Almost five months since his shock cancer diagnosis, Michael Hendry is back on the golf course.
The Kiwi pro will play on the Charles Tour this weekend at the Tauranga Open as he still recovers from a leukaemia diagnosis in May.
Hendry has been missed on the greens and he’s missed being on them – he had to give up his spot in the 151st Open Championship at the Royal Liverpool in July following his diagnosis among other events.
But those sorts of things don’t stress him as much now.
“I’m a bit more aware of what may take me out so at the end of the day why stop living? I’m just going to try and do as much as I can with whatever time I have left, and that may be a long time, it may be a short time,” he told 1News.
“But I know what I want to do with my life so I’m going to get busy doing it.”
Hendry is in remission but still has a way to go in his battle with the cancer still present in his bone marrow and a stem cell transplant needed ideally towards the end of this year if a donor can be found.
“That’s probably the best chance of kicking it in the guts anyway and probably always was,” he said.
“But we had hoped the chemotherapy would be enough to get rid of it.”
Being on the golf course and back with his mates helps him briefly forget about his reality where rounds of chemo have been more common than golf.
"I’m very fortunate I get to do what I love for a job, and it was always about getting back to what I wanted to do with my life.
"I never really knew how much I loved it until probably Covid took it away from me a little bit, and this whole thing this year, it’s really invigorated me and set the fire underneath me to do better."
And the 2017 New Zealand Open winner showed at today’s Pro-Am he’s still in good swing with his first hole a birdie.
It's form like that that has him planning to go to Australia at the end of this year to build on the mindset of simply doing what he loves.
"Plan is to go over and play three or four events before the end of the year including the Australian PGA and Australian Open so hopefully there won’t be any curveballs thrown my way then so I can get my fitness back, get my game back in those events with hopefully some level of confidence that I can have some good weeks."
Those plans stem from a commitment Hendry has had to building back up his strength and fitness to the point now where he can walk the course.
“We've been in the gym heaps so I was like, ‘go and do it you feel good’,” wife Tara said.
And sick or not, some things never change.
“I love to compete. I really hate being down the bottom of the leaderboard so I’ll do whatever I can to put myself at the top.”
Even his rivals likely wouldn't mind that this week.
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