Golf Prodigy Buoys Sick Mom

A Florida girl who's considered one of the country's best young golfers has just learned that her dream of competing in a Ladies Professional Golf Association event will come true.

But, reports (video) Dave Price, it's a bittersweet moment: She just hopes her sick mother will be alive to see her play.

Dakoda Dowd is only 12, but has a swing even the pros envy.

She's played golf since she was four and, in that time, has won nearly 200 junior trophies.

Asked by Price if she knows what a gift she has, Dakoda shyly replied with a chuckle, "No."

But, says Price, don't let her modesty fool you. There's a reason she won all the awards and caught the attention of sportswriters all across the Sunshine State. She's a true golf prodigy.

Her longtime coach, Matt Mitchell, tells Price the Tampa-area resident is "the most incredible 12-year-old athlete-golfer I've ever seen."

But, says Price, what may be most incredible about Dakoda is that she's still playing at all.

In May, her mother, Kelly Jo, a former model, was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time. Doctors had given her a clean bill of health after her double mastectomy in 2002. But now the cancer is back and has spread to her bones and liver. And, says Price, this time it's expected to be terminal.

"I was so aggressive with my treatments," Kelly Jo says. "I mean, I couldn't have done any more. So, to find out that it came back, it was so hard. Chemo (therapy) was such a rough battle."

But Dakoda says her mom has shown her "how to be strong and how to have a good attitude and, when you have a good life and it starts to go wrong, just roll with it. … My parents try and keep everything real and just normal but it's not always easy."

Despite the devastating news, Dakoda has tried to keep a positive outlook, inspiring her parents to stay strong, as well.

Her father, Michael Dowd, is a counselor, so he counsels kids and their parents who go through tough times. What's this been like for him?

"As much as it pains me to think about losing a partner, it pales in comparison to a little girl losing her mother," Michael says.

"She's keeping me alive," Kelly Jo tells Price, holding back tears. "She's giving me strength, she's giving me hope. She's doing it all for me."

Dakoda's optimism has helped everyone around her, Price observes, saying, "This young girl has been a Rock of Gibraltar."

"She's hurting," Michael says. "She's devastated. How could you not be when you have a mother like she has? But she's very resilient, and very strong. And my wife and I do pick up off of her strength."

Kelly Jo has decided to go through chemo once again, if only to give her more time with Dakoda.

"When I looked into Dakoda's eyes," she says, "I definitely knew I would do chemo. I was going to fight for her."

Dakoda also wants more time with her mom, so she's cut back on her practicing and competition. She's the first to tell you, golf is no longer the priority it once was.

"It doesn't even compare," she says. "My mom and my family are 10 times more important than golf. A lot of people go through this. We were just dealt a bad card. But we'll get through it. I'd give up golf in a heartbeat for my mom to stay with me for the rest of my life."

The LPGA tournament Dakoda is slated to play in is Ginn Clubs and Resorts Open from April 27-30 in Orlando.

Profile In Courage, Golf Helps Bond 12 Year Old, Mom

When you bow your head and clasp your hands when seated around the family dinner table sometime Thanksgiving Day, please – please – say a quiet prayer for Dakoda Dowd and her family.

Dowd is a congenial, fun-spirited and talented 12-year-old golfer from Palm Harbor, Fla., who is being asked to grow up faster than any 12-year-old should have to. Her mother, Kelly Jo, is three years into a mountainous health battle. Each day more sand slides out of the hourglass, forever lost.

Kelly Jo is 40, and her body, once proudly shown off in swimsuit calendars, has been infiltrated by cancer. Three years ago, breast cancer surfaced. She dealt with it, as did the family, and they seemed to be flying along with little obstruction last May – Michael doing some final touching up on the new family studio apartment, Mom spending time with relatives, Dakoda playing 36 holes – when Michael's phone rang with shattering news.

Kelly Jo's cancer was back. This time it was in her liver and in her bones.

Stage 4. Most advanced. Life expectancy, realistically, is a matter of months.

"I'm a social worker, so luckily some of the stuff I knew how to do, getting her on disability and retired from work, getting that going," Michael said last week, watching his daughter hit balls on the practice tee at Reunion Resort outside Orlando. "And then there are the things you don't know how to do, because you've never been through dealing with this with your spouse. . . . You just muddle your way through. And you take it a day at a time."

The Dowd clan – or as Kelly Jo calls it, Team Dowd – is an inspirational profile in courage and resiliency. With nothing guaranteed for tomorrow, they live for the day. Trite as it sounds, it's a lesson we all should heed. Thanksgiving Day called for Team Dowd to be visiting in Michigan with Kelly Jo's family, and Dakoda, her trusted golf clubs left behind in Florida, to be surrounded by the love and energy of uncles and aunts and cousins.

