Leaderboard: BMW Championship

AUSTIN, Texas — Bubba Watson made the final of the Dell Technologies Match Play look as though he were on vacation all along. Watson won his second World Golf Championships title Sunday with the biggest blowout since the championship matched switched to 18 holes in 2011, a 7-and-6 victory over Kevin Kisner. He picked up 550 FedExCup points to move to fourth in the standings.   Watson wasn’t as sharp as he was in the semifinals against Justin Thomas, whom he beat in 16 holes to deny Thomas going to No. 1 in the world ranking. He didn’t have to be in the final. If not for missing a 4-foot birdie putt on the par-5 sixth, Watson would have won the first seven holes. Kisner had a lot to do with that. After escaping in 19 holes against Alex Noren in his semifinal match, Kisner didn’t put up much of a fight. He made four straight bogeys and only twice on the front nine was putting for birdie. Watson had scheduled a family vacation out of the country on Sunday, which he had to postpone. Watson figured he hardly ever makes it this far in golf’s most fickle format, so it was a good problem to have. There was nothing fickle about his game, especially on the final day. Watson never trailed in the 28 holes he played Sunday, and he was never seriously threatened. The tougher match was against Thomas, the PGA champion who needed only to reach the championship match to replace Dustin Johnson at No. 1 in the world. Watson went out to a 3-up lead on the front nine, and when Thomas closed to 1-down at the turn with his first birdie putt, Watson won two of the next three holes to regain control. Thomas didn’t make another birdie until the par-5 16th, and by then it was too late. Watson made his birdie from 3 feet for a 3-and-2 victory. Thomas said he was too consumed with what was at stake in the semifinals. “I haven’t had such a hard time not thinking about something so much. And that really sucked,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it, to be perfectly honest. And I think you’re constantly getting questions about it with the media. But I need to be mentally stronger than that, and understand that it’s just a match.” Noren beat Thomas in the consolation match, 5 and 3. One year after Watson disappeared from among the elite in golf, he has won his last two starts. He was No. 117 in the world when he arrived at Riviera, where he won for the third time in his career. With his 11th victory on the PGA TOUR, he now is back up to No. 21. And the two-time Masters champion added his name to the growing list of contenders at Augusta National. “I’m looking forward to it, and hopefully I can get this focus and my putter rolling like it is,” Watson said. Watson played 109 holes over seven matches, going to the 18th hole just once when he halved his match with Julian Suri on Friday. Through it all, he said he wasn’t committed to only four or five shots. He was hitting high draws, low cuts, all the shots he created as a kid in the Florida Panhandle when he was just a boy with a club and a wild imagination. He wouldn’t have imagined such an easy time against Kisner in the all-Georgia Bulldogs final that ended with the fabled “dog license” score in match play. A dog license in Britain used to cost seven shillings, six pence (referred to as 7 and 6). Watson holed a 10-foot birdie on the opening hole, and then Kisner took care of the rest. His drive was short and to the right on the hill at No. 2, and he did well to get it just short of the green, failing to get up-and-down. Kisner then hit just inside the hazard and had to play up short of another hazard. Then, he found a bunker on the par-3 fourth hole. His next drive went right into the trees on the reachable par-4 fifth. Watson missed his short birdie putt to win the sixth hole, but not to worry. Kisner’s next shot bounced off a spectator’s head and next to a fence, and he had to chip off loose soil across the green for another bogey. This can happen in match play, and Kisner saw it Saturday in his 8-and-6 victory over Ian Poulter. “I don’t know what was going on. It was just pitiful,” Kisner said. “I’ve just got to forget this 12 holes and get back to working on the things that got me here.” Even in a final match that lacked any drama, Watson still managed to shed a few tears. His mother was with him in the gallery on the weekend, and they shared a warm embrace after he made a 7-foot birdie putt on the 12th hole to win the match. “It’s crazy to think about it,” Watson said. “I’ve got two World Golf Championships, and two majors. It’s unbelievable to think about that, giving my mom a hug. Six years old, having one golf club for a year, no lessons. I can sit here and make up stories all day, but it’s absolutely remarkable that I’m able to life a trophy like this.” As for that vacation? Watson was cryptic as ever. “I’m going on vacation tomorrow, no matter if it’s at home or wherever it is, it’s vacation,” he said. “Golf clothes will not be seen until next Saturday.”

