AKRON, Ohio — “Do you want me to go over my hole-by-hole?”
Scott McCarron is wearing a mischievous grin as he asks the question, knowing that the response would be a polite “no thank you,” and that he would not be inclined to give it anyway. McCarron had just completed a disappointing 10-over-par 80 in the opening round of the Kaulig Companies Championship at Firestone Country Club, the highest score of his PGA Tour Champions career on Firestone’s South Course.
His attitude is refreshing. And also requisite. “I better have a good attitude or else I'd probably be dead.”
He was still smiling. But he was not kidding.
“Attitude is a big part of it,” he continued.
Golf is a big part of it, too. Even when he is shooting 80, which happens to be last in the 78-man field of the de facto Senior Players Championship, an event he won in 2017 among 11 PGA Tour Champions titles. Golf is helping him beat cancer.
McCarron should probably be home in Mooresville, N.C., preparing to celebrate his 61st birthday on Friday. Instead, he’s playing this week, taking his medicine, as it were, on the arduous South Course while continuing to take his medicine to beat diffused large B-cell lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's. McCarron received the frightening diagnosis on March 23 and recently completed three rounds of chemotherapy. The chemo port into which treatment was administered remains in his right upper chest. Just in case. In 11 days he will begin 10 rounds of radiation over a two-week period.
The Kaulig is his ninth start since he received the phone call from his doctor while preparing for the Hoag Classic in his native California. He has finished no better than 30th since, but his scores and finishes are not the point. He isn’t even trying to make a point. Golf is therapy. It keeps him going.
“It's a good distraction. I'd rather be out here, even though I'm struggling,” McCarron said while standing not far from the famed Firestone water tower. “I'm not playing very good, and I’m not feeling very good, but I'd rather be out here than be at home. When I'm out here between the ropes, I'm not thinking about the cancer. Idle times it's tough not to. So I think it's been a good thing for me to be out here and playing. I haven't played well though, so that's been disappointing and that's hard. But I’ve got to remember that right now I'm fighting for something else other than just playing good golf.”
McCarron described how he came to discover the illness. B-cell lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's is a blood disorder that can show up in various places. In McCarron’s case, he noticed a white growth in the back of his throat on his tonsil about the size of a pencil eraser.
“I thought it was like a tonsil stone or whatever, and I kind of took tweezers to try to get it out, and it wouldn't move. And I'm like, ‘Oh, I don't like that,’” he said, noting that he immediately called his doctor who sent him to a specialist. The biopsy came back after his best finish of the season, a T-15 at the Cologuard Classic in Tucson. He already had driven to Newport Beach, Calif., for the Hoag Classic.
“The doctor called and says, ‘You've got cancer. Get home now.’ And it was just that fast.”
David Berding
Attempting to post a score is difficult enough on a long championship layout like Firestone South, but McCarron contends with all sort of handicaps from the chemo, the effects of which are hanging on three weeks removed from his last injection. Chemo affects vision, energy level, muscle function and heart rate. McCarron wears a Whoop device that tells him his resting heart rate is 120 to 160.
“The hardest part is sleeping. You don't sleep very well because your heart's racing,” he said. “Coming out here, you feel like every shot's the first tee of a Ryder Cup. It's hard playing that way.”
McCarron will take a month off for the photon radiation that will be administered at Duke University about 2½ hours’ drive time from his home. He intends to return for the Boeing Classic near Seattle starting August 14. It’s an ambitious schedule, but he refuses to back off. He hopes to keep practicing in the meantime, though energy level and concentration are challenges that prevent meaningful impact.
“I want to start feeling better, and I want to start playing better,” McCarron said, his cap hiding his bald head, which is not a big deal because there is no hair on his entire body. He removed the hat to show off his shiny pate. He laughed and said, "I'm like a hairless cat right now. It all started coming up a week and a half after my first chemo. It was like an Australian Shepherd had taken a haircut in my bathtub."
More laughs. The guy does not lack for courage.
“I'm starting to work out again, but it's been a real challenge," he said. "My wife and I have been walking a lot, but I'm a guy who works out hard and runs and Pelotons and all that stuff. I walk up a flight of stairs and I'm dizzy and winded. Luckily, I've had the cart and that's helped. And that's probably the only reason that I've been able to play over the last two months. Other than that, I would not.
“But hopefully after this radiation, I'll start feeling better. I still feel like I got some good years left in me because I still drive it far enough.”
And he is doing all he can to ensure that he simply has a lot of good years left in him. For more than just golf. Preliminary tests have revealed encouraging results so far. Modern medicine is doing its part. McCarron is doing the rest.
“Yeah, I didn't drink at all, I’ve eaten right, tried to do everything I could that you're supposed to do when you got cancer. And it’s working. So I'm there. I feel like I'm almost home free. A few more tough weeks, and I think I’ll be good. I’m going to kick this thing.”
In golf parlance, he’s even par. He's holding his own. He liked that. “Right, I’m even par,” he replied. “But I want to win.”
The only score the matters.