"She's looking forward to seeing some snow," Kelly Jo said of her only child. She smiled. "I think she might get to see a little."

Kelly Jo told Michael she feels this likely will be her last Thanksgiving.

"She wants to be with the family, enjoy some good home cooking, enjoy seeing her brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles," he said. "We pray that God gives us another one."

Kelly Jo was looking forward to spending quality time with her own parents.
"It's going to mean everything," she said.

* * *

If only things could be as simple as they sometimes appear. Standing on the green, green grass of a practice tee at Reunion is 12-year-old Dakoda, not a whole lot taller than her driver, hitting shot after shot, her rhythmic swing gently sending each ball on its way into a gray, cloud-filled sky.

So simple. Hard to believe she is 12. In late April, just after she turns 13, Dakoda has been invited to tee it up at the LPGA's inaugural Ginn Clubs & Resorts Open, a $2.5 million event that will boast the best players in golf. Her game, though polished in its infancy, is not yet ready for such a big stage, but she's playing in the hopes that her mother will be there to see a dream come to fruition: her little girl, playing alongside Annika Sorenstam and the very best women players in the world.

"In KJ's mind, she'll have made it, right there," says Michael.

There is a powerful simplicity in watching a child hit golf balls as well as Dakoda, or Koda, as her proud parents lovingly refer to her. Yet zoom out, and more than a half dozen television cameras have her in their collective eye, filming Dakoda for stories to run on media outlets ranging from the local nightly news to ESPN. A 12-year-old whose mom is dying. It's the kind of story that tugs heart strings, and Dakoda is under the media bigtop. Tiger Woods seldom, if ever, hits a bucket of practice balls under such scrutiny.

So much for simplicity.

Nearby, seated on a wooden bench one level away from where her daughter so gracefully swings, is Kelly Jo, pretty but frail, two days removed from surgery in which a cement-like substance was injected to fuse two vertebrae after a compress fracture. Kelly Jo's striking blue eyes stare off into the overcast November afternoon.

She doesn't really know what lies ahead. Nobody does. But Dakoda's invitation to play the LPGA event – extended by Ginn Co. president and CEO Bobby Ginn, who has become a family friend – has given the days and weeks ahead added purpose. Kelly Jo has been treating her cancer aggressively, fighting hard and doing all she can to be there to see that first shot.

"It gives Dakoda something to work toward, a goal, something to stay focused on," Kelly Jo says quietly. "It's given me something, too, to get to the next step, to watch her. It's been a little pot at the end of our rainbow, so to speak. Bobby Ginn has been a little piece of heaven for us. He really has."

Dakoda has collected nearly 200 trophies competing for several years around the Tampa/St. Petersburg junior circuit, but this is going to be a giant step.

"We're just proud and privileged that Mom is going to get to watch it and Dakoda is going to try to do her best," says Michael. "She's going to hit a lot of good shots, and hit a few wayward ones, and she's going to come home with an experience that is going to be irreplaceable. It'll be, 'I know where I'm trying to go, I've already been. I want to get back there.' I told her, this one is a gift. The next one you're going to have to earn.

"For Mom to be able to see Koda play in a tournament like this, she's like, 'Oh, yeah, she's made it.' For her to see that . . . she can rest. She can rest knowing she (Dakoda) fulfilled her dream."

Ginn said he was drawn to the Dowd's story because it was so tragic. Here's a 12-year-old girl who possesses great potential, maybe enough talent to one day be a standout on the LPGA, and her mother likely was not going to live long enough to see it. Many times, there's nothing one can do about things, but in this case, there was something that could be done.

He could invite young Dakoda to play in his LPGA event. So he did.

"I would love to see her mother there for the first tee shot (in April) and for the final putt," said Ginn. "I think that would be a real answered prayer."

* * *

Kelly Jo picked out her daughter's name ("I always loved that name, Dakota," she says) and Michael came up with the unique spelling.

"We couldn't have picked a better name," says Kelly Jo. "She is so raw, and so earthy. It's so her."

In many regards, Dakoda Dowd is like most 12-year-olds. She loves music, maybe more than golf, and jokes that if she doesn't make it in golf, she'll be a drummer for either Nine Inch Nails or My Chemical Romance. Though only in seventh grade, she already knows what it's like to win a state high school title, helping lead Northside Christian High School to a title last autumn, when she was 11. She didn't play this fall, choosing to spend more time with her mom.
Dakoda's dad laughs when he calls his daughter "a goof."

