Roman golfer Durelli defying the odds
Every day that Deann Durelli awakes, exits her room and walks down the stairs of her South Philadelphia home, a weight no mother should carry accompanies her to the basement until she reaches her son Alex's bedroom.
Every day that Deann Durelli awakes, exits her room and walks down the stairs of her South Philadelphia home, a weight no mother should carry accompanies her to the basement until she reaches her son Alex's bedroom.
Alex Durelli, a junior at Roman Catholic, is an exceptional golfer with a rare congenital heart condition that has rendered his left lung ineffective and leaves him at risk of heart failure.
"Every morning I walk into his room," Deann said, "I wonder, is today the day?"
According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Total (or Partial) Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (TAPVR) occurs in about one out of every 10,000 births.
Alex was born with TAPVR, characterized as a birth defect of the heart in which veins bringing back blood from the lungs don't connect normally to the heart.
Instead, abnormal connections are formed, dangerously causing affected babies to get less oxygen to their bodies than necessary.
Twenty-three hours after his birth, Durelli was rushed via ambulance from Pennsylvania Hospital to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. There, doctors gave him a 10 percent chance to survive emergency open-heart surgery.
Durelli, a first-team all-Catholic selection as a freshman and sophomore, has been defying those odds ever since.
"I really don't think about it," he said, his voice low, sitting in a golf cart outside the Walnut Lane Golf Course. "My mom explains to me that I wasn't even supposed to make it after the first night of birth. But I guess I was supposed to."
Now, he is symptom-free and requires zero medication. His condition, however, is still serious and requires yearly checkups.
"I've made it this far, so I can make it for another 50 years," he said. "If I could do it while I was three; I'm obviously stronger now."
Durelli was 2 when he swung his first toy club. By five, he was hitting balls at the FDR Golf Club on Pattison Avenue, where his grandfather, Sonny Durelli, worked cleaning carts and picking up range balls.
At 6, Durelli caught the eye of professional golfer Sean O'Hair, who put on an exhibition at FDR for First Tee - a youth organization that promotes life skills through golf.
"Let me see you do that again," Sonny recalled an incredulous O'Hair saying. "After Alex did it again, O'Hair said, 'Let me see you do that again!' "
After her husband left the family when Alex was 21/2 years old, Deanna Durelli said her father, Sonny, became a permanent fixture.
"He's like a father to me," Alex said.
"I remember when I was five, hitting balls in 100-degree heat on the range from morning to night," he said. "It helped because he worked there. I'd hit 600 balls a day. And when I was 8 [I] started playing with him and his friends. After that, I haven't stopped playing."
Now, the 5-foot-10, 147-pound 16-year old is one of the city's top golfers, known for driving the ball more than 300 yards.
"I remember last year, against Lansdale Catholic," said Roman golf coach Dan Hoban, who is also the head pro at Middletown Country Club in Langhorne, "It was the last hole of the match and his drive probably went 320 yards. I'm walking down the fairway and I said, 'Hey Alex, how tall are you. . . how much do you weigh?' He said, '5-foot-8, 130 pounds.' I said, 'You make me sick!' "
"The ball just stayed in the air forever," continued Hoban, now in his 14th year as Roman's coach. "I almost have to remind myself that he's faced with that challenge. He's beaten it so far, and God willing, he continues to. But when Alex ever realizes how good he can be, what his capabilities are and the gift that he has, there's no stopping him."
His mother plans to make sure of that.
"I always told him, 'You can't give up,' " Deann Durelli said. 'If golf is what you want, you can't give up.' "
Later she added: "If you get through this, you're going to get through everything, and I, as his parent, I'm not going to let him settle for less."
Durelli hasn't attracted college suitors just yet, but hopes playing this spring in tournaments, which carry more recruiting weight than the high school season, will help.
"I think the dream for every golfer is to play on the PGA Tour," he said, "but if that doesn't happen, hopefully I can work at a good country club and keep playing golf. And hopefully make money off it. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing, but whatever it is, I'll keep playing golf and see where it takes me."
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