“You need to come home now, you have leukemia.”

Chris MacDougall didn’t know exactly what leukemia was, but he knew it was bad. He cut his work trip in New York City short to make his way back home to Columbia, South Carolina, and in that span of 24 hours, the world seemed to stop. All around him at the airport, people were bustling as if nothing had changed, but for MacDougall, life would never be the same again.

MacDougall grew up near Langley, Virginia and started playing tennis in the fourth grade. His junior and senior year of high school were spent at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, where, as a junior tennis player, MacDougall hovered at around number 60 in the country. He started at the University of New Mexico on the tennis team but quickly became burned out by the sport. In an interesting turn of events, he ended up graduating from the University of South Carolina on a cheerleading scholarship, where his team was top-five in the country.

Upon graduating, MacDougall went back to his roots and spent the next decade or so teaching tennis in North Carolina and Hawaii, after which he began a career in pharmaceutical sales for Pfizer.

This is where he was he got the phone call from his doctor, who happened to be a friend.

A couple of weeks before, MacDougall and his family had noticed that he was extremely tired and needed naps on the weekends. One day, he was able to mow the lawn in the front yard, but too exhausted to do the back. At the end of the two weeks, MacDougall was playing in a tennis tournament and had to retire from a match before the third set, which had never happened before. He knew that something was wrong.

A doctor’s appointment the following Monday is what immediately preceded the infamous phone call. By Wednesday, he was on a plane heading home to begin chemotherapy and radiation.

“I got home, luckily, my bags were packed, and I went straight to the the oncology office, and they did a bone marrow biopsy, which is brutal, right,” recalls MacDougall, now 54. “They stick almost like a half-inch needle, like six inches, into your hip and then they break off a piece of marrow and pull it out. They give you a little Novocaine, but that's it. When you're going four, five inches in your body, there’s no Novocaine down there. So I ended up doing the course and I had probably seven of those during the two year period.”

Chemotherapy began for MacDougall immediately, with IVs and a port in his chest. It was May of 2011 and the original hospital stay lasted around two weeks, after which he was home for a month to recover. Then, back to the hospital for a week and home for another. This process repeated until around Christmastime. By February the cancer was gone and MacDougall returned to work, with monthly checkups.

Unfortunately, by May of 2012, the leukemia had returned. At this point, a bone marrow transplant was recommended, so MacDougall headed to Duke University Medical Center for 100 days to receive the transplant, chemotherapy, and 10 full rounds of radiation.

Duke had to wait, though, because MacDougall and his best friend, Will Bull, were scheduled to play in a national tennis tournament that they wanted to win. After looking at MacDougall like he had two heads, the doctor agreed.

They did indeed win that title, and the 100 days began in July of 2012.

“It was a long 100 days,” MacDougall remembers. “When I was there my ex wife stayed with me the whole time, and my sister, she could work remotely, so she got an apartment for 100 days, and my dad came, and then my mom was more like in and out. So I had a lot of family and friends that came to visit.”

Abby and Karsen, MacDougall’s daughters, were only seven and five years old at the time, and they would visit on the weekends.

“They came every single weekend because their grandmother drove them. And so they were really, really excited to come,” says MacDougall, who remained positive throughout his entire battle. “They had a little playroom in the hospital wing, and they would walk me around the hallways, because you have to walk around with this IV pole. I just told them that, ‘hey, I'm doing great. You know, these doctors are just here to make daddy better,’ and that's all they knew.”

A hundred days later and 40 pounds lighter, the leukemia was gone and MacDougall returned home just before Halloween. It was an intense road to recovery though, as a person who could once do 60 pushups wasn’t even able to do one. Mounting the stairs was a workout in itself, but when he was able to do four sets of stairs, he moved himself outside and was able to walk around the neighborhood. Slowly, with the help of his support system, MacDougall regained his strength.

“I tell anyone now, and a lot of people have told me, that you can't worry. Your kids are with the grandparents, and you have to take care - obviously, you worry about your kids - but this becomes your new job, right? It's a job you either have to be positive and try and get better, or you have the alternative sometimes, which isn't good.”

After about a year of recovery, MacDougall hit the tennis courts once again. Since then he’s captained multiple teams, including one which, in 2018, won the USTA Nationals at the 5.0-5.5 level while playing in the 18-and-over division. He was 48 at the time.

Pickleball started popping up on MacDougall’s radar during the Covid-19 pandemic and piqued his interest. His shoulder was giving him problems and in the fall of 2021, a tear in his rotator cuff finally sidelined him for three months.

In December of 2021, MacDougall picked up a pickleball paddle. The first time he went to the pickleball courts, he didn’t know how to play or even how to keep score. But by the end of the night, pickleball veterans were watching him.

“It's fun, it's competitive, and it's just so much more conducive to meeting people. And you don't have to be quiet while you play, you can play music, it's just so fun,” MacDougall exclaims.

MacDougall has been a regular on the APP Tour scene for the last year, and is steadily making his way up the AARP Champions division rankings. He’s also on a Humana Cup team but is currently sidelined after finally having surgery on his rotator cuff back in July.

“I'm trying to work my way up and it’s still a work in progress. And those top 10 guys are unbelievable,” MacDougall concedes. “So I'm not that level, but I'd like to stay around 20, that was my goal.”

Still working in pharmaceutical sales for Pfizer, MacDougall travels for tournaments as often as he can and enjoys the social scene that pickleball provides, estimating that he’s met about 150 people just in the last year from pickleball alone.

“I've been so competitive at tennis my whole life, or anything that I've done,” MacDougall explains. “Instead of being so ultra competitive, winning, winning, having fun and meeting new people and having these friendships are unbelievable. I've been competitive my whole life, and don't get me wrong, I'm still competitive, it just seems to be changing with pickle that you don't have to beat everyone to have fun.”

For someone who was used to the intensely competitive junior tennis scene and then the college tennis scene that saw him leave the sport, finding new meaning through pickleball has been eye-opening, and he’d rather play with someone who’s fun but also a good player, and have an enjoyable experience.

“It's just made me value friendships and family, and I'm just so excited that I can play at this level,” shares MacDougall, whose lung capacity has been affected by his cancer treatments.

For someone to go through all that Chris MacDougall has been through, and admit that pickleball  is what has given him a new perspective on life, that is saying something.