In adversity, he finds his passion
Marquette High golfer Brady LeMonds has overcome brutal leg injuries.
You would have thought Brady LeMonds’ mind would be elsewhere.
The Marquette senior, unable to walk, crawled across the basketball court floor. Both legs looked out of place, but if that wasn’t enough of a tip-off, the look on everyone’s faces let you know that something really awful had just happened.
The litany of injuries he experienced Jan. 28, 2017 was lengthy. He didn’t just break his right ankle, he broke it in three spots. His right leg wasn’t just fractured, it was broken in half. He didn’t just hurt one leg. He also tore his left anterior cruciate ligament.
So in the immediate moments after he was undercut during a friendly church league basketball game, LeMonds’ first words had nothing to do with the immense pain he was in.
“He literally says to me (In) this tortured sound, ‘What about golf’ ”, said his father, Bryan, who was coaching the game. “And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m about to pass out looking you.’ ”
It is amazing where our minds turn during dire circumstances. For Brady LeMonds, at the time a high school junior hoping to become a college athlete, the idea that he would be thinking about his future as an athlete isn’t surprising. Junior year is a big time for recruiting.
That he was worried about his golf game was a bit of a surprise. What about golf? Baseball was thought to be his best game. He’d been called up to the varsity at the end of the 2016 season when Marquette reached the state final and was poised to be a key contributor junior year. The game was thought to be his passion … until he feared he’d lost it all.
“I love baseball so much,” LeMonds said, “but the moment when I got my injury made me see I need to focus more on golf than I do on baseball.”
The message he took from that day was to cherish the moment and to follow your passion. It was a moment of epiphany for him that has shaped how he has approached the past 18 months.
When Marquette’s golf team begins play at the WIAA state tournament at University Ridge in Madison on Monday, LeMond will fill the No. 3 spot on the state’s second-ranked team. When he tees off, his repaired ankle will be a little stiff and his knee, as the day goes on, will experience some soreness, but understand the day will be sweet.
“I feel the first tee is going to be relaxing and fun,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’ll have any pressure at all because I know I’ve accomplish my goal and I just want to have fun and help the team.”
The hard work is done.
If you want a test of patience, try waiting through a recovery that included a surgery on his right leg that left him with nine pins and a 6-inch plate and a second surgery to repair his ACL. He needed a wheelchair for about six weeks and crutches for a couple of months after that. Even after he was back on his feet, he had physical restrictions.
If you want pressure, try going 10 months without swinging a club and then working to regain your game in time to make a team as rich with talent as Marquette’s. It wasn’t until October that he was cleared to play again.
Even after he was cleared, the process of coming back was slow.
He did most of the work with his younger brother, Hayden, who will be a freshman at Marquette next year, and his father.
“We were on the course 24-7 working on my short game, chipping all day, putting and we just moved up from club to club until I could reach my driver,” said LeMonds, who plays at Bluemound Country Club. “We were there 24-7 until the snow fell, and then once the snow fell we were at Moorland Golf Center in New Berlin and we were just hitting balls nonstop, trying to get my swing back to where it was.”
When tryouts began in late March, LeMonds’ game reached the point where adding him to the varsity was a relatively easy choice even though he was a JV player sophomore year.
“His abilities were really there before he got to his senior year,” Marquette coach Brad Niswonger said. “His tenacity as a competitor, I’d seen before. You can have great skills, but not the temperament to succeed in competition and that’s something that is difficult to teach anybody. … If you keep your competitive advantage, you can play any sport.”
LeMonds isn’t just been a member of the varsity, he is one of the team’s top players.
At the sectional last week, he shot the low round for the team, an even-par 72 at Washington County Golf Course, to lead to a second-place finish and state berth. Earlier this season he shot a 69 when Marquette fired a 276 at Washington County. In Greater Metro Conference play, he was a second-team all-league performer.
LeMonds, who plans to play with the club team at Xavier University next year, will be counted on again this week at state, where every time he looks at the cover on his driver, he’ll be reminded of how far he has come.
It was a gift from his father. The inscription, written in Latin, reads “What about golf?”
“It just tells me I need to focus and get back to the game and enjoy it,” he said. “There is pressure in the game, but just to enjoy every shot you have.”