"She's a huge practical joker," he said. "She was the life of the party on her high school golf team last year. Eleven years old, and everybody knew Koda would be the one to come around and get the party started."

When that phone call came last May, informing the family of Kelly Jo's spreading cancer, Dakoda wasn't sure she wanted to play much golf anymore. She quit for about a week, then one day joined her father and walked onto the golf course at Innisbrook, where the family lives. She clearly wasn't herself, making a string of bogeys, and Dad suggested they go in.

"Not until I get a birdie," said Dakoda. "I can fight my way through this. Look at Mom and what she's going through."

There wouldn't be any birdies that day, but Koda showed the fight her brave mother has instilled in her. She and Kelly Jo have a special bond, right down to a weekly mother-daughter day where the two escape to a movie or a mall or go get a pedicure together, talking all the way.

It places a lump in one's throat to think a 12-year-old girl will face a future without that, without being able to share shopping junkets or cruises or just talk the morning after a first prom.

Michael Dowd says Dakoda often keeps to herself about all that is going on.

"I've come to really learn a lot about our daughter through this process," Michael says, "how resilient she is, how tough she is. We talk a lot. We're a very open family. We talk about all of this. We talk about things that are going to have to be dealt with down the road when Mom is not here.

"We pray that we'll get a miracle, but we're realists, and we realize that the likelihood of that, from a medical standpoint, isn't that good."

Dakoda and her dad have even talked about taking a road trip one day, carrying the ashes of Kelly Jo across the country to places her kindred spirit would love to see. Dakoda already has worked out some of the itinerary: "Colorado, Kentucky – I love Kentucky – Malibu, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. Oh, and Arizona," she says.

The words come from a 12-year-old in a pink visor who is not just some little girl, but a young woman who has been asked to handle a lot, and has done so with great love and maturity.

"It's OK," she says, reassuring a reporter who finds the conversation awkward and does not wish to be intrusive. "I understand everything that is happening with my Mom. She's so strong. I have every moment that I can with her.

"I know it sounds corny, but she's going to a better place."

On this particularly blustery November day, Dakoda Dowd plays a few practice holes at Reunion, tuning up for her April date. As all the cameras zoom in, she can barely feel her hands because of nerves, but Dakoda rips a drive on the opening hole down the left edge of the fairway. Though the hole plays into a strong wind, she makes a birdie.

"That a girl!" shouts a solitary voice. It belongs to Kelly Jo.

It's a voice we all hope to hear, need to hear, come April.

Say a prayer.

Sponsoring A Dream

TAMPA - When the LPGA's inaugural Ginn Clubs & Resorts Open is played next April outside Orlando, Dakoda Dowd will nervously make her way -- not even two full weeks after turning 13 -- to the first tee box where she will play against Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis, and, if there is any justice in this world, make her mother's dying wish come true.
"Hopefully she'll be there to see it," Dakoda said.

The Palm Harbor junior golfer will play in the tournament at Reunion Resort and Club in Celebration on a sponsor's exemption, one of two open invitations granted to the tournament's corporate host. Along with Dowd, who played last year for Northside Christian High's state title golf team, newly announced pro Michelle Wie is expected to be offered the second exemption.

"We know Dakoda is a good little junior golfer who works hard at it," Michael Dowd said about his daughter. "But, you know, in no way yet is her game deserving of this kind of honor and respect that the Ginn people have provided us."

But her story tore at too many hearts.

The Dowds' saga was first told in a newspaper article this summer. That's when Dakoda's words turned anyone with a soul into blubbering goop.

She was talking about wanting to practice harder and longer but not having the will.

"I don't really love golf any less right now; it's just that my heart isn't in it as much as before," she said. "It's not even right that we are talking about golf with this because it's 10 times more important than anything else.

"My mother is dying."

A fight with breast cancer that Kelly Jo Dowd believed she had won had recently been resumed. Unfortunately, the insidious disease not only returned, it came back in an aggressive form in Kelly Jo's organs and bones.

Kelly Jo, 40, is a one-time Hooters swimsuit model who made herself the only woman to climb the restaurant chain's corporate ladder from waitress, to manager, and to general manager, operating the Palm Harbor store on North U.S. 19 from 2002 until she had to resign this year.

With Michael, a Pinellas County school system counselor, the parents stressed to Dakoda that she possessed talent and ability to be anything she wanted in life.

Dakoda said her dream was to one day play on the LPGA.

In that case, Kelly Jo said her dream was to one day see Dakoda play on the LPGA.

