AKRON, Ohio - Adam Scott sat in the Firestone Country Club locker room and cried upon hearing the news Tuesday about his good friend, Jarrod Lyle.

He was a shattered man. As a father himself, his heart started to break for Jarrod’s two young daughters.

And he wasn’t alone.

It was the toughest of days.

Former Open Championship winner and now well-respected commentator Ian Baker-Finch cried for an hour before he could contemplate starting his day.

When Geoff Ogilvy heard the news at the airport, he let out a few audible expletives in disbelief.

For a moment, he couldn’t contain his shock before catching himself and hoping the elderly lady walking past had not heard his outburst.

Ogilvy couldn’t really face it right away. He asked for some time to process it.

I understood fully.

Only hours earlier, I awoke to read the update on Jarrod’s social media accounts.

“My heart breaks as I type this message …,” it began.

I was paralyzed. How Briony Lyle was able to summon the strength to pen those words shows what a rock Jarrod’s amazing wife has been.

“Earlier today Jarrod made the decision to stop active treatment and begin palliative care. He has given everything that he’s got to give, and his poor body cannot take anymore. We’ll be taking him closer to home in the next couple of days so he can finally leave the hospital.”

The greatest fighter I have ever known just couldn’t go another round.

Three times with acute myeloid leukemia. Three.

He beat it three times also. Right now there is no cancer in his body. But the toll of treatments finally broke him.

His sight and speech started to fail at times. The trademark weight stripped from his figure.

But it didn’t beat his mind. Nothing ever could. Nothing can take away the infectious personality of this man.

Anyone who ever met him has nothing but good things to say about him.

Which is why this is so emotional. It is why people all over the world have drawn inspiration from him.

“Perhaps one of the greatest reality checks that life is just not always fair,” good friend and fellow golfer Greg Chalmers says.

No it is not fair.

In this case it is particularly not fair.

Jarrod always puts others first, no matter what he’s going through. He never complains about his lot in life.

Even today – as the realization comes that the end is near – Lyle was thinking of others.

“I feel like I am the luckiest golfer going around because so many people took an interest in me and took an interest in my fight,” he emotionally told Golf Australia’s podcast, “Inside the Ropes.”

“And to have so many friends around the world, whether they are spectators, whether they are golfers, whether they’re marshals whatever … to have that kind of support to go to every tournament is a great feeling and it is going to be hard to leave that behind.

“But they know that I love them, they know that all the fighting I did do was to get back out and play golf again and to have the support from all those people was just a tremendous feeling.

“It is going to be hard but at some point, it is going to happen and they will get on with their lives and I just feel very, very lucky.”

We could all aspire to be half the person Jarrod Lyle is.

He’s thanking us when we should be thanking him.

His way of life is what came to Scott’s mind as he wiped away his tears.

“I can’t imagine being in that position; it’s unthinkable,” Scott says. “He is one of the best blokes there is. Given all the difficulties he’s had since his late teens, he has lived the best life he could with the tough cards he has been dealt.

“He has done better than anyone would have. He was out on TOUR for so long, playing such good golf while battling illness. He has been through it all. His positivity and general demeanor have been so good and so infectious on others; it’s a good way to think of how I should live my life.”

In just being himself, Lyle inspires so many.

He was basically bedridden for nine months as a teenager with the disease.

Just surviving was impressive.

Returning to golf was amazing.

Making it to the Web.com Tour was a massive feat. Winning twice there? Almost unthinkable.

But Lyle did it.

He was a poster child for overcoming the odds.

In 2011, Lyle lost his TOUR card before winning it back at Q-School. He credited the performance at the six-round event to the fact he was about to marry Briony and they’d found out she was pregnant – something doctors said would be unlikely.

Life was good.

He proved it by posting his best-ever TOUR finish – a T4 at the Genesis Open in early 2012.

But then his world would be hammered with the news the leukemia had returned. With his daughter due any day, Lyle tried to keep the diagnosis quiet until after the birth.

But word got out and this meant I had to try to make a call and get confirmation.

At 7 a.m. in the morning where Lyle was in Australia, he took my call. He didn’t have to. But he did.

He then proceeded to apologize profusely for not letting me know sooner. Not giving me the story first.

That’s right. In this most dire time, Lyle’s concern was on some silly idea that he owed me this knowledge.

Of course I told Jarrod to stop being ridiculous. I didn’t care if I was the last to know. But once again he was thinking of others first, even if misguidedly.

Doctors induced labor that day to give Jarrod a chance to meet – and spend at least one day with – his little girl.

He held Lusi almost exclusively in those 24 hours and then of course apologized for it.

Not a soul on earth would begrudge him those hours. There was a distinct chance it would be the only ones he’d get.

“I was selfish and I’m sorry about that. But I just laid there for a few hours as she slept and just stared at her,” he told me later that year.

“There were a few times I just broke out in tears as I tried to piece together what I am going to go through in the next few months and I just didn’t want to let her go.”

He would thankfully get more hours with her after once again coming through the other side.

And phenomenally Lyle made it all the way back to the TOUR, playing 20 more times in 2015 and 2016 before deciding to move back to Australia for good.

It was time to give Lusi the focus. And Jemma was also coming into the world.