Click here to read the full article…

Ryan Palmer had been checking his smart phone all day, sneaking glances between shots during the RBC Canadian Open Pro-Am last year to see if his wife Jennifer had called. She was back home in Texas, waiting for the results of a biopsy. A mammogram the previous week had uncovered an abnormality that doctors felt warranted a closer examination. Not until that evening, when Ryan was having dinner with his caddie James Edmondson and some friends, did Jennifer finally reach him. He stepped outside the restaurant to take the call. The news was not good. Jennifer had stage 2A invasive ductal carcinoma. “It just hits you in the gut,â€� Ryan recalls, the memory clearly still fresh. Ryan’s fellow PGA TOUR pro, Stewart Cink, also knows what it’s like to get that sucker punch. Only he was at home in Atlanta after forgetting to commit to the Zurich Classic last year, his first such gaffe in 20 years on TOUR. His wife Lisa delivered the news to him in person. “Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, that was God’s hand,â€� Lisa now says. She had gone in for a follow-up appointment early that week. She hadn’t felt a lump in her breast. She just thought something wasn’t “right.â€� The doctors agreed – in fact, Lisa had a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy all in one day. “She told me afterwards that the mood in there was really serious and somber and not very upbeat at all,â€� Stewart said. The next day, the phone rang. Stewart and Lisa were meeting with the staff of their charitable foundation. This time, it was Lisa who stepped outside. Within seconds, Stewart followed her onto the front porch. Lisa had written some things in a notebook, and then she looked up at her husband, clutching the phone to her chest. “She said, I want to know my grandchildren,â€� Stewart recalls. “And there was not a lot more for her to say. I knew what that meant.â€� Lisa, who had led an extremely healthy lifestyle, has stage 4 invasive ductal carcinoma. The cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and was metastatic. With those two diagnoses, life for the Cinks and Palmers has changed forever. Stewart and Lisa met in high school. He was going out with a girl she played softball with – “He dated a lot of my friends, actually, which was interesting,â€� Lisa says – and the two eventually ended up in a class together where they became better acquainted. Their friendship blossomed into romance at Georgia Tech, and the two married at age 20. They have one son, Connor, who was born while the couple was still in college, and another Reagan, who is two years younger. Stewart and Lisa are empty nesters now. Connor graduated from Clemson last year while Reagan has followed in his parents’ footsteps and attends Georgia Tech. He’ll be a junior in the fall. “Do the math – we’ve been married over half our lives,â€� says Stewart, who’s now 43, as is his wife. “I feel like she’s been my soulmate before we ever met in 10th grade. She’s been part of me since birth, I feel like.â€� Ryan and Jennifer also met in high school in their hometown of Amarillo. But it wasn’t until the summer before her senior year at Texas A&M — Ryan was a year behind — that they began dating. “I saw him out at a party or something, and then he called me and said, hey, let’s go have dinner and play some golf,â€� Jennifer remembers. “I’m actually a terrible golfer, so I mainly just sat in the cart but that’s pretty much how it all began.â€� Jennifer was first attracted to Ryan’s smile – “He just lights up a room,â€� she says – and his positive attitude. He didn’t dwell on a bad round. He didn’t blame it on his clubs, either. Ryan was motivated, too. “It was never an option for him not to be a professional,â€� she says. “You know what I’m saying? That was his goal.â€� Jennifer had goals of her own, too, though. She graduated from A&M in 1998 and went to dental school, getting her degree in 2003. She practiced in Colleyville, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, for a while and still keeps her license current. Ryan finally got his TOUR card for the 2004 campaign, and he asked Jennifer to come to Pebble Beach with him. The couple married in June of that year. “After that week, he just said, ‘hey, do you want to try this full time?’â€� she remembers. “We didn’t really know what the future was going to hold golf-wise. So, we basically took a leap of faith.â€� Although they are similar in age, Stewart and Ryan were at different stages of life last year when their wives were diagnosed with cancer three months apart. While the Cinks’ boys are grown and living on their own, Jennifer and Ryan have two young children. Mason is 10, a huge hockey fan, while Madelyn turns 8 in August. After Ryan got that life-changing phone call from Jennifer, he wanted to come home immediately. She convinced him to stay in Canada, though. After all, there was nothing he could do; it wasn’t like she was having surgery the next day, and RBC, after all, is one of Ryan’s sponsors. It just hits you in the gut. The couple went to the PGA Championship where Ryan finished 42nd and then returned home where Jennifer had a lumpectomy. A week later, while Ryan was playing The Barclays (now called THE NORTHERN TRUST), they got the news that the cancer, already invasive in the breast, had spread into the lymph nodes. So Jennifer started chemotherapy on Sept. 19, the week after Ryan was eliminated from the FedExCup Playoffs at the BMW Championship despite a tie for fourth at Crooked Stick. It was also his 40th birthday. “He still got to have a fun little party the weekend before,â€� Jennifer says. “We had it in the works for several months so we went ahead and had the party.