AUGUSTA, Ga. — Nearly four years since her last broadcast for the in America for PGA Tour Sirius/XM Network at the 2019 U.S. Open, Maureen Madill’s distinctive voice returned to the airwaves at the 87th Masters.
“It was such strange times during the pandemic that you got used to people not being around,” she said. “You didn’t really miss anybody because you missed everybody.”
There are a variety of reasons Madill, a native of Coleraine, Northern Ireland, who has a wonderful command of the Queen’s English and a cult following of listeners, has been absent from the airwaves for nearly four years.
The global pandemic made 2020 a wipe out, then in 2021 travel restrictions prevented her from entering the U.S., and in 2022 a rare amoebic parasite in her stomach had attacked her liver and kept her sidelined.
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“Your world shrinks when you’re ill, doesn’t it?” she said.
Madill first made a name for herself doing radio commentary in 1997 for BBC Radio Five Live and she first started working with SiriusXM way back in 2007. After the Masters, she is scheduled to be a part of the team for SiriusXM’s PGA Championship broadcast in May as well.
Madill brings the knowledge of a seasoned pro to her coverage and paints a word picture as well as anyone in her business. Prior to her broadcast career, Madill was an accomplished amateur, who won the British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship in 1979 and the British Ladies Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 1980. She represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup in 1980, and later coached the team in the late 90s/early 2000s. She turned pro in 1986 and played on the Ladies European Tour, where her best finishes were runner-ups in the 1989 British Women’s Matchplay and the 1990 Haninge Open.
Madill, 65, had her life turned upside down after she went to London to do a speaking engagement in November 2021. She flew there on a Friday, caught a flight home the next day, didn’t feel well and on Sunday she tested positive for COVID-19. However, she didn’t suffer from normal symptoms. Instead, she was bedridden with joint and muscle pain and reduced to walking with a cane. A scan revealed a black spot on her liver, which was presumed to be cancer, but for three months, she met with a raft of health professionals who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her.
“They had never seen it before, what caused it or how to attack it,” Madill said. “After each doctor’s visit, my husband Brian would say, ‘Well, they haven’t given us any bad news yet,’ ” Madill recalls. “That was the mantra that kept us going.”
For all the scans, appointments and consultations, a diagnosis proved elusive. On one occasion, her husband suggested she would have to stop drinking her daily glass of wine. “I said, ‘You have to be joking. Why would I do that?’ ” Madill said.
Her husband was concerned that her liver had been under attack.
“How many health professionals have I seen?” she said. “I said, none of them have ever seen anything like this. They’ve all seen alcoholic’s livers. Mine is not an alcoholic’s liver. This is the only thing keeping me going. I’m not stopping drinking red wine. He said, ‘Oh, Ok.’ That was my medication. A glass of red wine in the evening helped keep me going.”
In August, she finally received answers. Her medical team had sent some of her blood off to the tropical diseases hospital in London. They determined she had a rare amoebic parasite in her stomach and it had attacked the liver.
“My immediate reaction was this is great. It’s not cancer,” Madill said. “I’m looking at this doctor and he’s telling me something very serious and why is she looking quite pleased? I took it as the lesser of two evils. It was something from which I had a chance of recovery and that was the first time I had heard that.”
She went home and toasted the semi-tropical amoebic parasite in her gut that finally had a name.
Once her doctors diagnosed the problem, her condition improved quickly. She described her health as a vertical graph. “It’s been a lovely, lovely up turn in the last five weeks,” she said, noting that last month her liver was declared clear and she began taking medication to attack the parasite. She’s still dealing with joint issues but it’s nothing like the pain she previously endured. After sitting on her back side for 15 months, she’s beginning to work on her fitness.
Not even cold, wet conditions and gray skies could drown Madill’s enthusiasm at being back at Augusta National on Saturday and doing the job she loves. “It’s like broadcasting from a swimming pool but I wouldn’t trade places with anyone in the world.”
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