The story of professional golfer Brian Morris has inspired many over the past couple years with his story of resilience in the face of trauma drawing admiration from the golfing world and beyond.

Over the period, Morris, who was diagnosed with Stage IV brain cancer on Christmas Eve in 2019 has been living and fighting through his greatest fear.

However, the last couple months have been a bit of a dream in many respects for the 54-year-old Bermudian, who on Monday, followed up his PGA Tour ambitions with another experience of the heart ‒ and it had nothing to do with golf.

Almost two years to the date since his diagnosis, Morris and his wife Laurie were invited to experience the Boston Celtics’s game against defending NBA champions Milwaukee Bucks, with full access and VIP flair.

For Morris, the head professional at Ocean View Golf Club and a lifelong fan of the Celtics, the evening would start with a familiar tone in the most unique of circumstances.

Golf club in hand and a makeshift hole a few metres away, Morris did something no one else has ever done ‒ sink a putt at centre court on the Celtics’s famed parquet floor.

“That was a nice present, huh?” Morris said in a quote from the Boston Herald ahead of the Celtics’s 117-103 win over the Bucks at TD Garden.

In fact, Morris has been attending Celtics matches since a Game 7 win against the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2012.

His relationship with the city is also driven by a different reason, with his necessary chemotherapy treatments taking place just four miles up the road from TD Garden at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

He has so far received 33 rounds of chemotherapy and is scheduled to see his doctors again this Friday to check on his progress.

Morris came to prominence internationally after going public with his diagnosis. This was magnified as he fulfilled a major goal of his after featuring in his first PGA event, the Butterfield Bermuda Championships, on a sponsor exemption in late October.

In fact, it was while watching one of Morris’s television interviews at the tournament, that Steve Bulpett, the Boston Herald’s NBA columnist and Celtics beat reporter recognised a familiar mark on the golfer’s neck ‒ a shamrock with the word ‘Celtics’ written above it, a clear homage to the legendary NBA franchise.

Bulpett then connected Morris with Jeff Twiss, the Celtics’s vice president of media services, who then put everything together.

It was Twiss, who handed Morris a putter and three Celtics-branded golf balls, before leading him out to the court for his putt, as fans settled into their seats ahead of their Bucks assignment.

Morris could not be reached for comment yesterday, but speaking to the Boston Herald, he made clear, the impact of playing his first PGA tournament at home.

“You know what? I must have had four or five hundred people just in my group,” Morris said. “When I was on the first green and looked down the fairway, I saw a sea of pink. Pink shirts. It was pretty impressive, really cool. People from all walks of life. The first round was on breast cancer awareness day.”