Micheel's 7-Iron For Spencer

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Atlanta, Georgia – September, 2006

If you think back very carefully, you might be able to pick this moment out of your vault of meaningless moments.

It was the final round of the 2003 PGA Championship at the Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York. Shaun Micheel and Chad Campbell had hit the final two drives of the day, both stalking an improbable victory. One of them would soon come away with his first major.

Micheel – now think, remember – turned to the camera walking with him down that 72nd fairway and managed a smile. His guts were churning, his mind surely trying to formulate that one final shot of his day, the most important of his career. But the smile came.

"Hi Spencer," he said to the camera, "I'm thinking of you and hope you're doing okay."

Only a very few people knew what those words meant. His wife, who was awaiting him at the green, his parents who had decided to stay back home in Tennessee, and a father and his little boy in Orlando preparing for yet another trip to St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, they knew.

Shaun Micheel fired a shot in Rochester, New York that was heard in Memphis, Tennessee.

Spencer had his face an inch from the TV screen that afternoon, following his hero as best he could, and when he heard his name, the smile would have electrified all of Central Florida.

"That's me," he turned to his proud father, John Beckstead, and cried. "Shaun! I love Shaun."

A moment later, Micheel hit one of the most dramatic shots in golf history, a 7-iron to within an inch or so of the 18th hole, and, in winning the final major of 2003, his words to his little friend were lost in the hurrahs.

We see our athletes do this often and probably think "how silly" or "how self-serving."

Rarely do we ever know how much weight they might carry or how many extra days of life they might bring.

Spencer Beckstead, you see, was five years old at that time and had spent almost all five in and out of the confines of one hospital or another. A tumor, sometimes referred to as the size of a baseball, sometimes a grapefruit, grew on his brain. It was not malignant in the sense that it alone was killing him. But as it grew, it slowly took his eyesight and then his hearing and his motor functions.

The doctors would cut it out and it would grow back, larger than before.

All the while, Shaun Micheel was there as often as he could, comforting him, trying to lift him. They had met, by chance, a year or two before. Shaun and his wife had joined several other players during the tour stop in Memphis and visited St. Jude. There, in a corner, like a smiling magnet, sat Spencer, and they were drawn immediately to him.

The bond would last, well, forever.

The Micheels were due to have their first child in the months immediately following that PGA Championship.

No one reveled in Micheel's PGA Championship victory more than Spencer Beckstead.

"Being around Spencer gives us both great perspective," Shaun told me. "I wanted a son with just that kind of fight, just that kind of smile, just that kind of dream. He has never given up. I've learned so much from him over the last few years."

I walked Royal Liverpool during a practice round for the British Open this summer with Micheel. He brought up Spencer. He always did.

"Spencer's gone," he said, matter-of-factly, his head down, walking. "Not gone gone, but might as well be. Slipped into a coma, his daddy told me. I feel so bad. He was such a great, great kid."

And he went off to hit a golf shot, shaking his head. He and his wife are expecting their second child this fall.

The coma mercifully lasted only nine weeks. Spencer Beckstead passed away on the 7th of September at 10:34 on a warm Thursday night.

When you see an athlete turn to a camera, then, and mumble some words of greeting, imagine a tiny pair of eyes on the other side of that lens, miles away, and know what a difference such "silliness" can sometimes make.

Forever.