REUNION, Fla. (AP) -- Kelly Jo Dowd didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so she did a little of both. With one swing of her 13-year-old daughter's driver, a mother's dream came true.
Dakoda Dowd opened play Thursday with a birdie in the LPGA Ginn Open, doing so while her terminally ill mother looked on, surrounded by friends and family. Wearing a pink shirt and black skirt, the teen teed off at 9:32 a.m., her first ball sailing down the left-center of the fairway.
Kelly Jo Dowd is fighting cancer for the second time in four years. She was given a clean bill of health after doctors believed she beat breast cancer, but she learned last year that she has terminal bone and liver cancer -- and, conceivably, only months to live.
"This is one of the best weeks of my life," Kelly Jo said Thursday before heading to the course. "It's such a warm feeling. It's almost like I'm walking and it's not really happening. I feel like a kid at Christmastime."
When Ginn officials learned Kelly Jo's wish was to see her daughter, who has won dozens of amateur tournaments, play against the LPGA's best, they made it possible with an exemption into the field.
Dakoda received a sponsor's exemption to play in the event near Orlando. Playing with pros Kate Golden and Tracy Hanson -- both at least 21 years older than the phenom -- she started on the 532-yard, par-5 10th hole. She arrived at the driving range 90 minutes earlier, clearly relaxed. After one wedge sailed long of her target, she playfully punched a cameraman standing nearby.
She chewed on her right thumbnail for a few minutes before teeing off, then hugged her mother and leaned her head back in relief that the wait was, at long last, over.
"I'm excited," Dakoda said after walking off the practice green and signing a few autographs before teeing off. "I feel like I'm going to Busch Gardens."
The Tampa amusement park is one of her favorite places. And she doesn't mind the spotlight, either.
"This has all been great," Dakoda said.
Through the attention generated here, the Dowd family hopes to raise cancer awareness and encourage women to be diligent in getting checked -- something Kelly Jo acknowledges that she did not do, instead waiting nearly a year before getting the breast lump that turned out to be cancerous examined by doctors.
Kelly Jo said countless strangers have approached her in the past few weeks, offering kind words and encouragement.
"I want to live as long as I can anyway," Kelly Jo said while Dakoda warmed up a quarter-mile away. "And now, after all these people and what they've done for me, I want to live harder and longer. God wants me here."
Virtually all of the top women's players -- sans Michelle Wie, who declined an invitation -- are at the Ginn and playing for $2.5 million, $375,000 going to the winner.
Even with the likes of Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa, Natalie Gulbis, Paula Creamer and Morgan Pressel -- some of the game's most popular players -- in the field, some simply came to see Dowd. Cameras have followed her all week, and they were around her again Thursday.
She expected the intense attention.
"Once I step on the golf course, I'm totally focused on, 'OK, I want to do well,"' Dowd said Wednesday. "So hopefully I can try to focus."
Her game and concentration have both drawn high marks from the pros.
Dowd played in a practice round this week with Creamer and Sorenstam, and both emerged convinced of her potential.
"I don't know how she does it," Creamer said. "That's pretty remarkable. ... She's such a good kid. She's fearless on the golf course, she just steps up and hits it and hits it again. I couldn't even imagine what that whole family is going through."
Pressel understands that, on a number of levels.
Not only does she know what it's like to be the kid among golf grown-ups -- the 17-year-old has earned $101,354 in five starts so far this season -- but Pressel lost her mother to breast cancer in September 2003.
"It doesn't matter what she shoots at all," Pressel said. "You know, she's here to have fun and that's all that it should be."