Adam Hunter is back on course
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after battle with leukaemia

FROM THE SUNDAY HERALD WEBSITE
By ALAN CAMPBELL
Adam Hunter’s initial fear was that he had suffered a stroke when the right-hand side of his face inexplicably froze last November.
He was correct in his assumption that something was seriously amiss, but wrong in the diagnosis.
Some 24 hours later, Hunter found himself installed in Glasgow’s Beatson Cancer Centre, where tests confirmed he had leukaemia. It was a devastating verdict for the self-employed golf coach, and also his wife Caroline and their two teenage daughters.
Just over 10 years earlier it had seemed that the golfing world was Hunter’s oyster. With the light fading on Carnoustie’s famous links, he had watched proudly as Paul Lawrie dispatched a majestic 4-iron shot to within three feet of the 76th and final hole of the 1999 Open Championship. That play-off victory over Jean van de Velde and Justin Leonard seemed destined to enshrine Hunter’s name as one of golf’s most valued coaches.
Yet, though his place in history as the key component of Team Lawrie is assured, the Glaswegian was not visited by fame or, more conspicuously, fortune. Instead, he resumed a punishing schedule in which he imparted his golfing wisdom to a wide range of clients from European Tour players Lawrie, Stephen Gallacher, Alastair Forsyth and Gary Orr, through to Scotland’s top amateurs and even club high-handicappers.
Paul Lawrie was chalk white and obviously apprehensive. He looked worse than I did
The latter work, his bread and butter, is conducted at the Mearns Castle Golf Academy, on the south-western outskirts of Glasgow. Six months ago Hunter was set to step up his commitment as 
director of instruction by renting the coaching bays from the owners and establishing his own golf school.
Instead, the 46-year-old found himself in the Beatson. It was to be his home for almost four months as he underwent tests and three courses of chemotherapy.
Now in remission, but being monit-ored on a fortnightly basis, Hunter has already confounded the doctors by giving a 30-minute coaching lesson. Since being released from hospital in March he has started to build up his strength through walking and swimming, but it will be a long time before he can return to full-time work. As he sips tea from a mug, he recalls his early forebodings when leukaemia was confirmed.
“The biggest scare was that I’d pass it on to my children, but it’s not hereditary,”
he said. “Then my next thought was, ‘how am I going to survive financially because I’m self-employed. Will I have to sell the house?’ All these thoughts go through your head rather than the obvious one, which is, ‘am I going to get well again?’ But that’s how it was – there were a few things ahead of that in the order of merit.”
Although leukaemia had been 
identified suddenly, it had been preceded by another problem. “I was struggling with my health from 
November 2008,” Hunter recalls. “I started to get numbness in the left side of my face and body, like pins and needless. There was a neurological problem which the 
medical people never resolved.
“Almost a year to the day the other side of my face went completely numb. I went to the doctor and she thought it was a palsy, but because I could move an eyebrow she was uncertain. I was sent to the Royal Infirmary, where they took blood and said it could be something really serious. The next day they checked bone marrow from my hip and knew it was definitely leukaemia.”
Hunter was given a trial drug for his chemotherapy, and although for a while his liver responded badly it meant he only had to have three rounds of treatment, rather than the usual four. “Bizarrely,” he reports, “when I started the chemotherapy the stuff on my left-hand side went away even though the two things were not connected as far as the doctors are aware.”
Hunter looks well after his ordeal. His hair is growing back in, even if it is more fluffy and grey than its owner would have preferred. But although he is generous with his time for this interview, an afternoon of sleep was on the agenda for a man who is still very much on the mend. Fortunately, given his justified early fears about his finances, Hunter’s 
dedication to duty, and commitment to helping even the most hopeless 
golfing cases, has ensured that his clients have rallied round to prevent the coach and his family from suffering hardship.
His supporters include the Scottish Golf Union, who employed him one day a week to assist national coach Ian Rae. But the most generous help has come from Lawrie who, after 
Hunter’s admission to the Beatson, quickly drove down from Aberdeen. The two go back a long way, to when they were both struggling to make a living on the European Tour.
Hunter, who won the Portuguese Open in 1995, became Lawrie’s coach three years later and the extraordinary Open Championship victory quickly followed. But even at the outset Hunter had told his pal that their coaching relationship would be a business one and that he was free to go elsewhere if he felt that was best for his game.
Professional golfers change coaches, as they do caddies, and over the past 10 years Lawrie has frequently reviewed his backroom options. But despite their tiffs the bond between the two has been enduring, and Hunter was Lawrie’s short-game coach when disaster struck last November.
“Paul came straight down from 
Aberdeen, and I could see him pacing up and down in the corridor where he’d been told to wait,” says Hunter. “He was chalk white and obviously apprehensive. He looked worse than I did.”
The golfer and his wife Marian swung into action to ensure that Hunter would not have to worry about money on top of his health. It was a typically generous reaction from Lawrie, who also runs his own golf foundation. Its star pupils include Scottish men’s and boys’ champion David Law and before his world collapsed Hunter would travel weekly to Aberdeen to coach Lawrie’s youngsters.
Realistically, it will be some time before that will resume. But even when it does, Hunter has resolved he will live a more measured existence following the inevitable lifestyle appraisal.
“I was working stupid hours pretty much every day of the week,” he says. “It was 12 hours a day and just hectic.The balance between work and family was non-existent. I enjoy coaching and it’s very difficult to say no to people if they’re struggling with their game. I feel they are clients and they should be able to phone me any time to see if I can help out. But clearly that is something I’m going to have to change.”
If it is too early to suggest the spring is completely back in Hunter’s step, his recovery has clearly started. Friends, like Gallacher, now feel confident enough to kid him about the fluffy hair. Scottish golf will be the healthier when Hunter himself is fully restored.