Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award celebrates Patient Champions

Anna Earl likes to say her father will cry even while watching a tire commercial, but maybe he’s just had a lot of practice. And rest assured his won’t be the only tears as Anna is given the Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award at this week’s Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide.

It’s that kind of story.

Barbara Nicklaus, who with 73-time PGA TOUR winner Jack is the driving force of the award, calls it “an annual highlight” for them both. “We always look forward to hearing the stories behind the smiling faces of these children,” she says. “Some are tragic, but through the efforts of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the perseverance of that boy or girl, and the unwavering support of their families, we get to share stories with happy endings.”

Adds Jack, who with Barbara started the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation and the Play Yellow campaign to support children and children’s hospitals: “I can be a sentimental guy at times, a softie, but when you meet these Patient Champions or hear the stories of what our Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award winners have battled and overcome, well, if it doesn’t get to you, there is something wrong with you. When we see the impact the Foundation and these other efforts are having on children, it’s far more important than any 4-foot putt.”

Each year at the Memorial, Jack and Barbara, along with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and tournament officials at Muirfield Village, celebrate a roster of Patient Champions. They are kids who through perseverance and premier pediatric medical care have overcome long odds just to live their lives, but in many cases have done much more. Among them, Jack and Barbara choose one whose story is so remarkable that it simply must be celebrated.

That’s the Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award, and Anna Earl will be the 10th annual recipient.

Golf as a refuge

She was born prematurely at just 29 weeks, and parents Micheal and Michelle were told she had cerebral palsy. Any type of physical activity was going to be hard, so much so that as a young child, Anna -- before any sort of competition -- would preface it with, “It’s OK, Dad, I know I’m going to finish last.” She wore braces on her legs like Forrest Gump.

“I got a lot of, ‘Run, Anna, run!’” she says in a recent phone interview that also included her dad.

When she was 7, golf became a refuge even though her coach says she was so tiny and weak that she could barely pick up the club, much less advance the ball.

“You always saw the big smile – she wasn’t going to let anything get in her way,” says Scott Davidson, the head pro at Parkersburg Country Club in Parkersburg, West Virginia, about two hours from Columbus. “They got her involved in the First Tee program, and sometimes she’d have to throw the ball to get it to move. But she kept going and kept going and kept going.”

At age 8 she entered the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship, and dad Micheal said he wasn’t sure how it was going to go. As it turned out, there were no other contestants in the first round, but she still wore her first-place ribbon with pride, never having won anything before. Before long she was beating some of the older, bigger girls, and then some of the older, bigger boys. (West Virginia prep golf is coed.) Davidson kept thinking he and Anna’s parents would have to write a letter to petition for her to take a cart. Anna kept walking.

“When she sets her mind to something,” Davidson says, “Anna Earl is going to get it done.”

Her body almost didn’t let her. By 2017 the pain was such that she would come from middle school – its campus a regrettable welter of steps – and cry. Spasticity, a condition that causes stiff, tight muscles, was creating misalignments in her feet, knees, hips and back, and soon she had no choice but to be confined to a wheelchair.

No more golf.

Surgery was scheduled for a Monday – May 7, 2018 – and the name of the procedure was a mouthful: Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy. Nationwide Children’s is one of the few hospitals that offers it. Dr. Jeffrey Leonard, who has vast experience performing the operation, would be her surgeon.

Anna, then 13, was hesitant.

“I wasn’t really a huge fan of it,” she says. “We had an appointment where we talked about it, and I’m not going to lie, I was pretty closed-minded.”

Then again, perhaps you would be, too, if someone proposed cutting into your spinal cord and selectively snipping 60-75 percent of the nerves to your lower extremities.

“If it was associated with her legs and her lower body,” dad Micheal says, “then they would snip it. If it didn’t get a reaction, then they moved onto the next one.”

If successful, the operation would improve mobility, reduce pain, and relieve lower-limb muscle spasticity. With rehab, Anna might be standing in time to try out for her eighth grade golf team. A few days before the operation, Micheal took Anna to the club to hit a few practice putts. After being out of her wheelchair for only a few minutes, she was too tired to continue. As much as he tried to be positive, he wondered if it was the last time he would see her standing.

