Two summers ago Liam Lodding, then 14, was on his way to an American Junior Golf Association Tournament in Robinson, Illinois, about four hours south of Chicago, when something felt no good.
His stomach bothered him, but he looked forward to the event and wanted to play, so he flowed through, despite increasing pain during the round.
At night the discomfort deteriorated and Liam woke up the next day for chest pain so seriously that he felt he couldn’t breathe. Liam’s mother, Stephanie, hurried him to the hospital, where bloodwork revealed the level of troponin of Liam – a protein found in the heart muscle – was extremely high, which can be an indication for a heart attack. Liam was transported via a helicopter to the onion health in Chicago, where he stayed for a week. He was diagnosed with myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle.
“We didn’t know if I should have a heart transplant,” Liam said recently. “Doctors did not know exactly what was going on.”
Liam recovered completely, but his experience in the hospital changed his life.
“I had come across very much, but I saw children who have phase 4 cancer and diseases that are much worse than mine,” said Liam. “I was just really inspired to do something.”
Faced with a month -long break from Golf after his resignation from the hospital, Liam decided to concentrate his efforts on giving back. He heard from the Ajga’s Leadership Links programWith their fundraising efforts, these players help players by providing them with a personalized website and marketing material, processing donations and issuing tax letters.
Liam focused his attention on the Jack Nicklaus Children’s Healthcare Foundation and started asking donations.
“It took me a few weeks to pick up $ 5,000, and then I really just wanted to continue more and more,” he said. “I just started e -mailing and calling people, and I just asked for everyone who can donate, because my thing is, something small counts. Whether you get $ 5, you get $ 1, everything counts.”
Liam picked up $ 40,000 in a year.
“I was blown away,” he said.
In March, Liam joined other charity -oriented juniors to personally present a check to Jack Nicklaus, an experience he described as ‘unreal’. This year Liam focused his fundraising sights even higher, with a purpose of $ 77,777. He is about halfway, but hopeful an upcoming charity tournament that he organizes in his Home Golf Club, Elgin Country Club in Illinois, will bring him closer.
Courtiesy JSC / USAGA
Despite the revolution that caused his diagnosis in his life, Liam says that his illness also brought him new appreciation for things that he naturally considered – such as a round of golf. Given his condition, Liam was allowed to use a cart for his State Championship in high school, where he finished second. Now he is free to play and train without limitations, but is planning to check his heart with annual check-ups.
Earlier this summer, Liam reported that he was called the male recipient of the USGA-AJGA Presidents’ Leadership Award from 2025, which was founded in 2005 to identify one man and a female junior golfer who demonstrate leadership, character and community service set up by their involvement in the Leadership Left program-a-one-one-one-one-one-one juni organic.
“I am not a very emotional person,” said Liam about receiving the prize, “but I shed a little tear there.”
Liam enters his last year at the Harvest Christian Academy in Elgin, Illinois, and with the university that looms up, he says he is sure of two things: Golf will continue to play a role in his life – and philanthropy will.
“I absolutely want to stay with the golf path,” he said. “My dreams are to play professional wave, but at the end of the day, before this even happened, I was so golf, golf, golf, everything was golf. My identity, how I thought of myself, is how I play on the golf course.
“After that I had something like that, there are so many bigger things to life than just a golf shot and going out to make a golf score. It just helped me to be so much more grateful for the experiences I have now.”
That does not mean that Liam is not not overlooking.
“I just want to continue and just keep building what I have now the rest of my life,” he said.
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