â€� Had Ryan made it to the TOUR Championship, Jennifer said she likely would have waited to start the chemo. At that point, though, Ryan announced on the Ryan Palmer Foundation Facebook page that he was taking time off to be with Jennifer and their kids. “He has a lot of family and friends and supporters who follow that so he just felt like that would be a good way for us to get prayer,â€� Jennifer says. Ryan did not play on TOUR again for four months, returning to competition at the Sony Open in Hawaii earlier this year. Mr. Mom did a “fabulousâ€� job, Jennifer says. He got the kids ready in the morning, often making Mason’s favorite, an omelet, for breakfast and took the kids to school. Although friends put together a meal train three nights a week, Ryan was more than happy to throw a few steaks on the grill, which is his specialty. While he did take time to play some golf, hoping to stay sharp for his return, Ryan also pitched in and did some light housework, helping Jennifer’s mom — who lives nearby — keep things tidy when the chemo took its toll. Turns out he’s a rare bird who actually likes to do laundry, too. “That’s what I needed to do,â€� Ryan says. “I was blessed that I was able to stay home the whole time.â€� “There were times when I said just go play this week, you should go get some competitive rounds in and he said, no, this is where I need to be, this is where I want to be,â€� adds Jennifer. “… It was something he really wanted to do for our family.â€� Stewart and Lisa had been looking forward to this time in their lives. With both sons essentially on their own, the couple was planning to travel the world as Stewart, the 2009 Open Championship winner, played golf. Turns out, that’s exactly what they’ve done, although always on Lisa’s schedule. “There’s not a lot I want to do without her,â€� Cink says. The first week of chemo – she had nine rounds administered through a port in her chest – is usually the worst. The second was a “maybe,â€� Stewart says, and by the third, Lisa usually felt like her old self. The first treatment was May 9, 2016. Three weeks later – “We kind of went to three-week months,â€� Stewart notes – he decided to play at the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational. Lisa had friends visiting in Atlanta and family, including the boys, nearby. So he went to Fort Worth by himself. He shot rounds of 72-75 and missed the cut. “I learned really fast that I wasn’t ready to be out there,â€� says Stewart, who purposely arrived on Wednesday so he could avoid some of the inevitable, albeit well-meaning, questions from his peers. He admits both he and Lisa were “emotionally wrecked.â€� Two weeks later, though, Lisa felt well enough to go with her husband to the FedEx St. Jude Classic. The change of scene was good for them both, and Lisa has made new friends as well as connected with the old. “I just don’t think the house would be a good place to be for a long, long time when you’re going through something like this,â€� Stewart says. “Those four walls start to close pretty fast.â€� In an interview with PGA TOUR Entertainment for a special on the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston where her doctors are based, Lisa said she wasn’t surprised her husband put his golf on hold to focus on her. “That’s who he is, and it’s the relationship we’ve been blessed with,â€� Lisa explained. “And of course, it meant everything to me. I don’t know how people do it alone.â€� The weeks at home allowed Stewart to go with Lisa to her various appointments and treatments. Understanding what is about to happen gives him some semblance of control. “Sometimes when she’s emotional, it’s hard to hear correctly, decipher what the doctor is saying,â€� Stewart explains. “So my role is to take down notes and ask questions and get facts straight so that later on, when she sort of takes deep breaths and can understand it, we can have a conversation and I can kind of spit it back the right way.â€� Lisa says her husband was a great “filterâ€� for what he calls a “firehose of information.â€� She was told not to Google treatments or symptoms, which she thinks is great advice. “But he was so good about hearing the information, researching the information, and giving it to me as I asked or he thought I needed it,â€� she says. Long walks through the old neighborhood near the Rice University campus helped the couple “sort through all this immense amount of terrible information we were getting,â€� Lisa says. Also helpful was mindless entertainment like the shows on HGTV that they both like to watch, and the family and friends who gathered in Houston to lend support. “We had every stool, bench, chair (occupied),â€� she says. A year later, as the couple lives with the disease, Stewart has become the de facto spokesman for the family. There are many times when he feels helpless — “Hence, the faith,â€� Stewart says, adding that he has a list of Bible verses to rely on – and he finds it therapeutic to talk about Lisa’s situation. “It makes me feel like you care about it, for one thing,â€� Stewart says. “That’s a good feeling. You find that when you’re discussing it, you’re not thinking about the future, you kind of talk about what you already know. “It kind of keeps me a little bit grounded in the present.