From Michigan Section PGA
Dave Kendall had a great golf career. He won several state major tournaments, including two Michigan Senior Open titles and one Michigan Senior PGA Championship.
He’s also had 11 holes-in-one and three double-eagles. The first ace for Kendall, growing up in Jackson, came when he was 17, in 1972. The real story, however, isn’t about his own playing legacy, but it’s about the people he helped along the way as one of the most renowned golf instructors in Michigan.
A member of the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame, his lessons are hardly ever just about golf. Golf is a sport that mirrors life lessons, like honor, integrity, etiquette and accepting bad breaks.
Dave’s lessons in golf come with a lot of stories and story-telling, and what you end up learning is life lessons.
These days, Kendall, 69, is semi-retired as a golf instructor. His career started as the head pro at Cadillac Country Club, before moving on to his own academy, but he still has one big lesson left to give, plus it’s free.
Kendall is well into the back nine of his life. He has Stage-4 esophageal cancer and it has spread to his lungs and brain, where he had a golf ball-sized tumor removed in a mid-April surgery that left him bedridden for weeks, battling unbearable headaches and an inability to eat. He lost so much weight, plus his voice was barely was above a whisper.
Kendall newest lesson; ‘The best way to die is to live.’
“I’ve been rolling sevens my whole life. What do I got to complain about?” Kendall said recently during a drive around Washtenaw Golf Club, which he co-owns. “I have a niece, and her husband died at 30 of leukemia because he got exposed to something in the service. He got a bad deal. Look at me. How can I complain, being (almost) 70, all the nice things that have happened in my life? I’m grateful. I’m not sad at all. I’ve never spent one day being sad. We’re all gonna go sometime.”
Only given a few months to live, Dave attacked the cancer like he was Tiger Woods trying to win a major.
“Maybe, I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“People are telling me these miracle stories of people who beat the odds and lived 10 years. That’s nice. I hope I’m one of them. I really do, and I’ll do everything I can to be that. There still are things you can’t beat. You can have the best attitude in the world. It doesn’t mean if you died, you had a bad attitude.”
The disease affected his appetite and he was down to 129 pounds and OK with the reality of his situation, both in life and in golf.
After beginning chemo treatments, Kendall started eating again, and in July, he started chipping and putting, and played his first round. Just nine holes, from the red tees. The golf club felt like a sledgehammer in his hands. “It felt tremendous.”
He doesn’t hit the ball like he used to, he lost distance, and that’s understandable. His lone acceptance to the cancer was adding a hybrid club to his bag.
Kendall mostly plays at Washtenaw, which he and some partners bought just before the pandemic. The ownership group has put significant dollars back into the course and Ray Hearn was brought in to lead the restoration.
“Everybody’s rooting for Dave.” Said Doc Pearson, who’s worked at Washtenaw for seven years: “He did say to me, ‘Doc, I don’t know if I’ll play again.’ I said, ‘Dave, who knows? And if you can’t, you’ve given the game everything you can.”
Golf is arguably the toughest sport on the planet. It can’t be perfected. Your game can be great one day and trash the next. It also can be totally unfair. You could hit the shot of your life but it could strike the flag stick square and ricochet 30 yards back and into sand or water. Just like life, It’s how you respond to adversity…… It’s not the shot, that defines you.
With his diagnosis, Kendall hit the flag stick, but moved on. Dying isn’t a choice, everyone does it, eventually. Living life to its fullest, though, certainly is a choice, one that Kendall — predictably to all those he’s played with and worked with and taught over his five-plus decades in the sport, lives by.
Kendall was named Michigan’s golf professional of the year, and twice named Michigan’s teacher of the year. He previously served as president of the Michigan Section of the PGA. He played in the Senior PGA Championship. Golf Digest annually ranks the top teachers in every state, and Kendall is always near the top of Michigan’s list. Golf Range Magazine has named him a Top-50 teacher in the country.
Kendall was inducted into the Jackson Golf Hall of Fame in 2011, the Michigan PGA Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in 2015, mostly for his instruction and service to the sport, but also for his skills. He won numerous events in his 50’s but is not prone to give an exact count or list.
The Kendalls have been overwhelmed by the support from friends and family. Golf is an individual sport, but everyone has come together to offer their support. Early in his diagnosis, when he was very frail and the immediate future was unclear, friends and family came to visit Dave. Karen let everyone in. She wanted them to see him. So many urged him to stay strong, and, yes, to play again.
“Dave is a very humble and unassuming person,” said his wife Karen, a retired dental hygienist. “The amount of support in the golf community is amazing, and the friendships we have, there’s so much love and support and prayers and help.
He is a super competitive individual and now playing golf again. In August, he collected his 11th lifetime hole-in-one at Washtenaw using the newly purchased six hybrid.
He has made friends and influenced people his entire life, what more could you ask for in one man’s lifetime.
Well Played Sir, A Life Well Played.
This excerpt was Reprinted with permission from Michigan PGA. To read the entire article visit https://michiganpga.com/
