‘I’m So Bloody Lucky To Play Golf’: Given Two Weeks To Live, The Miracle Recovery Putting The Game In Perspective

Life throws us curveballs, as many of us know, and none change the way you feel about life quite like cancer. The way we play golf often mirrors the way we live as a person. It tends to highlight characteristics deeply hidden within us and tests coping mechanisms to the limit.

If cancer touches you personally and you lose someone dear to it, it changes you. I know it changed me. Ultimately, cancer is life and death, you get that ultimatum that you have utterly no control over.

If you survive it, the way you live changes, what you tolerate changes, and, of course, it changes the way you react within your golf game. I feel these elements appear within golf to a point; we have little control over so much of what happens on the course, yet we get so frustrated by these things. Time for a bit of perspective.

I met Lisa Noble at the 2026 Solheim Cup at Bernardus Golf. She was marshalling for the week. She plays golf at Bishop’s Stortford, and she is living proof that miracles do happen. Lisa is cancer-free, but in 2020 it was a very different story.

"I'd been diagnosed with cancer after a routine cholesterol test. I had no symptoms at the time, so it was a case of watch and wait, and two years later I found a lump in my neck."

She’d gone through four failed rounds of chemotherapy for B-cell lymphoma and had two weeks left to live when she began CAR-T cell therapy at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. "CAR-T cell therapy was my last chance. I was the third-ever person to have it, and three months later I was cancer-free and I still am. It's amazing.”

I asked Lisa if it has changed the way she actually feels about her golf, or the way she feels about lots of things.

“It really has. As a general rule I want to play well, [but] it’s not the be-all and end-all anymore. It doesn't really matter. There are bigger things that have gone on and I'm just happy to be out on the golf course now rather than be out there all the time to win. I enjoy it more now, you know? You're just appreciative of it, and... being here.”

I can relate to Lisa’s attitude towards people fussing over all the stuff that, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn’t matter. The things golfers get frustrated about are often out of their hands, or the same for everyone. When your life has been touched by trauma like a cancer diagnosis and subsequent fight, or the loss of someone dear, you change. Your tolerance levels shift and you see the joy in all the small things.

“If other people on the course are moaning, then I get frustrated. There’s more to life than so much of what people fuss about on the course.”

A story like Lisa’s is inspiring. I get it because I’ve had some serious stuff hit the fan in my life. It does give you a thirst to go and live life to the full. Lisa couldn't walk for about three months. She was in intensive care in lockdown, so she couldn't have any visitors. As soon as she could move about, she booked a flight, even though she was advised to take it easy by her haematologist.

“I think I just kind of wanted to get on the golf course, and my haematologist called me. I was in Tenerife - I think it was in June. I had the treatment in February. I'd managed to get onto a flight and I didn't tell him I was going, and he called me. He was confused by the international dial tone. “I’ve spoken to him since, and he said, ‘I can remember jumping in the air.’ And the fact that you'd actually just got up and gone - he said, ‘I was so impressed with it.’”

That’s the message, isn’t it? Say YES to things that scare you or perhaps you wouldn’t have said yes to in the past. Make memories, and play the kind of golf you want to play, not the kind you think you should play. Choose the people you want to play with and constantly ask how people are.

I say it all the time, and Lisa said it too: after such huge bumps in the road of life, golf becomes such a precious gift.

Imagine going through such a battle with cancer, coming out the other side, and not having golf in your life. Neither of us could imagine that. Agreed, other hobbies exist, but golf gives us somewhere to escape to and have that headspace. Lisa explained that if those first few treatments hadn’t failed, the level at which she lives life to the full now would be toned down. The desperation and running out of time and options was becoming so real that when life was given back to her, the gratitude was amplified.

Friendships grow closer and those golfing mates stand strong beside you. They’re also grateful to have you there. Although sometimes this isn't the case - you can lose those closest to you as they just can’t cope with it - these friends stuck beside Lisa.

“The girls that I play a small society with were amazing. During treatment and lockdown, every Thursday, no matter what, they used to drop something on the doorstep. It went on for so long they got short of ideas. At one point they started adopting me chickens and putting adoption papers through the letterbox.”

Lisa took “live life to the full” to the extreme when she was recovering. “Golf gave me something that I wanted to be doing, and I took on an allotment as well just to get me out before I was ready to play. It got me out and just doing stuff.

"I'm so bloody lucky to play golf. I want to get out there. All these men moaning about needing a medical adaption to their handicap because of a dodgy arm or knee and all that, and I was adamant that after all that time, I was going to let my handicap work itself out. I didn't have any medical adjustments or anything on my handicap.

"I came back in the first competition I played off my original 11 handicap I had before the cancer... I won. I literally haven't won a competition since, but it was just one of those really random rounds of golf."

Even with my handicap being so much lower that first time, I wasn’t necessarily expecting much, and it was one of those golden moments where you're just in the right mindset and you're in the right level of relaxed expectation. When you haven't played the course for such a long time, you don't remember all the crap that you played before, so you don't think, 'Oh, last time I played it, I was having trouble with that.'"

Lisa now plays off 15 and is happy: “I love the new WHS handicap system purely and simply because if you're carding every time you play, your handicap's going to be right. If you're putting everything in, then it's a fair reflection on how you're playing in that moment, not how you played last year.”

What can any golfer learn from Lisa’s story? It’s not so much about trying to go out there, be grateful, or adopt an attitude like Lisa’s. Simply be inspired and say yes to things that ordinarily you may think twice about. Live life and play golf that makes you smile. Perhaps get someone into golf who you think would benefit from all that it gives us. If you’ve been on a journey like Lisa’s and it’s really changed how you play your golf, do write in the comments below.

Here’s to a second chance at life, sheer gratitude for this wonderful game we all play, and the opportunities we get from it. Say yes!