For Now, a Young Golfer Dakoda (Koda) Dowd Keeps Driving
The driving-range stalls were nearly empty as 12-year-old Dakoda Dowd honed her golf swing in the morning half-light of this beach town outside Tampa.
"Somewhere, someone is practicing," one of her coaches, Lew Smither III, told her.
"And when you meet them, they will beat you," Dakoda said, finishing a sentence she has heard before.
It was Smither's reminder that ambition has a price, that the endless flop shots and 3-wood darts Dakoda (Koda) has hit were a down payment on the nearly 200 trophies she has won.
But time spent on the driving range is complicated these days.
Dakoda's mother, Kelly Jo Dowd, has bone cancer. She sleeps in most mornings, wears out in the afternoon and takes Vicodin for her aching joints. "I want to live as long as I can," Kelly Jo said in a recent interview, "but I also know that I have Stage 4 bone cancer."
This is Dakoda Dowd's reality. She possesses a golf swing that looks like a tour professional's. She has more than 100 contacts on her cellphone, many of them friends, mall hoppers and moviegoers like her. She has a mother who believed she had beaten cancer, only to have it return.
"It was kind of weird that it came back," Dakoda said softly during a break from practice.
Dakoda said she would drop golf immediately if it meant good health for her mother, who is 40, but that was not the doctors' diagnosis. A scan last May revealed that Kelly Jo had cancer in her bones and liver. They gave her six months to a year to live unless she immediately started treatment.
Kelly Jo embarked on radiation and chemotherapy, and when tournament organizers from the Ginn Clubs and Resorts Open — an event on the L.P.G.A. Tour — heard about the family's situation, they gave Dakoda a sponsor's exemption to play in their event April 27-30 in Orlando, Fla.
Dakoda (Koda) learned to play golf from her father, Mike Dowd, when she was 4 and, according to Smither, she is in the top 1 percent to 5 percent of all 12-year-olds. But one month after Dakoda's 9th birthday, with golf trophies piling up on the shelves, Kelly Jo received a diagnosis of breast cancer and had a double mastectomy.
Dakoda, a daddy's girl for most of her young life, began a home-school curriculum so she could be closer to her mother, and to the driving range several hundred yards from their apartment here.
Kelly Jo, believing she was cancer-free, began working out with Dakoda in a gymnasium. When Kelly Jo developed pain in her left hip, she thought it was from exercise.
"I went to my plastic surgeon, and they gave me some anti-inflammatories and said maybe the implants were causing pain in that area," Kelly Jo said. "It didn't get any better. I had gone to my general practitioner to do some X-rays, and they didn't find anything. It was like a guessing game. Nobody, including myself, had the intelligence to say, 'You just had breast cancer and this could be something more serious.' No one caught it."
It wasn't until May 26 of last year that her oncologist found that cancer had returned and spread.
"I had fought so hard the first time, not realizing that I should have saved some of that energy for the second time, that I had no more to give," said Kelly Jo, who has left her job as the general manager of a local Hooters, the company where she started as a waitress. "In my mind, I fought it, I battled it, it was gone. I had no idea that it might not exactly be true."
Mike Dowd, 45, said of his wife of 18 years: "She has been a working woman her whole life. She could have married way above me in looks and status, but she married a poor social worker. We're devastated by this, but we're strong people."
Dakoda (Koda) has spent nearly a quarter of her life seeing her mother go in and out of the hospital, watching her ache and moan, observing the growth and loss of Kelly Jo's blond hair. At the family's apartment, Dakoda is often at her mother's side, propping up her pillow or bringing her a glass of water.
Dakoda, like her mother, believed they were past cancer. And then, out of nowhere, they weren't. "I just couldn't believe it," Dakoda said. "She did everything she could and beyond."
On the golf course, Dakoda keeps Kelly Jo close the best way she can. Her clubs are adorned with the initials "KJ" in pink. Her golf bag is stocked with pink and purple lipstick.
"Somewhere, someone is practicing," one of her coaches, Lew Smither III, told her.
"And when you meet them, they will beat you," Dakoda said, finishing a sentence she has heard before.
It was Smither's reminder that ambition has a price, that the endless flop shots and 3-wood darts Dakoda (Koda) has hit were a down payment on the nearly 200 trophies she has won.
But time spent on the driving range is complicated these days.
Dakoda's mother, Kelly Jo Dowd, has bone cancer. She sleeps in most mornings, wears out in the afternoon and takes Vicodin for her aching joints. "I want to live as long as I can," Kelly Jo said in a recent interview, "but I also know that I have Stage 4 bone cancer."
This is Dakoda Dowd's reality. She possesses a golf swing that looks like a tour professional's. She has more than 100 contacts on her cellphone, many of them friends, mall hoppers and moviegoers like her. She has a mother who believed she had beaten cancer, only to have it return.
"It was kind of weird that it came back," Dakoda said softly during a break from practice.
Dakoda said she would drop golf immediately if it meant good health for her mother, who is 40, but that was not the doctors' diagnosis. A scan last May revealed that Kelly Jo had cancer in her bones and liver. They gave her six months to a year to live unless she immediately started treatment.
Kelly Jo embarked on radiation and chemotherapy, and when tournament organizers from the Ginn Clubs and Resorts Open — an event on the L.P.G.A. Tour — heard about the family's situation, they gave Dakoda a sponsor's exemption to play in their event April 27-30 in Orlando, Fla.
Dakoda (Koda) learned to play golf from her father, Mike Dowd, when she was 4 and, according to Smither, she is in the top 1 percent to 5 percent of all 12-year-olds. But one month after Dakoda's 9th birthday, with golf trophies piling up on the shelves, Kelly Jo received a diagnosis of breast cancer and had a double mastectomy.
Dakoda, a daddy's girl for most of her young life, began a home-school curriculum so she could be closer to her mother, and to the driving range several hundred yards from their apartment here.
Kelly Jo, believing she was cancer-free, began working out with Dakoda in a gymnasium. When Kelly Jo developed pain in her left hip, she thought it was from exercise.
"I went to my plastic surgeon, and they gave me some anti-inflammatories and said maybe the implants were causing pain in that area," Kelly Jo said. "It didn't get any better. I had gone to my general practitioner to do some X-rays, and they didn't find anything. It was like a guessing game. Nobody, including myself, had the intelligence to say, 'You just had breast cancer and this could be something more serious.' No one caught it."
It wasn't until May 26 of last year that her oncologist found that cancer had returned and spread.
"I had fought so hard the first time, not realizing that I should have saved some of that energy for the second time, that I had no more to give," said Kelly Jo, who has left her job as the general manager of a local Hooters, the company where she started as a waitress. "In my mind, I fought it, I battled it, it was gone. I had no idea that it might not exactly be true."
Mike Dowd, 45, said of his wife of 18 years: "She has been a working woman her whole life. She could have married way above me in looks and status, but she married a poor social worker. We're devastated by this, but we're strong people."
Dakoda (Koda) has spent nearly a quarter of her life seeing her mother go in and out of the hospital, watching her ache and moan, observing the growth and loss of Kelly Jo's blond hair. At the family's apartment, Dakoda is often at her mother's side, propping up her pillow or bringing her a glass of water.
Dakoda, like her mother, believed they were past cancer. And then, out of nowhere, they weren't. "I just couldn't believe it," Dakoda said. "She did everything she could and beyond."
On the golf course, Dakoda keeps Kelly Jo close the best way she can. Her clubs are adorned with the initials "KJ" in pink. Her golf bag is stocked with pink and purple lipstick.
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