Daughter of Dying Mother to Play LPGA Event

Dakoda Dowd will live a dream and hopefully fulfill a wish for her dying mother by competing in an LPGA Tour event next April.

Dowd, 12, has received a sponsor’s exemption to the April 27-30 Ginn Clubs & Resorts Open near Orlando.

Kelly Jo Dowd, Dakoda’s 40-year-old mother, is suffering from incurable cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002. She appeared to be cancer-free for more than two years following treatment, but the cancer returned this year in aggressive form in her organs and bones.

Dakoda said in a newspaper article last summer that she wanted to play on the LPGA Tour in the future. Her mother said her dying wish would be to see that happen.

‘It’s the right thing to do,’ real estate developer Bobby Ginn, whose company sponsor’s the tournament, told The Tampa Tribune. ‘Sometimes you hear about stories, but there is nothing one can do. This was a situation where we were able to do something.’

Doctors have measured Dowd’s life expectancy in months, The Tribune reported in July. But even though she has been hospitalized recently for a compound fracture of a vertebra, there is new determination.

‘I’m fighting for my daughter,’ Kelly Jo Dowd told USA Today. ‘God willing, if I can make it to April, I’ll get to see her play.’