A daughter's devotion

PALM HARBOR - Dakoda Dowd sees the world in narrow focus. Ball. Target. The space between.

If the goal is to beat golfers into submission, Dowd is practically there. The 12-year-old, who has won 185 junior trophies, is the latest prodigy du jour.

She is the nation's top-ranked golfer in the 2011 graduating class. Last year as a sixth-grader she was the No.2 golfer on the team at Northside Christian High and helped the Mustangs win their first state title.

But the single-mindedness in her pursuit for perfection is not there. She has scaled back the number of tournaments and decided against playing this season for Northside.

The focus now, she says, is on her family.

"My mom is dying."

Kelly Jo Dowd, 40, discovered a lump in her breast in December 2001. She waited 10 months before having a mammogram.

The diagnosis was cancer.

Ignoring conservative prescriptions for recovery, Kelly opted for a double mastectomy, which included removing 21 lymph nodes under her right arm - two cancerous. There also were chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Waiting for remission, she became the glue that held the Dowds together. As her family worried, Kelly remained calm, even upbeat. She insisted on reporting to work at Hooters in Palm Harbor, though the chemotherapy made her hair fall out and sapped her strength.

Kelly was a fixture at Hooters. She worked her way through the restaurant's chain and says she's the only person to go from waitress to general manager.

Her hair grew back and she appeared to be cancer-free. That lasted more than two years. Then Kelly felt fatigued, so she decided to have more tests.

This news was worse.

* * *

Mike Dowd, 45, has spent 23 years as a social worker for the Pinellas County school district. He is an expert at helping children and their families make sense of tragedies.

But nothing could have prepared him to deal with the gravity of his wife's situation.

In May, he received a call from Kelly's nurse.

The cancer was back.

This time, the diagnosis was a metastatic disease. The primary cancer had advanced incurably to the liver and bones.

Kelly could die within a year.

Mike dropped the phone. He fell to the ground and cried uncontrollably.

"All my training pretty much went out the window," Mike said. "I've been married to my wife for 17 years, and I've got one of those situations where she's my best friend.

"It was devastating."

Mike then had to figure out when to tell his wife. Kelly was in Michigan visiting relatives.

"I really didn't know what to do," Mike said. "Should I wait until she comes home or tell her now so she could be with her family?

"I decided it would be best to call right away."

But he still had to tell Dakoda.

Mike's initial thought was to wait until they picked Kelly up from the airport. But Dakoda sensed something was wrong.

"Is Mommy okay?"

Mike pulled the car over and explained what happened.

Dakoda's mood swung between anger and depression before she settled on grudging acceptance.

"I was just so mad at first," Dakoda said. "I didn't want to see her suffer through that again. That makes it hard to concentrate on golf at times, but I want to keep playing to make her proud."

* * *

Dakoda is a phenom in a sport that seems to anoint future stars as they emerge from the womb.

She was drawn to golf by age 4. Her father played recreationally and she often accompanied him. The two bonded through the sport. Mike played. Dakoda watched.

But Dakoda wanted more. She was itching to get her shot.

One day, Mike was at the driving range when Dakoda asked if she could try. She hit the ball high and far. And she did it again. And again.

"I knew I had a natural," Mike said.

Dakoda became so hooked that at 5 she told her dad she wanted to someday turn professional and be a dominant player.

"She's been so focused on the sport and it hasn't wavered," Mike said.

The Dowds devoted themselves to their daughter's success. They entered Dakoda in junior tournaments, took her to clinics held by golfers such as Annika Sorenstam and paid for lessons with top-notch coaches such as Matt Mitchell, who also has instructed Brittany Lincicome and Beth Bauer.

"Dakoda has the best hand-eye skill of any athlete I've ever worked with," Mitchell said. "People are going to see that and say that she's gifted. But that doesn't come by birth. She's very structured in how she works. I think she's right up there with ome of the others I've been around."

Lincicome, a former state champion from Seminole High who is now on the LPGA Tour, is a role model for Dakoda.

"I've played with her a few times, even babysat her once," Lincicome said. "Dakoda's a phenomenal player and probably more advanced at that age than I was. It's amazing that she's been able to do so well with everything that's going on with her mother. That's a lot to be going through for someone that young."

The training has paid off. Dakoda shot 72 to finish second at last year's Class A high school region tournament, followed by rounds of 75 and 76 at the state tourney. But she couldn't make the commitment to help Northside Christian defend its title because of her mom's illness.

"I completely understand given her situation," said Northside Christian coach D.J. Jackson, who attended Clearwater Central Catholic High with Mike Dowd. "I know that if Dakoda could be here, she would. I also know she wouldn't do something if she couldn't give it her all. That's just the way she is."

* * *

Dakoda grew up in a hurry, on and off the course. When her mom first became sick, Dakoda was taken out of elementary school. She now fulfills her scholastic requirements on a home-school schedule custom-fit to reach her potential in golf.

But the Dowds also decided on home-schooling to maintain a balance in their daughter's life while nurturing her game to the fullest.

"It's worked out because we are able to spend more time together and she can help out with things when I'm not feeling well," Kelly said.

Last year, Mike decided the family should scale back to help with some of Kelly's medical costs. They sold their townhome in the Countryside area for a studio apartment.

Dakoda's home now is in the Westin Innisbrook Resort, one of the most comprehensive playgrounds for golfers.

The move provided Dakoda easy access to the resort's top instructors. It also gave her the chance to rub elbows with pros when she plays on the resort's Island and Copperhead courses.

But there have been problems living in such tight quarters.

"I've had to tell Dakoda to just turn the television up and sleep with it on," Mike said. "otherwise, she hears her mother in pain all night."

* * *

Kelly does not think of her cancer as unlucky and will not consider her impending death to be so. She is not so stoic that she never cries at bad news, but she does not permit much self-pity. Fighting from procedure to procedure, she suffers little remorse over the loss of her once-flourishing career.

Kelly is buoyed by the support of friends and co-workers and their concern. Hooters organized a benefit that helped raise more than $56,000 to help with Kelly's medical costs and her loss of income. The company also paid for membership fees at Innisbrook so the family could golf year-round.

"Kelly has put up such a valiant fight and it's just heartbreaking to see what's happened," said Ed Droste, co-founder of Hooters. "She was one of the originals here and we just wanted to do our part to help in some way with things like the fundraiser and the membership fees. We understand that Dakoda is a great golfer and has a bright future, so we wanted the family to be able to focus on that during this time."

The courage and dignity Kelly displayed also touched a nerve with Donald Trump, who heard about her situation from Randy White, the pastor of Without Walls International Church in Tampa. Trump paid for the Dowds to fly to New York to stay at Trump Towers and for Dakoda to play at his course.

"That was so much fun," Dakoda said. "The room was bigger than my house and there was a Jacuzzi! The golf course had waterfalls, it was one of the nicest courses. The room service was the best and I got to play video games."

The fundraisers and trips have not been enough to lift the cloud that has haunted Kelly. She still goes through chemo with hopes of living a purposeful life. Her closeness with Dakoda has enabled her to deal with cancer and grow from it.

"We try to strengthen our bond as much as possible," Kelly said. "Every Wednesday we have a mother-daughter day. I think we'll keep doing that as long as I'm here. I just want to spend time with Dakoda. She's a such a phenomenal talent and has so much God-given ability. I know she's going to do great things when I'm gone."

By BOB PUTNAM, Times Staff Writer
Published October 4, 2005