Atwal has olive skin, black, wavy hair and a square chin. He is boyishly handsome, and reserved. "He keeps a lot of things inside," says Larry Dell Aquila, who coached Atwal at Nassau Community College on Long Island and who remains a close friend. "I think he graduated with a 3.2 or 3.3 average, but he didn't want anyone to know how bright he was." Atwal's private nature might explain why he often uses the second person to describe how he is trying to get past the accident. "You have to try to put it in the back of your mind," Atwal says. "But it's always there. You can never let it go. Today when I drive on that road I'll still think about it."
On a recent morning at Isleworth, Atwal seemed blissfully at home, warmly greeting the attendant at the front desk by her first name, yapping with the grillroom bartender about his wife's curry. He seemed affable and accessible. "He's a pretty selfless person, and that's rare for a golfer," less says Foltz, the Nationwide Tour analyst.
Atwal will not discuss the specifics of the accident, partly because he already told the police his story, partly because his lawyers contend that he has nothing to gain from rehashing the details and partly because, well, it was over almost as soon as it began. "It probably happened in five or six seconds," Atwal says. "But it felt like it took a lot longer. It was too scary to even describe."
The aftermath was frightening in its own way. "There were a lot of things said that [Park and I] knew each other, and that we left Isleworth together," Atwal says. "There was none of that." Even Atwal's supporters weren't exempt from what Atwal and Kreusler describe as reckless reporting by the media. "Daniel Chopra, who I've been best friends with for a while, he was trying to clear up things with me and the accident and he was misquoted as well," Atwal says. "He was brought to tears by the media at Bay Hill because guys...wouldn't leave him alone. Apparently he was saying, 'I know that it's been a horrible tragedy but I know Arjun is not going to be charged with it, he's going to come through.' But they made it sound like he's not concerned with the death of [Park]. It was all misinterpreted."
As the police investigation ensued, Atwal still had bills to pay. In his first tournament back, he finished tied for sixth, but his play mostly soured thereafter. He missed the cut in five of 17 starts on the Nationwide Tour and notched just one more top 10. Atwal says the course was an escape ("My mind would switch off from everything else"), but he wasn't practicing between events, and Kreusler says Atwal wasn't engaged. "He was going through the motions. He wasn't playing any kind of real golf."
Still, Atwal plodded through the season, banking $237,000 between the two Tours. Atwal credits his wife for helping him forge on. "It was amazing to see that she was very strong through it," he says. "If I wasn't married to her there's no way I could have played any more of that year." [Sona declined to be interviewed for this story.] Atwal says the birth of Shivo, in December, also helped put him at ease.
"How Arjun did it, I don't know," Cook says. "Golf is 95 percent mental when you get to this point. Any time something interrupts your mental state, it's very difficult. His demeanor, his pride, his will to get better definitely got him through the bad time."
Three weeks after Atwal learned he had been exonerated and nearly a year to the day of the accident, he won the Malaysian Open, an event co-sanctioned by the European and Asian Tours. Atwal shot 64 in the final round and birdied the final hole to force a playoff, which he won on the second extra hole. "It is an amazing feeling," Atwal told reporters. "I don't know how to put it into words."
Atwal has had plenty of emotions over the last 17 months that have been difficult to verbalize. His resolve hasn't been one of them. "He'd call me and say, 'Coach, we'll get through this,'" Dell Aquila says. " 'I know this wasn't my fault and when they check things out they're going to know that it was not my fault.' "
Says Atwal: "If I went to jail, I'd be innocent still."
Harder to accept is that regardless of how and why things played out a man is dead. And it could have just as easily been Atwal. "I don't get angry anymore," Atwal says when asked how the experience changed him. "I don't get annoyed. Even on the golf course, I'm just kind of chilled out."
"He's always been a mellow, down-to-earth person," Kreusler adds, "but perspective-wise, I think it's given him a stronger appreciation for family, and that it isn't all about golf. Golf is what you do, it's not who you are."
Still, Atwal seems to have regained his golf form. Through early June, in addition to his win in Malaysia, he had three top 10s in just eight starts on the Nationwide Tour, putting him 18th on the money list (the top 25 at season's end will earn a PGA Tour card for 2009). And he even picked up a new sponsor, Ecco shoes. Atwal says it's probably no coincidence that his play improved soon after he was cleared, but mostly, he says, it's a product of hard work and precisely what he was doing on March 10, 2007, less than an hour before his life changed forever: learning from the best.
"When you're practicing at Isleworth and seeing the greatest player in the world hitting all these shots on the range," he says, "some good stuff always rubs off on you." And Lord knows Atwal could use some of that.