â€� Like Lisa, Jennifer had chemo, six rounds in her case, once every three weeks. Ryan and her friend, Jennifer Hill, who came up from San Antonio, went to every treatment. They weren’t just there for moral support, though – the two had a mission. So that she wouldn’t lose her long dark hair, Jennifer opted to use cold caps to try to cool the scalp during the chemotherapy. It wasn’t that she was vain. She was worried about Mason. “Mason got a little upset thinking about it,â€� Ryan says. “She did the hair preservation for him. So, that was pretty special.â€� The caps are housed in dry ice and cooled to between minus-15 to minus-40 degrees below zero, measured by an infrared thermometer. The caps have to be handled with gloves and changed every 30 minutes – for eight hours straight. That’s where Ryan and Hill came in. “They had to knead them with their hands to make sure all the gel was evenly distributed, and get them to the right temperature,â€� Jennifer says. “Then they’d have a timer and they’d take that one off and put the new one on.â€� It worked. With the exception of a few bald spots under her hair, Jennifer says you’d never know she was a breast cancer survivor. Most importantly, Mason was reassured. No matter how weak or nauseous Jennifer felt while undergoing the chemo or radiation, she got up and got dressed every day. She even made sure she put makeup on. “If you can, you want to try and be as normal as possible for your kids,â€� she said. “You don’t want them to feel like you’re sick. It’s just a difficult subject for a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old to grasp. “My son wanted very concrete answers. He wanted it to be black and white, not gray, and so when we couldn’t give him an exact reason as to why I had it, it was very hard for him.â€� Ryan was amazed at his wife’s strength. “She did more things than I could imagine her doing,â€� he says. And he was glad he could be there to reassure the kids. “In case they had questions, we were there to talk about it together,â€� he adds. “Of course, their fears were the worst. Obviously, Mason’s was. But the main thing is just letting them know nothing is going to happen. “Don’t think the worst because it’s going to be OK.â€� Last fall, Jennifer was able to go with Ryan and their families to see him inducted into the Texas A&M Sports Hall of Fame. She also took a three-day trip to New York City after Christmas and before her final chemo treatment on January 3. “It was kind of like a let’s celebrate that we’re through this one step,â€� Jennifer says. “(It was) a lot of walking, but I kept up with it.â€� When Stewart didn’t qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs last year, he and Lisa went to Switzerland on a busman’s holiday of sorts when he played in a European Tour event. “And I could not believe that in the middle of chemo, I’m getting to go to Switzerland and see this beautiful, just breathtaking place,â€� Lisa said. “And meet these kind, wonderful people that we got to meet and it was such a blessing.â€� Stewart and Ryan played together at the CareerBuilder Challenge and picked each other’s brains about life with cancer. Their wives have been in contact, too, texting prayers and positive thoughts. “I think they’ve been great for each other,â€� Ryan said. And at times, the support the couples have felt from friends on the PGA TOUR has been overwhelming. Flowers, cards, texts and phone calls have helped make the journey easier. Meagan Laird, Martin’s wife, who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, even arranged dinners for the Palmer’s meal train. “She’s doing all this from out of town,â€� Jennifer says. “Isn’t that crazy?â€� Zach Johnson’s wife, Kim, had a quilt made with a small pocket in the back where friends of Stewart and Lisa left spiritual messages. Lisa took the quilt with her to PET scans and was able to “know that these people have prayed for me.â€� And when Lisa went out to Memphis, her first tournament since being diagnosed, the PGA TOUR Wives Association had a special surprise at their annual event at the St. Jude Children’s Hospital. The kids at the hospital had made cards and posters for her. “I just couldn’t imagine why these children, there are having to suffer, they’re pouring out love on me,â€� Lisa says. “And it was such a gift and it was such an encouragement to know how strong these children were. “It gave me a lot of encouragement that I can do this, too.â€� There has been good news of late. Jennifer’s latest mammogram was clear, Ryan reported, and her treatments, which included radiation, will be done in August. Stewart wrote this in his blog on May 8: Amen! PET scan results looked good again today, basically unchanged from the past two, from November and February. Lisa is now in what the doctor called “sustained remission.â€� Cink and Palmer are in the field this week at Colonial. After an emotionally draining year for both men, their wives and their families, a few hours on the golf course each day now offers a chance to step back into their old lives. Their thoughts, however, will never stray far from Lisa and Jennifer and the battle against the toughest of foes.

