Back in the Swing

The limp is barely noticeable as James Myoung heads to the end of the driving range, his pants legs flapping in the breeze.

What stands out is his golf swing--smooth, graceful, balanced--which drives the ball high and straight.

Nothing indicates that Myoung, 18, a senior at Cerritos High, is walking and swinging on one leg.

It started with pain, lots of it, late in the summer of 1997. Then there was a phone call to his answering machine in March 1998--a message that would change everything for Myoung as soon as he hit “play.”

The message consisted of only a couple of dozen words--mostly medical terms that Myoung didn’t completely understand.

“That’s how the doctor told me,” Myoung said. “He called and left a message on my machine. He said there is a tumor, but he doesn’t know if it’s malignant or benign. So he told me to make an appointment for a biopsy.”

Myoung soon learned that malignant meant cancer.

Then he learned about chemotherapy and radiation.And he learned what it was like to make a decision no teenager should have to make.

Doctors advised that chemotherapy and radiation therapy offered a 75% chance of curing the growth on his left ankle. Myoung tried that for six months.

Then he made a choice. Tired of fighting a battle that he might not win, Myoung, a rising junior golf star, told doctors to amputate.

“It was my decision,” Myoung said. “They told me there’s a chance of my tumor coming back even with the radiation. . . . I was like, ‘Forget that,’ you know, ‘Just take it all out.’ ”

He had surgery to remove his left leg a few inches below the knee on August 24, 1998.

Nine months later, the pain and the cancer gone, Myoung, wearing a prosthesis, started hitting golf balls again.

Twice in small city tournaments over the last few months, Myoung has broken 80. During a recent practice round at River Ridge Golf Course in Oxnard, he was five under par through 15 holes. Darkness denied him the opportunity to break 70.

When the high school golf season starts in the spring, Myoung will be among the top players on his team, just as before.

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The Myoung family emigrated from South Korea in 1983 when James, the older of two boys, was 2. When he was 11, he began tagging along with his father to the driving range.

He noticed a lump in his left ankle in 1995, but it didn’t hurt and he didn’t think anything of it.

His golf career was blossoming. He worked his way up the local ladder, playing alongside the best junior players in Southern California--James Oh, Ron Won, John Ray Leary, David Oh, Brian Sinay and Travis Johnson.

“He was a machine on the course,” said Johnson, now a freshman on UCLA’s golf team. “He came onto the scene a little later than most of us, but by the time he was 15, he was ranked above all of us.”

Myoung rose fast in 1997. He finished third in his first American Junior Golf Assn. tournament. And he was ninth in the AJGA boys’ championship tournament--one of the four junior golf majors.

Then came the pain. By August 1997 it was unbearable, forcing him to withdraw from a tournament.

“I couldn’t walk,” Myoung said.

But up next was the U.S. Amateur and, pain or no pain, Myoung wasn’t going to miss it. He traveled to Chicago for that tournament only a few days after pulling out of the other. But his leg hurt so much he needed a wheelchair to get around O’Hare airport when he arrived.

Hobbling through two stroke-play rounds, Myoung surprised himself by surviving a playoff to make the 64-player match-play field. Then he won his first match.

By the second round, the pain had subsided. The father of a friend, a doctor, had prescribed pain killers.

Myoung was 1 up through seven holes in his match against a freshman from Georgia Tech. The match went to the 18th hole, but Matt Kuchar’s back-nine rally proved too much and he defeated Myoung, 1 up.

Kuchar went on to win the tournament and gain national prominence with top-25 finishes in the Masters and U.S. Open.

“It’s funny,” Johnson said. “If James had won that match, we might not ever have heard of Matt Kuchar.”

*

Even when he couldn’t play, Myoung was a regular at the Buena Park Golf center. Bobby Lasken, Buena Park’s teaching pro, Myoung’s private instructor and himself a cancer survivor, employed Myoung as a secretary.

Myoung’s parents, who did not want to be interviewed for this story, left Cerritos and moved to Oxnard last year, partly to make a new start after their son’s ordeal. But James stayed behind, living with a friend so he could finish his senior year at Cerritos High.

Phone calls and letters, one of them from Paul Azinger, PGA Tour star and cancer survivor, provided emotional support.

Johnson, Myoung’s friend from the junior circuit, contacted Golf Design, a local golf product manufacturer, and started the James Myoung Cancer fund for financial support.

“I wanted to help out any way I could,” Johnson said. “It could have been any of us. If I was in that position, I would need all the support I could possibly get.”

Johnson, recognized as the AJGA sportsman of the year for his efforts, said he raised about $2,500. The money will help with Myoung’s college tuition.

“He was well on his way to a college scholarship,” Johnson said. “Hopefully, this will help.”

But if Myoung has his way, he’ll still get that scholarship.

“I still see that machine in him,” Johnson said. “He’d be a great addition to any team in the country. He’s got the raw talent and he’s got the heart.”

And his game is coming back.

“He always had this move at the top of his swing where he leans into his left side,” Lasken said. “He still has it. He has exactly the same tendencies as before. Looking at video of now and then, there is no change at all.”

But Myoung, who was once high on the recruiting lists of such national golf powers as New Mexico, Texas Christian, Texas A&M;, Arizona State and Colorado, realizes that there are more important things than a scholarship.

“When you’re hit with something like cancer, the first thing you think of is life or death,” he said. “It makes you think, ‘Am I going to live or am I going die?’ And it kind of makes you think about what’s your purpose. If you’re going to live, why do you want to live?”

Myoung, deeply religious, said his fight with cancer affirmed his faith.

“Everything that I have right now is from God,” he said. “I don’t really deserve to have a loving family like I do right now, or the friends that I have, just God loves you so much he gives you all that. He kept me going through it and he kept me alive through this day. I’m just thankful for that.”

*

Myoung is a reluctant interview. Like his parents, he wants to put his experience behind him. He fears people knowing his story and looking no further. He wants people to know him as a person.

“I’m kind of uncomfortable talking about my leg because I want people to look at me not as someone who had cancer but someone who’s just a nice guy.” Myoung said. “When you look at someone with an amputated leg, that’s the first thought, you know. It’s kind of negative.”

Lasken intervenes. The former UCLA and Nike Tour pro had two surgeries a few years ago to remove tumors from his right leg and reminds Myoung of others who are battling cancer. He tells Myoung they need hope.

Myoung recalls he could have used a little inspiration.

So he talks.

“I just gotta tell others,” he says. “That whatever they’re going through, you know, there’s some things that you can’t go through all by yourself.”