By Lee Hurley
Photos by Jordan Wald and courtesy of the Rebulas
Catching up with Jovan and Frances Rebula is a little like chasing a butterfly. Thankfully though, in late April just days before leaving for Europe (again), the pair took time to sit down and discuss the trials and tribulations of choosing professions both challenging and sublime.
Frances Patrick Rebula grew up in Birmingham, graduating from Mountain Brook in 2016 and going to Auburn where she ran track and
majored in Special Education. Her athletic skills included the 3000 meter steeplechase, the 1500 and 800 meter runs and the mile with a time of 4:58. One of four girls in the Patrick family, Frances is, as her mother Katie says, “Not afraid of very much.” Painting has always been Frances’ love and stress reliever though she had never envisioned it being her livelihood. That would soon change.
Jovan (pronounced Yo-von) Rebula grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, the son of a Serbian tennis coach who moved to the country in 1992 with $200 dollars and two tennis racquets, and a mother whose brother happens to be the world-famous golfer Ernie Els. Jovan, a natural athlete, played cricket, rugby and tennis until the age of 10 when he discovered golf and that, as we say, is all she wrote. He won several tournaments as an amateur in South Africa including the 2012 South African U15 Championship and the 2013 South African Boys U17 Stroke Play, and in 2018, he became only the second South African golfer in history to win The Amateur Championship.
On the Plains
With this early success came college offers. “I got a message from Auburn golf coach Nick Clinard asking if there was any interest to come play golf in America,” says Jovan. “I sent him a message back saying, ‘Thanks but I’ve got my own path set in South Africa.’” A couple of months went by, and the coaches sent another message and this time Uncle Ernie stepped in saying, “Jovan, I think this is something you need to try, and if you don’t like it you can always come back.” So, off he went. The culture shock of America and college golf took some getting used to. “I felt like I was floating for about a year, learning new things every single day and kind of just adapting,” Jovan says. And what was he adapting to? “As a student-athlete, you wake up in the morning, you go to the gym at six, get to class at eight and go till noon. Then you’re rushing back to your house to get changed and it’s off to the golf course for practice every afternoon. The days just blew by.”
Jovan considers himself lucky because as the only foreigner on the team, his teammates took care of him, especially his roommate Regan Harrell. “Regan took me under his wing and whenever I had questions to ask or whatever, all the guys were there to help me.” Jovan’s career at Auburn included top 10 finishes in 12 tournaments. His junior year he averaged a team-best 71.34 strokes per round, the 10th-lowest average in Auburn single-season history. This got him selected as a PING All-American Honorable Mention for the second straight season as well as named a semifinalist for the Jack Nicklaus National Player of the Year Award.
Meanwhile, Frances and Jovan met as juniors at the Sky Bar, a popular watering hole in Auburn, first becoming casual friends. But it was not until the second semester, Jovan called Frances and asked her to have coffee. The rest is history. The two were engaged in 2022 and married in September of 2023.
Distance makes the heart
grow determined
In between and after the two got married were painful periods of long distance separation. Frances got a master’s degree in Special
Education and became the head track coach and a teacher at Helena (and later Homewood), while Jovan turned professional and joined the Sunshine Tour in South Africa. The two had many long talks about the career of a professional golfer. After all, it’s a life of constant travel, and nothing is guaranteed. Not to mention being from two countries with different passports complicated their ability to be together for weeks at a time. Did Jovan have a plan B if golf didn’t work out? “Let me explain it this way,” says Frances, “a month into dating, I invited Jovan over for dinner. I’m trying to impress him, and we’re in the kitchen and I’m like, ‘So what would you do if, like, golf doesn’t work out?’ And he said, ‘Uh, golf.’ And I was like, ‘No, I mean if golf doesn’t work out, what kind of job would you get?’ And he was like, ‘Nothing. I will only golf.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay, cool. So no, plan B?’ And he was like, ‘No, no, no, just golf. Like, plan A or A.’”
Plan A
It’s late spring and the two are about to head back out together on a tour across Spain and Europe. Frances has traded in her teaching role in Birmingham for a creative career painting full time. Interning with well-known artist Laura Deems helped her hone her
artistic skills and develop her style, and so far her work sells faster than she can paint. It turns out that traveling all over the world
has enriched her nature based painting experience. “She snaps pictures of trees or bushes or plants or whatever is on the golf course, and that’s what she takes back to her hotel and paints,” Jovan says. Speaking of hotels, Frances turns each room on the tour into her local studio carrying her own golf bag of rolled up canvases from stop to stop. “I try to make friends pretty quickly with the cleaning crew. I’ll have like 12 commissions going in the room, and I get nervous that they’re not going to like that, but they’re always so nice and
interested,” she laughs.
And what about Jovan’s professional career so far? With five top-10 finishes on the Sunshine Tour, his next promotion will happen if he can finish in the top 20 of the Challenge Tour. He is well on that track now but one can’t say that out loud for fear of a jinx. That success would move him to the DP tour in Europe or the PGA in the states and back to a home base of Birmingham, Alabama. Meanwhile, as Helen Keller wrote, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing
at all.”