Remarkable success stories

You could fill a book with what it means to win the Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award, but it’s basically wind in the sails for a kid who has been through a lot. And it changes slightly year to year.

Matthew McClish of Galloway, Ohio, was honored last year after overcoming seizures, a brain tumor, and a stroke during one of his surgeries. He’d been the No. 1 player on his high school team with an average nine-hole score of 40, but now he had to learn to play one-handed.

Jack and Barbara and the Nationwide Children’s team celebrated him at Muirfield Village.

“It was amazing,” Matthew says of his VIP treatment. “It showed me how hard I tried to overcome everything that I’ve gone through. It was something I never thought I’d be given.”

On Sunday of the tournament, Nicklaus was doing his usual clinic. He called Matthew up to hit a shot in front of the crowd, and suddenly 2018 Memorial winner Bryson DeChambeau came out of nowhere to present Matthew with a brand-new bag full of custom, single-length clubs.

“We had met him the previous year on a whim,” says Matthew’s mom Angi. “He remembered Matthew and heard his story and surprised him at the end with a set of clubs and a bag and one-on-one lesson. I cried through the whole thing.”

She and Matthew are now DeChambeau fans for life. Matthew, who graduated high school and now takes classes at Columbus State Community College while working for Amazon, is working toward a degree in Sports Management. He planned to intern at this year’s Memorial.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Matthew became friends with 2018 NSA winner Maddi Webb at last year’s tournament. Webb is nothing if not gregarious, and they have similar stories.

Maddi was diagnosed with a benign tumor in 2016; that it was intertwined with her brain stem was what accounted for her vision problems. The first operation took 11 hours, but complications – spinal fluid coming out of her nose – led to a second surgery in January 2017.

Terrible headaches led to yet a third brain surgery. She fought through it all.

“Meeting Peyton Manning and Tiger Woods on pro-am day,” Webb says of her 2018 Memorial highlight. “Just getting to spend the day with them was the experience of a lifetime. Tiger was throwing jokes around and he and Peyton were starting to talk about the day, and then Rickie Fowler and Phil Mickelson and Jordan Spieth kind of joined in as well.

“It was so interesting to see a different side of them,” she adds.

Another highlight? Celebrating the doctors at Nationwide Children’s.

A junior majoring in Communications at Ohio University, Webb is focused on giving back. She advocates for pediatric cancer patients, and after so much staring out her hospital-room window at the gray, gloomy Columbus sky, she launched a project to improve the view.

“I was watching the holiday shows on the Hallmark Channel,” she says, “and I saw paper snowflakes and it came to me that that was how I was going to brighten the views for patients.”

With the help of schools, sports teams, churches, and community groups, in the first two years they made 13,500 snowflakes, which go in baggies with an inspirational note from Webb and then are affixed to hospital-room windows. “It’s just taken off,” she says.

As for her harrowing medical journey, she says, “In those situations it’s all about the mindset.”

Griffin Hayden, 20, won the 2014 NSA but wasn’t well enough to attend. (His dad took his place.) He was diagnosed with leukemia in 2013 and went to Nationwide Children’s Hospital for stays of 20-30 days. He improved, then relapsed. He had a bone-marrow transplant, then another. High doses of prednisone to fight graft-versus-host disease caused avascular necrosis – blood supply is cut off to the bones – and he had both hips replaced. He suffered renal failure after high school and received a kidney donation from his older brother.

Now in remission for almost six years, Hayden is a rising junior and plays golf for Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He follows 2016 NSA winner and Marshall University golfer Kyle Mitchell on Instagram and counts Jack and Barbara among his fiercest champions.

“I’ve been able to go back to the luncheon every year,” Hayden says, “and Barbara and Jack have been great, getting me tickets every year, which won’t happen this year [due to the no-fan safety measures]. I was into contact sports, but then golf became my safe haven, something I could do to take my mind off what I was going through for a couple hours. I had a central line in my chest, and I figured out how to swing with that. I figured out a new swing because of loss of power with my hip replacements.

