Thoughts of his infant daughter’s embrace on the green are driving cancer survivor Jarrod Lyle toward his professional golf comeback.
Lyle has targeted the Australian Masters at Royal Melbourne from November 14-17 as the time and place to return after successfully battling a second bout of leukaemia for the past year-and-a-half.
The 31-year-old US PGA Tour player said he was strongly motivated by his 18-month-old daughter Lusi, who was born after he began his cancer fight.
“For me, that’s probably going to be the biggest thing: having her there, at a golf tournament, watching her dad try to play some golf again,” Lyle told AAP on Wednesday.
“You always sit there and watch other guys win and their kids run onto the green to give them a big hug.
“It’d be nice for Lusi to be there and just run onto the green and catch me before I fall over after 18 holes.”
Lyle will share the Australian Masters limelight with US Masters champion Adam Scott and America’s world No.6 Matt Kuchar, having been cleared of the disease he’d beaten as a teenager in June.
Lyle admitted his practice had been limited since, playing no more than two days in a row in matches for lottery tickets at The Sands in Torquay, Victoria, where he lives with Lusi and wife Bri.
“It’s just hard because I still get very tired. I don’t want to push myself too much in a way,” he said.
“My doctors have said you have to listen to your body and the minute you start getting tired then you have to stop.
“(But) when I won that first Tatts lotto ticket down there (at The Sands), it really got me fired up.
“The competitive juices are still there, but it’s going to be a struggle. It’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster. But I’ve got to start somewhere and the Masters at Royal Melbourne, for me, was the perfect fit.”
Lyle, who remains on a medical exemption with the US PGA Tour, still plans to return to America but concedes he’s at least another 12 months away from attempting that.
“I’m just not ready. I’m not able to travel, I’m not able to do a lot of things yet.
“I’ve got a lot of things that need to happen before I can go back over there.
“This time last year I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know if I’d ever be playing golf again.
“So I’m sort of using the Masters as a bit of a gauge to see where everything’s at.”
While he appreciates his comeback will be a huge challenge, his family are providing plenty of inspiration.
“They’ve saved my life.
“They’ve given me something to fight for.
“To see the way that Bri’s dealt with this whole thing, giving birth and raising Lusi by herself while her husband’s away fighting for his life at the same time.”
Making the cut would be ideal, he added, but the chance to raise money and awareness for kids cancer charity Challenge – the official charity for this year’s event – is much more rewarding.
“For me, it’s the only way I’d be able to say thank you to everybody and show them the support that they’ve shown me the past 18 months has not gone unnoticed,” he said.
