Today's Birthday 21/8
Today's Birthday, August 21: Australian golfer Jarrod Lyle (1981-2018).
Jarrod Lyle would have turned 37 today.
The popular and loved Australian golfer fell 12 days shy of reaching another milestone in a life spent exceeding expectations while fighting a long-term cancer battle.
Lyle overcame the disease twice to return to the golf course, but ended treatment for a third bout of myeloid leukaemia in late July.
The two-time professional title winner spent his final days in palliative care where he died peacefully surrounded by loved ones on August 9.
"My time was short but if I have helped people think and act on behalf of those families who suffer through cancer, hopefully it wasn't wasted," Lyle's death-bed statement read.
Tributes for the big-hearted Aussie battler flowed as the heartbreaking news spread across the globe.
Lyle's friend and fellow Australian linksman Mark Leishman said the golfing fraternity was shattered and hailed his "fighting spirit".
Other Australians Jason Day, Marcus Fraser, Matt Jones, Greg Chalmers and Minjee Lee also joined the chorus of players to express their grief.
Overseas, South African great Ernie Els said the "world lost a good man" - a sentiment echoed by American PGA Champion Justin Thomas - while British golfer Rory McIlroy described his courage as an "inspiration".
Born in 1981 and raised in the regional Victorian city of Shepparton, Lyle was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 1999 at age 17.
The promising amateur recovered and returned to the course to play off scratch by 19.
He turned professional in 2004, qualified for the Asian Tour within another year, and less than 12 months later was playing in the US on the second-tier Web.com Tour - earning a US PGA Tour card for 2007.
The Victorian fell on and off the world's most lucrative golf tour, but recorded a career-high equal fourth-place finish at the 2012 Northern Trust Open.
The high was soon followed by another cruel low: a cancer relapse.
He beat it again to make an emotional comeback at the 2013 Australian Masters at Royal Melbourne.
Remarkably, Lyle again made his way back to the PGA Tour, playing 20 more tournaments between 2015 and 2016, before it was discovered that the leukaemia had returned in 2017.
He is survived by his wife Briony and their two daughters.
