Letter 92: Life lessons of Jarrod and Briony Lyle
She laughed.
"He watched that video all the time, I can remember waking up with giggling and I asked him what he laughed at and he said:" I just got the hole again one. "
Golf did not interest Briony, who was a high school classmate of Jarrod in their home town of Shepparton, in the north of Victoria. When they started dating a few years later, she attended his tournaments, but she recognized early on that she needed a distraction.
"I could not possibly spend time practicing round-the-clock golf courses as if I had been invested in every shot and every moment," said Briony, who enrolled in Melbourne lessons to become a massage therapist. She gathered her required training hours, she said, by setting up a massage table at tournaments and kneading the muscles of the caddies.
She earned her certification in 2012, shortly before the birth of the first daughter of the couple, Lusi. Another daughter, Jemma, arrived four years later. Around the time of Lusi's birth, Jarrod learned that the leukemia he had fought had returned successfully to high school.
He was from the P.G.A. Tour for more than two years, came back and made 20 more starts. He had returned to Australia to make his home visit and tried to broadcast when he discovered at the end of 2017 that the leukemia had returned for the third time.
During his first fight with the disease, Jarrod became acquainted with Challenge, a non-profit company dedicated to offering practical and personal services to the families of cancer patients. The mascot of the organization is a duck named Leuk, and since the death of Jarrod, people from all over the world have brought along great merchandise, everything from duckheads to pins and ball markers.
Next week, top performers of the P.G.A. Tour of Australasia, the Australian Ladies Professional Golf, the European Tour and the Ladies European Tour will meet at Barwon Heads Golf Club, not far from Torquay, for the Vic Open. Briony will be there and sell nice duck merchandise to raise money for families who are dealing with cancer.
