to escape the countless ruts in a rocky golf career that started via his father's guidance not far from Toronto, where he grew up following the National Hockey League's Maple Leafs and became a provincial and national junior speed skating champion.

Leggatt was born in Cambridge and spent two years in South Africa while in kindergarten through second grade as his dad helped build nuclear reactors in suburban Johannesburg. He began playing golf at age 9, riding his bike to a club in Cambridge about a mile from his house. He also played hockey until he was 12, then got interested in speed skating as a way to get extra ice time and strengthen his legs.

"Somehow or other, I was really good at it," Leggatt said. "I was on the junior national team, and as a kid, it's fun winning trophies. In speed skating, there's a competition every weekend, so I was winning a trophy every week rather than waiting until the end of the year to collect."

Leggett quit skating at 18 to concentrate on golf and can now chuckle about that decision.

"Looking back on it, I probably should have stayed in hockey," he said. "I could be sitting on the patio having a cocktail, collecting my $3.5 million a year."

Ian Leggatt has been a big supporter of children's charities. (WireImage)

But after being on the Canadian World Cup team as an amateur, Leggatt joined several countrymen at Texas Wesleyan on a golf scholarship, became a NAIA All-American and earned a degree in sports management.

"I visited some big schools but didn't really feel comfortable because I'd grown up in a small town," Leggatt said. "But it worked out nice."

So nice that Leggatt took a course as a volunteer intern for the United Celebral Palsy Foundation in Fort Worth, the start of charitable work that lasts to this day. After graduating in 1990, he turned down a job offer that paid $27,000 to become the foundation's athletic director for $15,000.

"I just thought it was something I really wanted to do," Leggatt said. "There's something inside of me that feels something for kids with disabilities."

Leggatt was the director for nine months, then "backed into" playing on TOUR. He asked someone who helped the Texas Weslyan golf program for money to sponsor an overnight camp for kids. The man wondered why Leggatt wasn't playing golf. He sponsored Joel Edwards, so he decided to sponsor Leggatt, too.

Leggatt won the Canadian Tour qualifying school, then went to Australia for five months before starting on the Canadian Tour. He spent nine years roaming his homeland with extended visits to Asia, South Africa and South America.

"The only tours I haven't played are Europe and the LPGA," Leggatt said with a laugh.

Leggatt joined the Nationwide Tour in 2000, finishing fifth on the money list to earn his PGA TOUR card and joined Jerry Anderson, Glen Hnatiuk and Rick Todd as Canadian winners on the circuit.

After finishing 133rd on the PGA TOUR money list, Leggatt retained his playing privileges with a tie for fifth in the qualifying school in 2001, then won in Tucson the following February. But he injured his hand soon after he tied for 20th in the U.S. Open.

While he was nursing that injury, Leggatt had a bad sinus infection that interrupted his oxygen intake and nursed a tendon problem in his left elbow that forced him to wear a brace. Leggatt also had laser eye surgery after nearly keeping his card in his first year on the PGA TOUR, then had the eye touched up before and after finishing fifth in the ensuing q-school finals and finally escaped the sinus difficulties when he moved from dry conditions in Arizona to the dampness of North Carolina in January.

That enabled Leggatt to renew his interest in hockey as a new fan of the Carolina Hurricanes and saw the transplanted Hartford Whalers win their first Stanley Cup in June.

That also was about the time he began working with Owen, who got Leggatt to watch film of how he played in his pre-injury days. The changes didn't enable Leggatt to earn enough to play out of the major medical extension category, but a tie for 18th in the 2005 TOUR qualifying finals allowed him to keep playing in the major leagues.

"All the injuries derailed me, but now I feel like I'm starting to go in the right direction," said Leggett, who has made four of his last five cuts after missing 14 of the first 17 to improve to 160th on the money list with $307,529. "I feel like I'm starting all over again as far as how I sort of played in 2002. I'm having rounds where I think I should be winning tournaments, then the next day it's not quite right. But it's getting better."

Despite the years of discomfort and disappointment, Leggatt hasn't stopped giving back. For 14 years, he has been an ambassador for the Ronald McDonald Children's Charities of Canada. McDonald's sponsored Leggatt on the Canadian Tour, and he continues to host a charity event in Toronto that has raised more than $2 million for Ronald McDonald House, where youngsters going through cancer treatments can reside for months, even years.

"Since I joined the PGA TOUR, my profile has raised the profile of the tournament," said Leggatt, who wears a McDonald's arch on his shirt. "It's an offshoot of my work with the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, which is how I initially met the guys at Ronald McDonald House. They wanted to do it with me because they felt I had something for kids with disabilities and that I would be a good spokesperson. Now it has evolved into a much, much bigger role.

"Every year my wife and I take our kids to one of the Ronald McDonald Houses in Toronto or Hamilton. And we spend Christmas morning there just because we want the kids to sort of understand the world is not really that perfect out there. Christmas is a big time at the houses, so a lot of companies donate presents."

Leggatt might make another visit this week, when he returns to Hamilton Golf & Country Club for the Canadian Open.

"I didn't play too well there the first time (missed cut in 2003), but that was during my injury time," Leggatt said. "But it's arguably the best courses we'll play on TOUR. That's what the players voted last time, so it'll be exciting to go back."