Rozner: When golf meets doctors and nurses

Golf runs in the Rozner family.

Not my family, mind you. No, it goes without saying that my wife and girls do not comprehend the obsession, though they do understand I needed something to replace hockey. It's inevitable that we all reach a point where the mind asks and the legs ignore, and that's an appropriate time to put away childish things.

In any case, golf does pervade the Antoine Rozner family, and it was a year ago that Rozner captured his first victory on the Challenge Tour, winning the Challenge de España, an event won by Brooks Koepka in 2013.

Rozner - whose older brother Oliv is also a pro golfer - went back to back the following week in Prague, thus guaranteeing him a year-end promotion to the European Tour, where he lost a three-way playoff in his first big-league event in Mauritius in December.

As far as I know, there is no relation to the 27-year-old Antoine, though we did have our first conversation via direct message Monday and it's something I need to trace.

He was born in Paris and obviously has all kinds of talent, which is the real tipoff we're not related, but I did think it an eerie coincidence that he won on a Sunday morning while I sat in my brother's hospice room in a Florida hospital.

I had been following Rozner's career since seeing him play in the 2016 NCAA Championship - out of the University of Missouri-Kansas City - when he finished eighth on a leaderboard that included winner Aaron Wise, Jon Rahm, Matthias Schwab, Beau Hossler, Robby Shelton, Thomas Detry, Collin Morikawa and Justin Suh.

Later that year he would represent Europe in the Palmer Cup, when he won all four of his matches.

His win in Spain on May 5, 2019, occurred just a few hours before my brother died. It was stunning timing since we used to joke about him being a distant cousin. I told my brother about it, though I have no idea if he could hear me.

The chaplain in the hospice wing insisted my brother could listen, so I spent many days talking, while wondering how long I could wear the only clothes I brought with on such short notice.

Digression not really being the better part of valor, I mention this now to remember the amazing people who worked on that floor, and to credit the nurses and doctors in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit.

What thankless and tireless work they do every day trying to save lives, expected to have only a perfect record. As one surgeon told me before I signed the DNR and they took Jay off the ventilator, "We will keep going as long as you want us to keep going, because that's what we do."

Today, they are on the front lines of a pandemic, doing the job as they always have, now risking their own lives in the process.

There is much public gratitude as they go about the task, selfless and serving, all of us using whatever forum we have to thank those doing important work.

But it is reminiscent of 9/11 in the way we promised to always honor the first responders. That lasted only a few months and then they were pretty much forgotten, save the lip service paid by politicians who speak only to hear themselves talk and ensure they have a snout at the trillion-dollar trough.

It is the same now, so many elected officials with Potomac Fever, thinking their daily briefings will earn them a spot at the big table. They see themselves as heroes, when it is the doctors and nurses doing the serious work.

We all admire the health care workers for doing the difficult jobs while we sit in bunkers, allowing truck drivers and package delivery folks - and those stocking shelves - to keep us hip deep in alcohol and pistachios.

But when this is over - and it will end at some point - most will forget about those who have done the demanding work.

As in all professions there are good and bad people, but most doctors and nurses do exemplary work and do it with a care and love for their patients that is almost impossible to understand.

They do it day after day after day, happy when patients leave upright and moving on quickly when the unfortunate don't.

How they survive when their patients don't is beyond my understanding, but the simple answer is there is always another patient and they must do their best with identical dedication to preserving life - as if yesterday didn't happen.

It's the same on the hospice floor, where the outcome has already been determined. They treat you like you're special, knowing you are only passing through, and show care for the dying and bereaved that is the stuff of angels.

This I will never forget.

I will also remember the Antoine Rozner victory from that early-morning Golf Channel notification, a moment of levity amid the misery, and my hope is Antoine makes his way back to the States and plays in some PGA Tour events.

That's when I will find him and tell the story of how his victory was the best part of a terrible week.

Even now when I think of that, it makes me smile.