Jarrod Lyle’s battle has been long and torturous, but through it all he has never lost his smile

JARROD Lyle’s golf career was filled with broad smiles, hearty laughs, travel, adventure, magic moments on and off the golf course and, the best bit of all, family time, writes Russell Gould.

Jarrod Lyle. Pic Mark Caleja

I’LL give it a smashing,” Jarrod Lyle said from a hospital bed just over a year ago.

He was laid up again after routine blood tests, which had become as regular a part of his life as reading bedtime stories to his two daughters, showed cancer had returned – again.

It was the third time.

“Cancer sucks,” Lyle’s wife Briony said.

She had seen way too much already. But the big fella was up for the fight, just as he had been twice before, the first time when he spent nine months in hospital as a teenager overcoming acute myeloid leukaemia.

THANKS: LYLE’S EMOTIONAL THANK YOU TO HIS FANS

GOLF GREAT: WHY TIGER BROKEN GOLDEN RULE FOR LYLE

The Lyle narrative, which is headed towards a painfully early conclusion for a man who is only 36, has been littered with setbacks.

But it has also been filled with big, broad smiles, hearty laughs, travel, adventure, magic moments on and off the golf course and, the best bit of all, family time that sated, as much as possible in such a short time, a heart bursting with love to give. Lyle walked like a big, happy bloke.

Jarrod Lyle with his children

It was an effortless, almost slow-motion lope and invariably done with a smile.

“He is one of the best blokes there is,” Adam Scott said on learning of the latest setback for Lyle.

A great bloke calling Lyle the “best bloke” speaks volumes for the universal acknowledgment of Lyle’s outstanding character.

The wellwishers came in droves on Wednesday morning from his fellow competitors through Australia, the US, Asia and Europe.

That’s pretty much everyone in golf, an entire sport saddened by the fate befallen one of their own.

L ISTEN TO JARROD LYLE’S THANK YOU MESSAGE HERE

It all started with him taking down older, unaware opponents in Shepparton as a burly 12-year-old.

The dream was always the US, but for every player who makes it to Augusta National, there are thousands who have found themselves in places like Chattanooga and Fort Smith.

One of his two wins wasn’t even in America, it came in Tijuana, Mexico.

Lyle got around and left no-one he encountered in any doubt that, for all his travails, he was “going well”.

He beamed like a bloke from the bush would when he burst on to the golfing scene in 2005. His backstory was compelling, everyone knew what it was, but he was still teeing it up against the world’s best. He finished third at a tournament called the Heineken Classic at Royal Melbourne.

Jarrod Lyle has decided to cease active treatment in cancer fight

It was his fifth start as a professional, he was 23, and he was playing against Ernie Els.

Lyle pocketed $115,000 and was away into a career that promised maybe not a world No.1 ranking, but plenty of good things at home and abroad.

Lyle played in Qatar, Cancun and an Irish Open – there were starts in Fiji, China and Panama too. Official figures have Lyle playing in 253 golf events in 15 years as a professional, a career broken up by a second cancer battle in 2012.

Yep, twice the big fella endured, and beat, the dreaded disease in order to not just continue to play the game he loved, but also to marry the love of his life Briony, and add two more loves to that list, his daughters Lusi and Jemma.

A yellow bucket hat became his trademark after he beat cancer the second time, a permanent reminder to some, a message of hope to others.

Yellow is the colour of the Challenge Cancer charity, which was there for him when he needed it and the charity he gave so much back to.

Lyle has twice battled and beaten acute myeloid leukaemia — once in 1998 and again in 2012.

There were tears when he returned to the game in 2013, but they were tears of joy.

Lyle took his growing family to the US. He was well again and his golfing ambitions were growing too.

Emboldened by a bright life perspective, that golf is just a game, Lyle bought a motorhome and drove his crew around the country.

They saw the sights, he played some golf, but better than that he experienced life with the family he had fought so hard to have. Unfortunately, professionally at least, the golf didn’t quite work out, so the family came back home to Victoria and Lyle scaled back his golf to spend more time with the family.

“I’ve done things golfers dream of doing … I’ve made lifelong friends,” Lyle said at the 2016 Australian Open standing in front of a stall manned by Briony, where she was selling belts and undies.

It was a business started because he knew life on the road, away from his girls, wasn’t for him.

Jarrod Lyle sporting his yellow hat. Picture: AP Photo

He played a bit, sold some belts, and was well too. Then he wasn’t.

Lyle played his last golf event in Kalgoorlie in May last year.

Then there were the blood tests and the cruel results. The battle this time has been going for about a year, but happened more in private.

More recently it has been torturous too, made tougher because that infectious smile that Jarrod took to fairways and clubhouses and charity dinners around the world had become too much to muster.

Lyle’s body had been so ravaged by his two previous fights that his immune system shut down.

SAD: LYLE’S HEARTBREAKING DECISION TO END TREATMENT

SUPPORT: MESSAGES FOR LYLE FROM AROUND THE WORLD

There were few answers from doctors and months in hospital before the decision was made.

He never cried “woe is me” and pushed his message for hope through Challenge.

His work for them never stopped, and his two successful fights, his life adventures, his marriage, his two daughters, all those moments they shared, were evidence that the disease doesn’t always win.

But this time it seems the disease has won and that’s a tragedy.