While every player at last week’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines was thrilled to be in the field, no one was more appreciative than former PGA Tour player Brian Kortan.

In 2006, Kortan was playing on the South Dakota mini-tour when he suffered a heart attack. He had three stents put in his chest and lost 40 to 50 percent of his heart function.

In addition, he now walks around with an internal defibrillator, which is designed to shock his heart back into rhythm if he has any future heart attacks.

For more than two months after the attack, Kortan wondered if he would ever play again, and now two years later he's competing in the Open.

“I'm glad I'm able to have this experience, because there were some times over the last year and a half I didn't know if I'd ever get to experience something like this,” Kortan said.

Kortan's defibrillator was surgically implanted in his chest. So, if his heart is in trouble, the defibrillator will shock him.

“If you're familiar with a defibrillator, it's one of those but really small," Kortan said. “It has some lead wires that lead into my heart to monitor the activity in my heart and make sure that they have the settings on it. It understands if your heart is operating under the function that it should. And if it's not, it can give you shocks.

“Fortunately for me, it hasn't had to kick in yet. And when it does shock you, it puts you to the floor.”

Kortan played on the PGA Tour in 2004, but he looks like a regular guy at 5-foot-3, 150 pound. He was reading a book late one night at a friend's in South Dakota, where he was playing in a golf tournament, when he felt ill. Kortan had all the symptoms of a heart attack: chest discomfort, soreness in his jaw and arms that felt like they weighed 100pounds. He put on a T-shirt and shorts and told his friend they had to go. That's when he knew he was having a heart attack.

His friend drove him to a local hospital and he was airlifted to a hospital in Sioux Falls. Kortan was healthy, but a family history of heart disease was responsible for his heart attack. The blessing from his attack was that other family members had their hearts checked and his mom actually had six stents put in to open her arteries.

Kortan, 37, was one of 8,390 entrants for the Open, and he made it through locals and sectionals. He played only two days before missing the cut at 20 over par.

But for Kortan, success is no longer defined by how well he plays on the golf course, but by other more important factors in his life.

“Success for me is playing well," Kortan said. "If I go out there and can walk off the golf course feeling that I played well, I can compete, I can compete with these guys. I have done it before. To me, that's being successful: doing something that you do and doing it well.”