SYDNEY, Australia – The trademark smile and quick-witted humor has never left former US PGA TOUR player Jarrod Lyle, even though he’s certainly had reason to let them slip.
Three times in his life Lyle has been struck down by acute myeloid leukemia, interrupting a promising golf career.
As a 19-year-old, he was given less than a 20 percent chance of survival. He beat the odds and went on to make his way to the PGA TOUR.
The cancer returned after he finished fourth at the 2012 Genesis Open, the best finish of his career.
He was once again given grim odds. Lyle won again and returned to the PGA TOUR to try again.
Unable to reclaim his TOUR card, Lyle returned to his native Australia to play his home tour, dabble in some commentary and take up a business selling golf apparel. He'd basically given the sticks away.
Then the leukemia returned again this year.
Once again, Lyle fought his way into remission, but the battle is far from over. Next week, he faces a new battle for his life.
He will gamble on stem cell therapy and have a haploidentical transplant with the help of his younger brother, Leighton. Unable to find a full bone marrow match for a transplant. he will instead go with a 50 percent match and hope for the best.
He’s been given a 25 percent chance of success and told it’s basically his last hope of a cure.
This week, he will watch the Australian Open in Sydney from a merchandise tent for his Lyle Apparel brand and also join the host broadcaster for some commentary.
Next week, he will enter hell again.
“It will be the hardest chemotherapy I have ever had to have. They want to get rid of my bone marrow,” Lyle told PGATOUR.com while five-year-old daughter Lucy threw feathers in the air and blissfully played nearby. “They are going to kill me from the inside out. They want to get my bone marrow to the point it is gone, and it’s never going to grow back.”
He will enter a Melbourne hospital on November 29. Over five days, he'll undergo two types of chemo, including one extremely toxic on the liver. He then has a day without any treatment before his brother’s cells are pumped in.
The next two days might be the worst of all.
“Those two days are likely to be very bad days for me. My body will recognize Leighton’s cells and will fight them,” Lyle explains. “My doctor said he is confident we can get it to work. If he didn’t believe it could work, we wouldn’t be doing it. But to hear the odds, and knowing it’s my last chance, it wasn’t the easiest conversation to have or information to hear.”
With wife Briony steadfast by his side and daughters Lusi (5) and Gemma (18 months) foremost in his thoughts he is once again steeled to fight.
“I know I am pushing stuff up a very steep hill. It opened our eyes that we are still struggling but there are a whole lot of things I still want to do in life and I have to keep fighting as much as I can to make that happen,” he said. “It’s kind of like I am filling up my positive bottle of energy now that I can use when things aren’t going well. I will have things to draw on and use and try to help me get through it all.”
Despite exhaustion at times, Lyle has made huge efforts of late to take his daughters to the park, the beach, the playground and anywhere else he can to plant great memories in their heads.
He craves the normalcy. And being at The Australian this week has him once again contemplating what would be a third comeback for the ages.
He found himself wandering inside the ropes, ignoring the regulation crosswalks.
“All things being equal, if I could play one more event, I’d be happy,” he said. “I don’t know how my body is going to turn out after this. I don’t know how much damage the chemo will do. But if I can play one event, my heart is still there.
“Being here this week, it’s hard to be on the other side of the ropes. I feel like I am still part of the playing fraternity. The support from all walks of life, from all over Australia and the world, there are a lot of people behind me. That always feels good.”
Lyle is in the process of writing a book about his life experiences, one he hopes will help people get through similar challenges in life.
The hope for all is he’s signing copies at the 2018 Australian Open.
Labels: US PGA TOUR
posted by Colin |
See story on its own page | Wednesday, November 22, 2017
