Dakoda Dowd makes emotional return to golf

Once, she was a 13-year-old golf phenom, seemingly with star power at her fingertips. Once, she was the youngest player ever to compete in an LPGA tournament. The inspirational story was made possible by event organizers to fulfill the greatest dream of her mother, who had terminal cancer.

Even as tears flowed during intense national coverage, even as complete strangers grieved for her family, Dakoda Dowd remained stoic.

"I kept everything inside," Dowd said from her family's apartment at the Innisbrook Resort. "All those interviews, all those questions about my mom, and I never cried in front of anyone. I just wouldn't."

That was four years ago.

Now Dakoda Dowd is 17. She's thinking about a bright future. Next month, she heads to Daytona State College, which just won its fourth junior college national championship in women's golf. She wants to regain her status as a dominant player. Eventually, she wants a spot on the LPGA Tour.

Where has she been?

"Oh, every emotional place I could've imagined - and back," said Dowd, who was at the bedside of her mother, Kelly Jo, when she died on May 24, 2007, at 42. "I didn't feel close to God. I didn't feel close to anyone. I felt alone."

Her father, Mike, cried all the time but knew he was healing. Dowd, too, was depressed and sad, but she wouldn't admit it. She showed anger and bitterness. She was reclusive and rebellious.

"I had a hole in my heart and it was like I was dead set on filling it with negative things," she said.

For a time, she gave up golf. She dropped out of school. She experimented with alcohol, smoked a few cigarettes. She hung with an edgy crowd and shut everyone else out.

She doesn't mind talking about that journey. The last year has been an epiphany, recapturing her golf game and finding some inner peace.

Recently, Dowd was interviewed for the Golf Channel's "Golf in America" segment (it airs Tuesday night at 9). She was asked about her junior golf days, which included 185 tournament titles, and her future. And, of course, she was asked about the loss of her mother.

One question touched a nerve.

Dowd began to cry, something she never did with television lights nearby, even after a bad round on the sometimes emotionally fragile junior golf circuit. At first, she felt embarrassed. But the more she thought about it, the more it felt like a cleansing process. She missed her mother.

Finally, after all these years, it was OK to cry.

"I'm not sure if I've ever been more proud of her," Dowd's father said. "She let it out. I think she's beginning to accept what happened."

Father and daughter

Mike and Dakoda Dowd, father and daughter, have much in common, most prominently their love for Kelly Jo.

Dakoda has a tattoo of her mother's name on the back of her neck. Each day, when Mike hops in his Jeep, he pulls up a photo of his late wife from the console.

"Hey, KJ, I love you."

Everyone who knew Kelly Jo Dowd, it seems, grew to love her, too.

She was the first woman promoted to general manager of a Hooters restaurant. Soon after that, she felt a lump in her breast, but initially ignored it. Eventually, she was diagnosed with cancer. With treatment and a positive attitude, it went away.

Then it came back, getting into her liver and bones.

When Ginn Resorts president and CEO Bobby Ginn read a newspaper story about the Dowd family - and Kelly Jo's lament for potentially never getting to see Dakoda play in a professional event - he issued a sponsor's exemption to the 2006 Ginn Open.

On the tournament's first day, early in the morning, Kelly Jo saw a rainbow, "the rainbow you see only in your dreams. To me, it was a clear message."

Dowd ripped her first tee shot 245 yards down the middle of the fairway. She shot an improbable 2-over-par 74 in the first round, although she didn't make the cut.

Sometimes, Dowd and her father will watch videos of the event - not for the golf, but for the memory of Kelly Jo.

"We never forget her," Dowd's father said. "We always honor her."

Even though, in the aftermath of Kelly Jo's death, they handled things differently, although both had their customary intensity.

"We love each other, but we love hard," Dowd said. "It might seem like a fight, but nothing goes unsaid. Nothing festers."

"Neither of us backs down from anything," Dowd's father said. "Kelly Jo was like the calming influence for both of us. When we lost her, Dakoda and I kind of did our own thing for a while. We were just floating along, not sure where it was going to end up."

A new family

For a while, Dowd's father, a counselor with the Pinellas County school district, drowned his sorrow with alcohol. It felt good being buzzed, maybe a little euphoric, after downing a few drinks on the Innisbrook property. He slept it off, then repeated the cycle. But he knew it was just "numbing myself out" and it couldn't last.

About six months after Kelly Jo's death, Dowd and her father reluctantly attended a party given by Innisbrook owner Sheila Johnson. That's when Mike noticed Tara Erikson, who had "the longest beautiful wild mane of hair" that first reminded him of Kelly Jo. They tiptoed into a serious relationship. Dowd was initially puzzled, even disillusioned, over a new woman entering the family's life.

"Things happened that I never intended to throw Dakoda's way," Dowd's father said. "But it's just life. In the last year of Kelly Jo's life, she was always telling me she wanted me to meet people and have fun. She said, 'I hope you don't fall in love too quickly.' I loved my wife and took care of my wife, but I was never the type to be alone. I know what Kelly Jo and I shared. I'm lucky enough to have someone else to love me, someone like Tara. It has been complicated at times. I won't deny that."

Tara and her 8-year-old daughter, Eleanore, moved in. Nearly a year ago, Dowd's father and Tara had a boy, Bode, and became engaged.

"I love them all," Dowd said. "Tara has been great for me. But it was an adjustment. Instead of just me, my mom and my dad, it was suddenly a new family.

"It happened so quickly and it happened when I was dealing with a lot of things."

But just about the time this new family came together, Dowd's outlook began to clarify. After leaving Tarpon Springs High School, Dowd earned her GED and was contacted by Daytona State. She recaptured her love of golf. This time, it's different. In the beginning, she was driven by her father. Then the game became a way to provide her mother's joy.

"Now I'm playing for myself," Dowd said. "Now I want to see how far I can take this."

Dowd's father said the new chapter will be exciting, but also melancholy because he has hardly ever been separated from Dakoda.

Sometimes, though, you have to move on.

The other day, Dowd asked her father a question: "Do you think about Mom every single day?"

"Every single day," he said.

She nodded with understanding. She's more of a woman, no longer a little girl. So many things are different now.

Yet some memories will never fade.

"I still feel my mom's strength, her soul," Dowd said. "I do pray every day. I'm not angry anymore. I think, one day, we'll all be together again."