Golf can be a miraculous old game.

This correspondent, for instance, shakes his head in wonderment on a regular basis when, amid much swiping, thrashing and houking, I manage to winkle out a solitary par and pull off the kind of eye-popping miracle that would make the raising of Lazarus look like an everyday occurrence on the 16th green.

Of course, the world of sport is awash with tales of competitors overcoming adversity but Erik Compton trumps most of them. His story is well-documented yet its ability to dumbfound remains undiminished. As a 12-year-old back in 1992, he underwent a heart transplant. In 2008, he had another. Here in 2015, Compton, a modern day miracle, will tee-up in the Masters for the first time.

Six years ago, Compton made the trip to Augusta to accept the Ben Hogan Award, a prize given to a golfer who has remained active in the game despite a physical handicap or serious illness. This week, he will be back as a player fulfilling the wildest of dreams. "You can't ever write yourself off, you just can't give up," said the 35-year-old from Miami of a sporting life less ordinary. "I mean, we all have adversity in our lives, some are different than others and some are more major. When you have disabilities or you have health issues, some days are really bad and then you have to try to make the best of it the next day and wake up and move your body.

"And I'm a perfect example of that. I've been on my back twice and I never thought I would ever leave the house. I pretty much had come to grips with the fact that I wasn't ever going to play golf again. When I was sitting in a hospital, I replayed a lot of things in my life that I didn't accomplish in golf one of my dreams was to play in the Masters. You know, you never really put yourself into that emotional state until you're in a bad situation. You know, 'I wish I could have told my daughter this' or 'I wish I could have told my wife that.' Well, I wish I could have played in the Masters and been able to walk up 18 and experience that in my lifetime. For me, the Masters is this huge thing because it symbolises the accomplishment of just being able to be in that arena."

Compton remains a man of great courage and character and an embodiment of perseverance. You could say he is the ultimate brave heart. "If I withdrew from every golf tournament I play in when I'm not feeling well, I wouldn't finish half of them," he said. "That's why I always give it a shot, because sometimes I do start to feel better."

A graduate of the University of Georgia, Compton was part of the US side that lost the 2001 Walker Cup to a superb GB&I team featuring the likes of Luke Donald, Graeme McDowell and Marc Warren before he turned professional later that season.

He won the Canadian Tour's order of merit and tried to advance to the main PGA Tour through the second-tier Nationwide before his life took another devastating twist in 2007 when he suffered a heart attack. He drove himself to the hospital and called family and friends on his mobile along the way.

The heart that was planted into him as a 12-year-old was shutting down. "My heart was working at about 20 percent of normal at that point," Compton said. "The question was whether they would be able to find a donor before it shut down completely."

Compton received another heart the following year from a young volleyball player who had been killed in a motorcycle accident. His remarkable recovery was completed in 2011 when he won the Mexico Open en route to promotion to the promised land of the PGA Tour.

Last season, Compton revelled in his finest hour as finished in a share of second place in the US Open at Pinehurst, a result which earned him an invitation to this week's Masters. It was a defining moment. "I think my mom summed it up pretty well," added Compton of that career-changing result. "She said Erik's a golfer with two transplants, not a transplant recipient that plays golf. I finally had that feeling of putting myself on the map. And now I just have to keep going out and trying my best. I have used golf as a means to put some of the tough stuff behind me. It's been very therapeutic. But I don't have anything to really prove to anybody anymore. If I never played golf again for the rest of my life, I think that I have made my mark in this game."

Whatever happens at Augusta this week, we are guaranteed at least one Masters miracle.