“Billy Casper sent me a letter, and Jack wrote me a letter, and it meant a lot to me,” he continues. “It was very personal and drove me to keep going and get more involved in the game and improve and compete at a higher level. Winning the award grew my love for the game.”

The operation that changed everything

Anna Earl always punched above her weight. When she was named a starter on her middle school golf team, she was just 70 pounds and barely 4-1/2 feet tall.

Once she was in a wheelchair, though, grit could take her only so far. She needed an operation.

The Earls decided to go forward with Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy on April 31, 2018, which presented a troubling timeline. Unless things moved fast, Anna, who would be entering eighth grade, wouldn’t be able to start playing for her school’s golf team in August. Beth Deley, Dr. Leonard’s assistant, found a cancellation on May 7 and slotted them in.

“We will always remember her doing this for us,” Micheal says. As for the operation, he adds, “Obviously this is not a routine surgery. People come from all over the world to have it there.”

He remembers the helpless feeling of watching his daughter get wheeled away to the operating room. He remembers the doctor coming out to say it was a success, that Anna had to lay flat on her back for four days, and the comfort in knowing his wife could comfortably stay with her, in a couch that turned into a bed. Anna had to relearn how to stand, how to walk. For the 19 days that she was in rehab, mom Michelle never left her side except to go to the nearby Panera Bread restaurant.

She thought about school, and playing on the golf team, and it would motivate her during 45-minute physical and occupational therapy sessions, followed by an hour or two break.

“I had to relearn how to do pretty much everything,” she says.

She was released two days before the tryouts in early August. She not only made the team as an eighth-grader, she made it again as a ninth-grader at Parkersburg High. Last year she finished 12th (out of 69 players) in the West Virginia State High School Girls Championship while walking – not taking a cart – on extremely hilly terrain. And that was the part she was most proud of.

“They did an amazing job,” she says of the doctors and staff at Nationwide Children’s.

No longer trying to walk on her toes, she can bring her heels to the ground. This attribute, which most of us take for granted, was so big that a picture of her feet wound up on the family Christmas card. “To see where she was and where she is now is remarkable,” says Davidson. “You can barely tell she had an issue right now. She’s got some pretty cool things in her future.”

Now a rising sophomore at Parkersburg High, Anna enjoys the life of a normal teen-ager. Well, normal other than Jack and Barbara Zoom-bombing one of the golf team’s meetings last month to say Anna would be receiving the Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award.

Watching the meeting from coach Davidson’s office, Micheal smiled through his tears.

“Emotional. Inspiring. Uplifting,” said Jim McCoy, Nationwide’s Vice President of Sponsorships, Meetings & Events. “That is how I would describe my reaction when hearing the stories of the Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award winners and seeing the kids on stage with Jack and Barbara Nicklaus. Each journey is unique but the common themes are always courage and determination. These incredible kids and their families are why Nationwide is so proud to join the Nicklauses and our tournament partners in supporting Nationwide Children’s Hospital and showcasing the truly life-changing outcomes they make possible.”

Adds Steve Testa, President of Nationwide Children’s Hospital Foundation: “Nationwide Children’s serves families from every state in the nation, each one courageous and inspirational in their own way. When Jack and Barbara announce the Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award winner, it is a really powerful moment. That child represents the resiliency and bravery of all our patients. I’m always overjoyed for the winner, and it’s so heartwarming to see Jack and Barbara welcome this young person. We are so fortunate to have supporters like the Nicklauses, the Memorial Tournament, and Nationwide to propel forward our mission of helping kids everywhere.”

When not practicing, Anna teaches the game to younger kids, paying it forward. She has picked out the place on her wall where she’s going the picture of her and Jack and Barbara, and looks forward to her second year at Parkersburg. Davidson expects her to start all the matches on what he calls “a pretty competitive coed team.” Anna thinks that sounds fine and keeps practicing. She had a tournament the other day, 18 holes. It was pretty hot. She walked.