Mike Hendry will treasure his place in the Open Championship field more than most.
All those friends and family who have travelled with the New Zealander to Royal Troon this week are just thankful he is still alive.
Over a year ago, Hendry, ranked in the world’s 400s, was enjoying a run of top 10 finishes on the Japan Golf Tour when he suddenly fell ill. Little did he know he was on the cusp of a major health scare.
“I was playing well at the time,” he tells i. “However, I started feeling run down out of nowhere but I just put it down to playing a lot.
“It felt like I had a cold. Sneezing, coughing and the like. But I got progressively worse. I had no energy. I was either in bed or on a couch. I was sleeping about 18 hours a day which is not like me.”
For the past decade, Hendry, a self-confessed workaholic with 17 professional tour wins, has commuted between his home in New Zealand and Japan, where he mostly plies his trade.
Practice is relentless and sleep often in short supply so when his wife Tara noticed her husband’s deteriorating condition she managed to convince him to take some blood tests.
“I went to the doctor and he sent me to the local hospital straight away,” he says. “From there, I got rushed to a hospital in Auckland and started chemotherapy that evening. It all happened so quickly. It’s crazy. I didn’t return home for six and a half weeks.”
Blood tests revealed Hendry had early stages of leukaemia – a form of cancer. The doctors urgently sought the level of treatment the 44-year-old required. From what he believed was just a mild illness had turned into his worse nightmare.
“It was bloody terrifying,” he says. “I was aware of what leukaemia was. I was thinking, ‘I’m really sick here and I might not live’. It was April 11th. I will never forget that day. I was in this state of not knowing what was really going on. I was in shock. It was all a bit of a blur.”
While Hendry prepared to tell his two daughters, Maddison and Harper, that he was faced with the “fight of his life”, his career was brought to a shuddering halt and he was forced to withdraw from last year’s Open at Royal Liverpool having clinched his spot after finishing runner-up at the World City Championship in Hong Kong.
He would go through a tumultuous five and a half months of chemotherapy. Battling the symptoms of treatment such as diarrhoea and a loss of appetite left him exhausted and weak.
“It was rough,” he says. “I’m sure people know the sort of things that happens to your body. Disgusting, really. I won’t go into it. It became about trying to show my kids you will go through tough times in life, but that you can come out the other side of it. If you go into anything with a positive attitude, you can be successful.“
The chemotherapy left Hendry confined to bed and he would lose 17kg in weight. However, the treatment has helped launch his recovery and last October he returned to action, winning tournaments in Australia and Tokyo after five months out.
Along with his family, the thought of competing at the Open again, after featuring in 2017 and 2018, inspired him to overcome his leukaemia. After he pulled out of the event in 2023, the R&A – the Open’s organisers – decided to carry over his playing rights to this year’s championship. Hendry, who once had a summer contract at Ealing Cricket Club, is eternally grateful.
“After all that’s happened, to get the opportunity to play this year is awesome,” he says. “To get that email from the Open was so motivating. It was incredible. When I was ill, I thought, ‘Now I’ve really got something to look forward to.’ The R&A have been incredibly gracious. It’s a second chance I thought may not come.”