Click here to read the full article…

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Golf is not a team sport, but life is. That’s one of the lessons in the story of Phoenix Small, 14, who met with Jon Rahm on TPC Scottsdale’s famous 16th hole Wednesday in the pro-am for this week’s WM Phoenix Open. They walked through the tunnel together, allowing Phoenix to take in the wild, fully enclosed stadium hole for the first time, his eyes wide. They walked 17 and 18 together, too. In addition to his parents, sister, doctors and friends, Phoenix, a patient at Shriners Hospitals for Children, now has the world’s No. 1 golfer in his camp, which he calls “a blessing.” Rahm, too, has relished the friendship. Play was slow, and they did radio and TV interviews together as they waited. The emcee at the 16th tee announced Phoenix as Rahm’s good luck charm. “I think I would have been a lot more nervous than he was,” Rahm said after the round, in which he and Phoenix were mic’d up and embraced behind the 15th green while spending roughly two hours together. “He composed himself in such a great manner, it was incredible.” Phoenix is from outside Salt Lake City, Rahm is from Spain. Shriners connected them by video chat last fall because each was born with clubfoot, which affects an estimated 200,000 children a year. Rahm first spoke publicly about his right foot last summer. Phoenix had two club feet. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Because neonatal doctors at the Shriners in Salt Lake had to be sure Phoenix would survive infancy before they considered his feet. A long and twisty road Wide-eyed? Phoenix had never been on a plane before flying to Arizona to meet Rahm, and in his maiden voyage they encountered pockets of turbulence. Perhaps that’s fitting, for the journey to sunny, surreal TPC Scottsdale has required the family’s full reservoir of faith. Phoenix’s mom, Chariti, was trying to get up to speed on parenthood and 18 weeks pregnant when she and Phoenix’s dad, Shane, learned that their son would be born with club feet. “I was devastated of course,” she says, “and there was no way of knowing how severe the clubbed feet were until we saw them with our own eyes. I wondered and stressed and lost sleep over it.” Then everything changed. Phoenix was born with bleeding on his brain and a virus attacking his lungs. His color was off, he wasn’t breathing on his own, and suddenly his club feet were a lesser concern. Doctors intubated him and began a series of tests as his life hung in the balance. “Those first days were exhausting,” Chariti says. “We were scared and tired and didn’t know what the future held in store for our family, which is the scariest thing of all, the unknown.” Leaving her new baby in the hospital, she adds, was “beyond hard.” At one point he reached up and deintubated himself, and doctors realized he was breathing on his own. Meanwhile the body was reabsorbing the bleeding on his brain. He was stabilizing. “There were a lot of prayers on that baby’s behalf,” Chariti says, “but all we could do is leave it in God’s hands. Thankfully the prayers worked, and he came home two weeks later. He had a long road ahead of him, but he improved quicker than doctors thought he would.” The next medical hurdle: what to do about his feet. The late Ignacio Ponseti, from the island of Menorca, Spain, was as famous in his field, the treatment of clubfoot, as Rahm, from Barrika, on the other side of the country, is in his. Traditionally, the treatment of clubfoot involved invasive surgery; that was what was available to Rahm. “I’m tired of hearing that the reason why I have a short swing is that I have tight hips or other things,” Rahm said at The Open Championship last July. He went on to explain that he was born with club foot on his right leg, his foot, “90 degrees turned inside and basically upside down.” He continued: “They basically relocated, pretty much broke every bone in the ankle and I was casted within 20 minutes of being born from the knee down. I think every week I had to go back to the hospital to get recasted, so from knee down my leg didn’t grow at the same rate. I have very limited ankle mobility in my right leg. It’s a centimeter and a half shorter.” Lacking stability in his right leg, Rahm knew that taking the club back to parallel was going to be out. He was going to have to learn to create power and consistency with a short backswing. The