Lynn DeBruin: MAJOR Champion

Tom Ferrell

Each week we take a look at the drama and storylines of one of sport's most colorful journeys—the tours of professional golf. But there is a much larger tour that bears discussion, and it is one we all plod in search of the means to keep going. And when one of our fellow travelers reaches the end of the road, it is only right to pause and ponder the dilemmas, victories and defeats we share on life's bigger course.

And so this week we honor a fellow scribe and fallen friend, Lynn DeBruin.

Lynn passed away Saturday, leaving in her wake a field of friends and colleagues who didn't need her amazing battle with cancer to respect her. If you knew Lynn, you respected her for her passion, her laughter and her drive. If only she could have putted better!

I came to know Lynn while she covered golf for the Rocky Mountain News. We became close when Colorado Golf Club was named host venue of the 2010 Senior PGA Championship. We became even closer when I let slip that the club was working on a Solheim Cup bid. She, being the pro she was, wanted the scoop, and it was all I could do to hold her at bay.

But more than that, she wanted the story—my story. How were we framing the bid? How did the then-hurting economy and the youth of the club affect my pitch? When could she go public? To her credit, she respected my request for privacy, and she was the first call I made when the LPGA awarded the Solheim Cup to Colorado Golf Club.

I was floored when I learned Lynn was battling cancer. Not because she had cancer, but because she had had it throughout our always-growing friendship.

On a trip to Walla Walla, Washington, to visit the spectacular Wine Valley Golf Club in 2009, Lynn told me that cancer would not define her, that she would live with it if she had to, would acknowledge it and prepare a small room for it in her life but that it would have to deal with her, too.

My 75-year-old father, a doctor himself, was also on that trip and told me that he had never met anyone with her perspective. Most people fight it, he told her, and expend so much energy in opposing it. She crammed it in her suitcase and went on to her next thing.

A remarkable person, he called her.

Lynn shared much with me. When she shot a photo that moved her, she sent me a copy and an email. Always sharing. When someone introduced her to the Jerry Garcia shrine in the trees on Aspen Mountain, she spent an hour there, photographing it for me. She shared her fears when the Rocky folded, and, pro she was, she made do.

Lynn loved the mountains. She loved the sun and the smiles of friends. She loved the sports and the athletes she covered. And—like so many of us—she saw golf as a metaphor for something much bigger.

The game brought us a friendship, and that friendship brought this great sadness and joy that I feel as I write these words.

Golf is not life. It's something we do to share some good times and stories in an often hard and lonely world.

And sometimes it opens a door inside us, just enough for a remarkable person to slip in.

 

For Jon Rizzi's tribute to Lynn DeBruin, click here.

 

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.