Winning a tournament can mean big money, big fame, and big changes. But other victories can mean so much more. Grant Boone takes a look at what it really means to have a life-changing win -- on and off the course.

By Grant Boone, Special to PGA.com

First off, a request: would you please cyber-flog me at the e-mail address below if at any point over the final month of golf's regular season I overdramatize -- either in print or over Golf Channel airwaves -- a player's position on the money list; his or her place on a tour's exempt status pecking order; or any particular golf shot that's pushed, flushed, yanked, shanked, skanked, snapped, pured, flopped, fluffed, thinned, bellied, bumped, or jarred. (You can also scold me for run-on sentences.)

This is the time of year when those of us who broadcast golf are often guilty of calling shots from an 18th tower of ivory, using phrases like "do or die" when what we're watching is really nothing of the sort. Not unimportant, but certainly not life and death.

Not unimportant would describe what George McNeill did Sunday in Vegas. The 32-year-old rookie, who shot 23 under par over six days to win last year's PGA Tour Q-school by five, needed just four days to get to -23 and win the Frys.com Open Sunday by four. For his efforts, McNeill got a trophy and his picture taken with these buxom beauties. (Note: Those are definitely fake; real feathers wouldn't be so perky). More importantly, McNeill's financial augmentation takes him from the bubble at 122nd on the money list to 59th, which most likely earns him a spot alongside the big boys in next year's invitational events like the Buick at Torrey Pines and The Memorial. And it guarantees his first season on Tour won't be his last. The win is good for fully exempt status through 2009. Not unimportant, but not life and death.

Life and death is what happens daily at the 22 nationwide Shriners Hospitals for Children, the benefiting charity of the tournament McNeill won. More than 800,000 kids, like Katie Walker (read her story here), have been treated free of charge in the 85 years Shriners Hospitals have been around. Unlike McNeill, the kids treated at Shriners today aren't guaranteed anything through 2009.

Not unimportant describes what Brad Adamonis did Sunday in Midland, Texas. In his fourth full season and 120th career Nationwide Tour event, Adamonis emerged from a four-man, eight-hole playoff with his first title, the WNB Classic. It's easily the brightest highlight of a career that hasn't had many. Even better, it moves Adamonis up to 30th on the Nationwide Tour money list where one more good finish could propel him into the Top 25 and secure a PGA Tour card for 2008. Not unimportant, but not life and death.

Life and death is the struggle facing Adamonis' good friend and fellow Nationwide Tour player Erik Compton. The heart transplanted into Compton in 1992 when he was only 13 suffered an attack three weeks ago in Miami. Adamonis got to the hospital two days later where Compton gave him a prescription for what was ailing his friend's game. Compton admonished Adamonis for playing defensively and infused in him the belief that he was good enough not just to compete but to win. After another pep talk from Compton last Saturday night, Adamonis got himself into a playoff Sunday and parred all eight extra holes to outlast the third and final overtime opponent. Compton, meanwhile, has far greater concerns than being 165th on the Nationwide Tour money list. Newly engaged and still just 27, he remains hospitalized in Florida, waiting to find out from doctors just how much his second heart has left.

Not unimportant was the controversy surrounding last week's Samsung World Championship, whose organizers I flamb?ed in this space last week (read here). Tours and tournaments have a responsibility to their players and to the fans who spend time and money supporting them to conduct competitions with integrity, which I believe the LPGA and Samsung officials failed to do in attempting to sneak Annika Sorenstam into the tournament at the last minute. Not unimportant, but not life and death.

Life and death was the brink upon which Tricia Burdzy teetered a couple of Thursdays ago as the Samsung imbroglio was brought to full boil. Burdzy is Meg Mallon's older sister, a 49-year-old wife and mother of three who was on an operating table in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for 11 hours. Among the procedures Burdzy endured that day was something called a heated chemo bath, which essentially entailed having her organs marinate in poison for about 90 minutes in hopes it would allow doctors to remove more of the cancer that's ravaged her body for the last two years. Burdzy's reward for surviving half a day of unspeakable physical trauma? Another round of chemotherapy.

Not unimportant was the phone call I received last Friday from one of the companies under whose employ I've been the last several years. They were calling to say they've at long last figured out a way to somehow carry on without me. No warning. No explanation. No lovely parting gifts, other than two recently-delivered boxes of logoed apparel featuring every conceivable configuration of fabric to cover various portions of a man's upper torso. Short sleeves, long sleeves, windbreakers, fleeces, mocks -- there may even be a dickey in there -- all emblazoned with that familiar icon I've proudly worn. The temptation is to feel both fleeced and mocked as I stare at a box of what could've been rather than be grateful for the opportunity to do something I loved for a long time and, even more important, for the memories and friendships formed in that time. Not unimportant, but not life and death.

Life and death is what my friends in Nashville experienced in equal and excruciating measure when their baby girl, Copeland, was recently born with Trisomy 18, a pre- or, in their case, neonatal death sentence (also known as Edward's Syndrome) in which a baby's cells contain three of the 18th chromosome instead of two. The day after getting my verbal pink slip, I heard the awful news about my friends and saw this video (click here), which they played at Copeland's funeral. Another family which endured the tragedy of Trisomy 18 put their story on this short video (click here). Warning to those who don't like it when I "go all God on you," as my Golf Channel friend and colleague, Jerry Foltz, describes it: there are brazen expressions of faith on these videos. But I figure people who've been broadsided with this degree of despair deserve a chance to say whatever they want.

I, on the other hand, am going to watch what I say and how I say it over the next month, beginning this week as the PGA Tour has another order of Fry's (this time in suburban Phoenix) and as the Nationwide Tour choo-choos into Chattanooga. Cards will be dealt. Careers rerouted. Dreams dashed. Not unimportant, but not life and death.

Grant Boone is a husband, father, golf broadcaster, and sports journalist based in Abilene, Texas. His column appears on PGA.com each Wednesday and every day during major championships and other big events. He can be contacted at pgagrant@hotmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed here do not reflect those of PGA.com or The PGA of America.