old method lingered perhaps longer than it should have. Ponseti, a medic in the Spanish Civil War before fleeing the Franco regime and building his career at the University of Iowa, found that scar tissue led to long-term tightness and pain in the foot and ankle. By avoiding the big surgery and instead manipulating babies’ pliable foot and ankle bones – a process he likened to playing the piano – followed by casting, outcomes improved. No one took him seriously, but what finally made the difference was the internet, so that when a few pioneering patients saw the benefits of the Ponseti Method for themselves, around the year 2000, word spread quickly. Other doctors, too, began to take notice. One of them was Dr. Kristen Carroll, a rising star in Salt Lake. ‘Our superhero’ The Chief of Staff of Shriners Salt Lake City and professor of orthopedics at the University of Utah, Dr. Carroll has been there from the beginning. Chariti calls her “our superhero.” It was Carroll who performed the infant Phoenix’s casting and Achilles Tenotomy, in which the Achilles tendon is cut, the foot is brought up to a neutral position, and the tendon regrows in a longer position. “It’s not really a surgery; we do it under a local anesthetic,” Carroll says. “It’s a clinical procedure, but it’s scary for the family. After that, roughly 30% of children will require other work down the road, and he was one of those.” Phoenix wore braces, which he had to take off for bath time and to splash around in the little plastic pool in the backyard. On one of those occasions, he surprised everyone and stood up and scampered around on his ankles. “I think it hurt each one of us watching him,” Chariti says. A quarter of the bones in the human body are in the feet, but those bones don’t become visible on an X-ray until kids are toddlers. Until then, they’re mostly cartilage. The Ponseti Method: push the feet back into position, followed by casting, and repeat three to five times. The small group of doctors who specialize in treatment of clubfoot know it’s a science and an art. Dr. Carroll, who had taken a course from Ponseti, used both. Phoenix was 2 when he got a tendon transfer, in which the anterior tibialis tendon is transferred to make up for the peroneal tendon, which is underpowered in clubfoot patients. He was in the hospital for a week, during which time Disney’s Monsters, Inc. played on repeat in his room. It was a success, but with the severity of his case he was scheduled for another operation less than two years later. Already battle-tested over the course of nearly four years, the family braced themselves yet again. It wasn’t ideal, but another invasive procedure seemed inevitable. “The day that we showed up for the surgery,” Chariti says, “Dr. Carroll walked in our hospital room and said, ‘I have an idea and if you’ll trust me, I’d like to try it instead of surgery.’” Taking a page from Ponseti, Carroll wanted to correct the remaining deformities with manual manipulation – playing the piano – and serial casting. The Smalls were ecstatic, and having been spared the knife, Phoenix dressed up as Frankenstein for Halloween, trick-or-treating in his casts. There were still a few bumps along the way. When he got out of his casts, he would not walk. He was brought back to see Dr. Carroll, who said to give it time. The family did, but to no avail. Back at the hospital, she X-rayed his feet, solving the mystery: He had osteoporosis, a web of tiny fractures. The fix was an unusual looking pair of soft boots, plus physical therapy. “For somebody who was born with both feet clubbed, you look at him and you wouldn’t be able to tell,” Rahm said. “It’s amazing. He’s a remarkable young man, remarkable family, and I’m sure he’ll have a really bright future, because with what they’ve endured early in his life, I mean, there’s not going to be many challenges that are worse than that.” A normal kid Phoenix’s father, Shane, says he never lost faith that everything would turn out OK. Golf has helped, although he might not have anticipated the role it would play in his life upon his introduction to the game. “I started playing about 25 years ago,” he says. “My first time out I ended up in the ER with a fractured leg. I went after work with a few guys and the person driving the cart turned on a hill and tipped the cart and it landed on my leg. I couldn’t make that up if I tried.” Phoenix was about 6 when he