Gators’ Silent Warrior is Back on Top

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — If you expected the hottest golfer in the Southeastern Conference – heck, maybe the most sizzling player in the country at the moment – to stroll into the room with an extra dose of swagger, you were thwarted immediately.

Gators junior Ian Gilligan is the boy-next-door type, the kid you hire to mow your yard and care for your dog when you’re out of town. He’s 21 but could pass for 18.

But don’t be fooled. The fire burns deep inside Gilligan when he grips and rips.

“His passion for golf is super high, and it always has been,” said Grant Gilligan, Ian’s father.

Gilligan’s backstory is multi-layered, conventional in ways but with a jarring scare that once put his golfing future and life in doubt. Still, the Silent Warrior plays on. He slayed cancer and recently defeated the field at the Southern Hills Intercollegiate in Las Vegas, earning a spot in the PGA Tour’s Shriners Children’s Open in October.

Gilligan’s win also earned him a second consecutive SEC Golfer-of-the-Week honor and headlines on golf websites and news outlets that cover sports in Nevada, where Gilligan grew up after his parents moved from San Francisco to Reno several years ago. One of his former golf instructors, aware of how the young Gilligan approached the game with an all-business manner and amicable demeanor, nicknamed him the Silent Warrior.

It has stuck all these years.

“He would just go out and talk with his play,” said Grant Gilligan, a former high-level cyclist who competed in Europe and against a young Lance Armstrong back in the day. “He would garner respect by just the way he went out and played.”

The sight of Gilligan holding the winner’s trophy and posing with Gators head coach J.C. Deacon a few days ago at the Southern Intercollegiate contrasts sharply with the summer when Gilligan was diagnosed with cancer. The shock came after doctors removed a lump in his left armpit and discovered Gilligan had a rare form of lymphoma in June 2018, a month after Gilligan placed fifth in the state championship as a freshman at Galena (Nev.) High.

Gilligan’s life was put on hold as he battled stage-4 ALK-negative large cell lymphoma, a cancer that, according to NBCSports.com, is usually found in the elderly and rarely in kids. Gilligan underwent seven rounds of chemotherapy and spent more than 50 days at Renown Children’s Hospital in Reno. He lost 40 pounds, but by the end of January 2019, Gilligan was deemed cancer-free and able to resume everyday life.