Hugh Royer III is back where he belongs

Sometimes numbers do lie.

Or, at the very least, they don’t tell the whole story.

Take last week’s leaderboard from the Tucson Cologuard Classic. Bernhard Langer may have lapped the field with his final round 8-under par, but he wasn’t the weekend’s only winner.

Scroll down toward the bottom. Keep going. Go all the way to 70th place. There you will find the biggest winner of the weekend, Champions Tour or otherwise. You’ll see a name that hasn’t appeared on a PGA Tour sanctioned event in years, just one stroke behind the three-way tie among former Master champion Angel Cabrera, Joe Durant and John Cook, and one spot ahead of John Smoltz. (Yeah, that John Smoltz.)

Hugh Royer III — plus-4 for the tournament.

Royer won more than just a paycheck of $1,496. He took home immeasurable satisfaction of playing with the world’s best players over 50. Sure, the competitor in Royer was a little disappointed that he didn’t do a little better. The realist in him understands and appreciates the enormous accomplishment of playing competitively again.

Beating cancer redefines victories.

“It was like being back in the ‘90s again, back on the Nike Tour again, playing with people I know,” Royer said. “It was really, really cool.”

And he didn’t say this, but I will. His dad, Big Hugh, would have been proud.

Some of the players, including Columbus resident Larry Mize, knew Royer’s story. Many did not. But they learned of it when they watched Golf Channel interviews with Royer.

“Billy Andrade came up to me and said, ‘Man, I never knew,’” Royer said.

A brief recap: A simple spot on his nose turned out to be basal cell carcinoma. Not just any kind but what’s called aggressive pattern. It lived up to its name. The cancer spread throughout his face and eventually came within one centimeter of his brain. Seven surgeries to remove all of the cancer and reconstruct his face, plus 30 rounds of radiation, left Royer with a new perspective on life, and a renewed drive to play professionally.

He made it the hard way, winning a spot in a qualifying event. The stressful thing about qualifying tournaments is you can play exceptionally well, but others play just a little better. Or you might play well but not catch some breaks.

“Going through qualifying is a crap shoot any way,” Royer said. “The nerves in that were actually a lot worse than in the golf tournament. Those last three holes (of the qualifier) it was like Daddy talked about. You’re going to find out if can do handle the pressure or not.”

It has already been quite a year for Royer. He was inducted into the Chattahoochee Valley Sports Hall of Fame last month, joining his late father. As incredible as Royer’s story is already, he’s determined that there’s still much to be written.

He’s back home in South Carolina this week, working out and taking care of every day family matters. He’s hoping to get a sponsor’s exemption for the next event in Biloxi, Mississippi, and the following week in Duluth, Georgia. But there’s one in May that he’s going to skip no matter what. It falls on the same weekend as his daughter Abbey’s graduation from high school.

“What she did for me, I’m not missing that for all the tea in China,” he said.

Royer’s support system, primarily Abbey and his wife Heather, mean more to him than golf ever has or will.

They were by his side, literally and figuratively, throughout his fight with cancer. Now they are the ones encouraging him to chase his dreams one more time.

When he qualified for the Tucson event, Heather told him, “You’re back where you belong.”

“It’s nice to have the support of family because it’s not an easy road,” he said. “The pressure, it’s still there. But I know if it doesn’t work out, I can go back to teaching and whatever.”

There’s still much work to be done. Teaching golf is nothing like playing against the best players in the world on some of the toughest courses. It’s only recently that he’s been cleared to work out and get stronger. He turned 56 last month. But Heather was right. He’s back where he belongs.

Really cool indeed.