Peter Oosterhuis, the former British golfer turned CBS analyst, revealed this week that, at 67, he has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.
“Maybe in the course of my commentary, I wasn't giving a lot of information like I used to. I would just talk about what's on the screen,”
he said of his fading memory, according to The Associated Press. "But I didn't feel like I had those things ready in my mind to call on to make a point like I used to."
Though Oosterhuis first disclosed his diagnosis at a fundraiser for the Nantz National Alzheimer Center at Houston Methodist Neurology Center last month, he went public with it
Monday in the latest edition of Golf World's digital magazine. Jim Nantz, CBS Sports host, founded the Center in 2011 after his father endured Alzheimer's for 13 years before his death in 2008.
“I miss the job, because it’s an amazing job,” Oosterhuis told the magazine of his CBS broadcasting career. “There’s a lot of travel, but the places you go are wonderful, and you have friends everywhere. It was awesome."
Oosterhuis admitted that he and his wife have known about his diagnosis since last July when visited a neurologist in Charlotte, North Carolina.
"It gave us a chance to say goodbye to everybody in a beautiful way, and it gave us the new focus of being part of Jim [Nantz's] incredible effort," said his wife, Roothie Oosterhuis, according to the AP.
She also admits that at first the news “was so shocking . . . We were depressed. We were lost.”
Still, the record-setting Ryder Cup champion does not think his diagnosis is that bad.
“I don’t think of it as a bad break,” he told Golf World. “At least not yet.”
His wife also believes she and her husband have happy days ahead.
"As human beings, it took a while to come back to ourselves," she said. "But now, even though we don't like the cards we were dealt, we are ready to play them. Because we are basically happy people, and we can still have happiness."
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