When cancer survivor Jarrod Lyle returns to golf after a 20-month layoff at the Australian Masters at Royal Melbourne on Thursday, he expects a number of teary eyes on the tee. His among them.
The 32-year Lyle will play his first tournament since his second fight with myeloid leukemia his first came at the age of 17. This time, he'll have his wife and young daughter with him when he starts a tournament that he's not sure he's physically ready to finish should he make the 36-hole cut.
His opening shot will be as much emotional as physical.
"Just walking to that first tee and teeing the ball up and trying to hit it that's probably going to be the hardest thing," Lyle said Tuesday at Royal Melbourne.
"It's just going to let a whole lot of stuff out. Hopefully when that ball flies I can just get on to playing golf and put everything behind me and just get back to the golfer that I am."
Lyle, then a regular on the US PGA Tour, was diagnosed with his second bout of leukemia in March 2012 just before the birth of his daughter, Lusi. Lyle's wife, Briony, became pregnant despite medical advice that Lyle's first bout of cancer and the resulting chemotherapy would leave him sterile.
With a medical exemption to return to the PGA Tour whenever he feels he's ready and it might not be until late in 2014 Lyle has found his second bout of cancer illuminating. On the positive side, he knew what to expect, and anti-nausea drugs to counteract the chemotherapy had improved in the 15 years between his illnesses.
On the downside, because he had the disease once, it was harder to overcome twice. The first bout saw him spend two to three weeks at a time in hospital, this time around it often was four or five weeks or more. He's lost weight, and his strength.
