Where’s your head?

Imagine this, you're an Elite Pro, a rookie doing not so well, Wheeler Lake is your shot to turn it around, and then your sister calls. Your father, the guy who took you fishing when you were a kid, just had a serious heart attack.

DECATUR, Ala. — Dateline: Room 104

Where's your head?

Is it with you?

Or elsewhere?

Did you go to the office and leave it home?

Did you go home and leave it at the office?

Is your body in Chem-101, but your head is still in bed?

How many times have you shown up, but forgot your head?

Now imagine this, you're an Elite Pro, a rookie doing not so well, Wheeler Lake is your shot to turn it around, and then your sister calls. Your father, a young man at 60, a man you are very close to, the guy who took you fishing when you were a kid, just had a serious heart attack.

Where would your head be? The river beds of Wheeler Lake … or a hospital bed in West Virginia?

That's what Brent Broderick is faced with. His father Skip Broderick is seriously ill hundreds of miles away. With his voice cracking and eyes tearing it took Brent a couple of times to tell me this.

"My dad wrote me a note … he couldn't tell me himself … but my sister read it to me from the hospital."

db: "Can you tell me what it said."

Brent looks down, fiddles with something he is holding, sucks in his lower lip over his teeth.

"The note … the note … he told me … don't come home … he told me to keep fishing."

And so he has.

"My dad, when I was a kid, used to take me fishing, used to do all the outdoor things with me, even though he really wasn't an outdoor kind of guy. Dad did it because my grandfather, his dad did it with him. My Grandfather died young, but my father wanted to do the things with me that he did with his dad."

Where would your head be at?

Skip never missed a tournament, watching every one Brent was in via the internet.

"Dad would always tell me before every tournament, 'Limit, Limit, Limit,' meaning make sure I catch the limit."

Here's a shout out to Skip Broderick … get well sir … but know that your son Brent has caught a Limit, Limit, Limit …

… of a father's love.

— db