Matthew Bolt, Icon Sportswire
Las Vegas is perhaps best known as Sin City, and the desert metropolis has certainly earned that appellation, what with all the drinking, gambling and carousing that occurs there.
But for one week a year, during the Shriners Children’s Open, it becomes a different sort of place, full of feel-good stories and celebrations of young people with serious medical conditions whose lives have been changed and improved by the care that the organization provides.
Most of those accounts are related by the 23 patient ambassadors attending the annual PGA Tour event, which is scheduled to conclude on Sunday at TPC Summerlin. In addition to representing the 21 Shriners Children’s facilities around North America, they are serving as standard bearers during the competition over the weekend.
“This is our 17th year as the main sponsor, and we find that the Shriners Children’s Open acts as a terrific platform for talking about our patients and the care they receive at our hospitals,” said Mel Bower, who was once a Shriners C...