It’s not often that a player withdraws from a tournament after making the cut – unless due to injury – but that’s what Hank Lebioda did last Friday at the 3M Open.
At the time, he cited “personal reasons,” and it generated the typical uproar on social media, infuriating gamblers and fantasy sports fanatics who had a little skin in the game. It turns out the former Florida State product had a more than worthy reason to skip town: His father was in an intensive care unit at New Smyrna Beach, Florida’s AdventHealth Hospital and being treated for sepsis, kidney failure and COVID-19.
“Thankfully they were there when dad’s blood pressure dropped and kidneys failed,” Lebioda wrote on social media. “He had entered septic shock and, on paper, should’ve been dead.”
Lebioda’s mother, who had taken her husband to the emergency room on Thursday, phoned her son after he had completed his second round at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota, and reached him in the player parking lot.
Update regarding my WD from the @3MOpen @PGATOUR pic.twitter.com/kzvhCYKFnj
— Hank Lebioda (@hank_lebioda) July 27, 2021
Lebioda had his wife book the first flight back to Florida on Saturday morning and informed the Tour that he would need to withdraw.
“I’m appreciative how they respected our privacy in the very touch-and-go hours immediately after I had heard the news,” Lebioda wrote.
Lebioda, 27, entered the tournament riding a streak of three top-10 finishes in a row, including a fourth at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, before shooting a pair of 69s and pulling out of the 3M.
“Four days later, I can thankfully say that dad is going to be alright,” Lebioda wrote. “His recovery is moving slow but as he is phasing out of septic shock and regaining function from a lot of his major systems/organs, I am confident the man I’ve looked up to my whole life will be back as I remember him.”
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