went out with his dad for the first time. He drove the cart – more carefully than his dad’s old friend – and supplied balls for mulligans. He was about 9 when he started to show interest in playing, and he got a set of clubs for his birthday. His interest was further stoked when, as a patient ambassador at a Salt Lake Shriners golf tournament, he became friends with Maleah Johnson, another patient ambassador who as an amputee, on a prosthetic leg, was playing on her high school’s varsity golf team. “They continued to participate together in every golf event for the hospital until last year when she went off to college,” Shane says. “He has had a few very positive influences in the game.” Chariti says she didn’t know what to expect when the best golfer in the world came into their lives. Indeed, no one could have predicted how well Phoenix and Rahm would hit it off. “I was happy for them both,” Shane says. “Jon had never met anyone else with their condition. So, it was fun to see his reaction. I was very grateful to Jon for taking the time to talk with Phoenix. Jon is a class act and true ambassador for the PGA TOUR. “I definitely find myself following the game more,” he continues. “Especially how Mr. Rahm is doing. I believe he gained quite a few new fans from this experience, and we will be forever grateful and rooting for him. I truly believe that Jon Rahm is a legend in the making.” Phoenix says no one at his school has any idea about his labyrinthine medical journey. He plays trumpet in band – he is a fan of 1940s music, owing to Louis Armstrong – and recently started a new 3D design class that he says is “pretty cool so far.” Soccer and other sports are too hard on his feet, but golf with his father, always in a cart, has been a fit. Admittedly new to the game, he has been thrilled to get some tips from the down-to-earth Rahm. “I learned that I might actually have a chance at being a decent golfer someday,” he said. These days, if the weather holds, Phoenix and Shane hit the driving range at Fox Hollow G.C. in American Fork. If not, it’s Mulligans in South Jordan, which has an overhang with heaters. Dr. Carroll still sees him roughly once a year. She diagnosed his little sister, Madeline, with hip dysplasia and fixed him up when he broke his elbow at age 7. That Phoenix still has foot pain is normal, she says, as 20-30% of clubfoot kids still do even as adults. “The clubfoot seems to be secondary to the muscle imbalances,” she says. “There are underlying weaknesses and imbalances in the strength of the foot. That’s kind of what causes the clubfoot. “I think golf is a great sport for him,” she continues. “It isn’t a contact sport. You don’t have that many kids who come in injured from golf. He can walk on a soft surface, versus a hard surface, and go at his own pace. And I think some residual foot abnormalities are minimized by the fact that you use your upper extremities more than your feet in golf.” Phoenix remains a patient ambassador for Shriners, attending events and fundraisers. Sometimes it means public speaking, and as always Chariti and Shane and Madeline have his back in a supporting role. Rahm says he hopes he and Phoenix keep inspiring and leading by example, proving to others with clubfoot that it need not hold them back. Carroll says she’s already inspired. “When I see Phoenix in clinic, the whole room just lights up,” she says. “He has this wonderful smile, and this unassuming, disarming sweetness about him even though he’s a teenage boy. What teenage boy still wants to hug their doctor? The wonderful and extraordinary thing about him is his spirit and kindness and intelligence and thoughtfulness of others.” The patient ambassadorship, paying it forward, is only natural, Chariti says, for Shriners was there from day one. She reserves her highest praise for Dr. Carroll, “The most compassionate, humble, sweet, and caring doctor I have ever experienced.” As for Phoenix himself, a trumpet-playing, golf-loving wonder, she calls him an inspiration to all who know him – most of all her. “Phoenix is appropriately named,” she says. “His entrance into this world was a scary one but he has risen from the metaphorical ashes to live an incredible life. Life is funny that way, it will make you grateful for the weirdest things. If you asked me now if I would change things if I could, I would tell you not in a million years.”

Click here to read the full article…