BY SEAN KEELER
He's the incurable optimist. She ruins your morning. He lights up a room. She burns a hole in your wallet. He makes you want to seize the day. She makes you want to seize a 7-iron and toss it straight into the nearest lake.
It's an odd marriage, this union between Michael J. Fox and the game of golf. He's a walking inspiration; she's a succubus with sandtraps. And yet, somehow, it works.
"It gives you a new opportunity to fail every couple minutes, but it gives you an opportunity to succeed every couple minutes, too," explained Fox, the actor/author who's slated to headline the Principal Charity Classic pro-am this morning at Glen Oaks Country Club in West Des Moines. "And if you're not a good golfer, the (feeling) of hitting it, like, 190-200 yards down the fairway with a 3-wood - it's a great feeling. 'Is it on the green? Is it on the green?' That's a great feeling."
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And if it gets people talking about Parkinson's disease, well, that's fine, too. Or as Fox referred to it, jokingly, "my permanent yips.
"I kind of stumbled onto that after the fact, that people said it meant something to them to see me out there trying," said Fox, who revealed that he had Parkinson's 11 years ago and has since become one of the most recognizable advocates in the search for a cure. "Anything I do altruistic or nice for other people, I tend to do by accident."
He's 47 now, but the eyes don't look a day over 19. The impish grin hasn't changed. While Fox takes on occasional acting roles, including an acclaimed stretch on the cable drama "Rescue Me," he retired from full-time showbiz in 2000. The golfing bug bit while in his 40s, as he looked for a way to stay active - the Canadian-born Fox was a pretty salty hockey player in his younger days - and socialize.
"At first, I wanted to get out and try it and I did and I enjoyed it," he explained. "But it isn't lost on me that people draw some inspiration from it, and that's a great feeling."
Roughly 1.5 million Americans have Parkinson's. It destroys brain cells that produce dopamine, a chemical that's crucial to the movement of muscles. Patients suffer from increasingly severe tremors and rigid limbs. Motor skills are impaired, including the ability to walk and speak.
The voice and arms fail him occasionally. The spirit doesn't. Fox's latest book, "Always Looking Up," has seen a steady run on the best-seller lists, while a companion television special on ABC-TV earlier this month was a ratings hit. He even spoke to former NBA power forward Brian Grant, who recently revealed his own battle with Parkinson's, by phone last week.
"We talked about the fact that he (needs) to allow himself to go though the process of whatever - denial, anger, any of those Elisabeth-Kubler-Ross-kind-of stages that he's going to go through," Fox said. "And that's fine, he should go through them. But to be prepared, on the other side, at some point, to accept (it). Not resign yourself to it; fight tooth-and-nail if you want. Get involved with the cure and the quest to find a cure. But know that you don't have a choice about that. But around that choice, you have 1,000 other choices. Especially for someone as uniquely positioned as Brian is."
Which brings us back to golf. She chews you up, spits you out, mocks you, pulls the chair out from behind you a half-second before you were going to sit down. He loves her anyway, unconditionally.
"A couple of weeks ago, (in) Florida, at the Outback tournament, with my friend, Bill Murray," Fox said, "I don't know if you heard, but Bill took a woman out, (a woman) who specifically came out to watch him.
"Guess he went by her house and he hits it 270 yards, hooks it, and took her out. And he's perplexed that there were two wounds on her head. And I said, 'Well, one was an exit wound.' "
'Til dormie do us part.
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