Senior major champion and 3-time PGA Tour winner reveals cancer diagnosis

Scott McCarron eats right, sleeps well and tries to stay in great shape. He won three times on the PGA Tour and has won 11 times on the senior circuit, including one major. At 60, he hasn’t won an event in seven years but he’s still highly competitive. He tied for 15th place last month at the Cologuard Classic after shooting 66-68 on the weekend.

Two weeks before that finish, however, after playing in the James Hardie Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational he had a sore throat and discovered a little white spot. McCarron went to his doctor, was referred to an ear, nose and throat specialist, where he was biopsied.

“Dr. Barnes called me and said, ‘You have cancer,’” McCarron told the PGA Tour Champions this week. “So, at that point, he didn’t know exactly what kind. And then on Tuesday, he said it was B-cell lymphoma and kind of fast-acting, so he wanted me to come home immediately, get me with the oncologist.”

The cancer was Stage 2. He went through extensive bloodwork, scans and appointments.

“So, you start thinking, ‘How? Why? Why me?’ Those types of things, and then, then trying to put a team together to find out, ‘How can we beat this? Is it curable?’” McCarron said. “Those are the things that are really going through your head and then after you do that PET scan, you don't know if it's spread throughout your whole body and that was probably the scariest thing.”

This week McCarron played in the Mitsubishi Electric Classic at TPC Sugarloaf in Georgia, a modified Stableford scoring event. But earlier in the week he began his chemotherapy treatment in Atlanta, which lasted six hours on both Monday and Tuesday. He felt well enough to drive 40 minutes north to Sugarloaf and play three rounds saying that he was looking forward to the “distraction.”

“We caught it early. It’s very curable. But it’s serious,” McCarron said.

“If I would have waited six months, it would not have been a good outcome for me, from what my doctors say. So, early detection is the key for any of the cancers.”