Dreams Tempered By Cancer
Doctors spoke differently. Kelly Jo's condition is worsening, and dating to July her life expectancy was measured in months. The pain intensifies daily; this week Kelly Jo had to return to the hospital to be treated for a compound fracture of a vertebra.

"We were going out the other night to pick up tacos and my daughter said, 'You know, Dad, Mom's only doing what she's doing because of me, you know that, right?' " Michael said. "All I could say was your mother is as courageous a woman as you will find and she is enduring her pain and fighting this battle so she can have another day to go get a pedicure with you, have another day to experience one of your golf tournaments, have another day to have a mother-daughter talk about a crush you have, to have another day to get closer to you turning 13 and the dream of watching you play professionally."

It was like somebody already had been listening.

'The Right Thing To Do'
It was several weeks after the story of Kelly Jo's fight was first told that a copy somehow worked its way in front of Bobby Ginn at his company headquarters in Celebration.

Right then, Ginn said he knew what he wanted to do. Dakoda Dowd would play against the LPGA players, and her mother deserved to see it.

"Just something we had the ability to do, and it's the right thing to do," Ginn said. "This was something we had control of in regard to being able to help somebody. Sometimes you hear about stories, but there is nothing one can do. This was a situation where we were able to do something."

Ginn may have no idea how much he did.

"Just to know my wife has a good shot at getting to April and watching Dakoda means so much," Michael said. "We are real people. We understand how difficult it is to play a sport at the professional level. Our daughter has quite a bit of talent and some people think she's got a good chance at making it, but in no way are we that presumptuous.

"But the fact in my wife's mind will forever be, 'Yes, she made it. I saw her make it.' That's all that matters. If Dakoda wants to go further with it, if she wants to put in the work, God bless her. … But in my wife's mind, she will have forever made it."

Sometimes things just fit. The Ginn Clubs & Resort Open already had selected The Florida Hospital Cancer Institute as the tournament's charity. LPGA player Cristie Kerr, whose mother is battling breast cancer, is a spokeswoman for the Ginn Company, and promotes her Birdies for Breast Cancer Foundation.

As with Kerr, who receives donations for her foundation with each birdie made during competition, the Ginn Company will make a pledge to breast cancer research for each birdie Dakoda makes during any junior events she plays.

Why? Because it feels right.

"There was a board meeting with a table full of hardened business guys and after that story was passed around, there wasn't a dry eye in the room," Ginn senior vice president Ryan Julison said.

The announcement of Dakoda's sponsor's exemption and Birdies for Breast Cancer junior spokeswoman role was to be announced last month at Reunion Resort at a charity fundraiser. Hurricane Wilma caused the postponement of the function, but because she was already there, Dakoda, joined by her dad and the resort's director of golf, Jim Kroll, played the course.

"It is easy to forget that she is only 12 years old because her game is so mature," Kroll said. "She will perform well in the LPGA event."

But before that, Dakoda was given a tougher task. The Dowds were told the sponsor's exemption was being offered, but the announcement would not be made until this week.

"I'm the only person who didn't tell someone," Dakoda said. "My whole family went berserk and told every single person they knew. But I told absolutely nobody."

Now, finally, it's out. Everybody knows.

Good news travels fast.

Dakoda Dowd, 12, Will Receive An Exemption Into Next Year's LPGA Ginn Clubs And Resorts Open,

She may not be the next Michelle Wie or Morgan Pressel, but 12-year-old Dakoda Dowd will see her dream of competing on the LPGA Tour come true next season, according to a published report in the St. Petersburg Times.

Dowd will receive a sponsor's exemption into the inaugural Ginn Clubs and Resorts Open, to be played April 27-30 in Orlando.

But it's not necessarily cause for celebration. Dowd's mother, Kelly Jo, has cancer that has advanced incurably to the liver and bones.

"We just felt it was the right thing to do," Ryan Julison, senior vice president of corporate communications for the Ginn Co., told the paper. "Dakoda's dream was to play professionally and her mother is fighting to stay alive to see that happen. We didn't think that goal would be fulfilled given the situation with Dakoda's mother. "This gives her a chance."

Kelly Jo Dowd is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

"Every day Kelly fights," said Dakoda's father, Mike. "She goes through chemo and all the pain so she spend a little more with me and her daughter. She wants so much to see Dakoda make it.

"This is something that will definitely be memorable for all of us."

As for the Dakoda's chances at the event? She finished in second place at last year's Florida Class A high school region tournament, but has no illusions about winning.

"It's unbelievable to have that kind of opportunity," Dowd said. "I'm kind of nervous to play on such a big course with so many great players."

Dowd and Wie are the two players given exemptions into the LPGA event.