The book, as anyone would have easily guessed having ever met Jarrod or heard him speak about Challenge (the charity that helped him as a teenager with cancer), will see all proceeds and royalties go to charity to help support children and families living with cancer.

The goal of delivering Jarrod’s story and helping others outweighed any thoughts of quickly releasing the book last year in the wake of his death on August 8.

“The best decision I have probably made was to not have it released last year, because it just didn’t feel right to me. There were suggestions to get it out for Christmas to capitalise on the sales and whatever, but it wasn’t about that, it has never been about that,” Briony told Golf Australia magazine.

“I didn’t want to put a rushed product out there, I just wanted it to be right, because once it gets out there, that’s it. It is what it is. So, the product that we could have put out for Christmas wouldn’t have been anywhere near satisfactory in my mind, so I am really glad that we didn’t and we took the extra time and added a bit of extra detail that we needed and made sure that we got it right.”

Briony and daughter Lusi during Jarrod's return to competitive golf at the 2013 Australian Masters. PHOTO: Michael Dodge/Getty Images.

The result is certainly “right” as Briony puts it.

Compiled after endless hours of recording with Lyle by Golf Australia’s media manager Hayes – a close friend of Jarrod – and fellow veteran sportswriter Blake, the story of the boy from Shepparton’s rise up the ranks of Australian golf and three battles with acute myeloid leukaemia unsurprisingly makes for harrowing stuff.

And in talking about the finished product as she embarks on a semi-book tour to get the message out, Briony also revealed another unsurprising fact about the hardcover book with her husband’s face looking up from the front cover.

“I was heavily involved, once the recording was finished and the writers had put together their first draft, I have been quite heavily involved from then onwards. But that still didn’t really prepare me for physically receiving the first final copy of the book, which I found to be actually very confronting and emotional when it arrived in the mail.

“Even though I knew it was coming, I knew exactly what it was, but I was still quite emotional to open it up and see the absolute finished product, despite the fact that I had approved every detail along the way. And I still am not ready to sit down and read it again as it is now, in its final form. But reading printed A4 pages as drafts along the way, I was ok, but now that it’s actually the finished, beautiful, glossy, lovely book with the cover on it and everything, I can’t read it.”

Although at this stage not ready to sit down and read the book, Briony acknowledges the benefit of the story for her and Jarrod’s daughters Lusi and Jemma.

Surrounded by reminders of their dad every day, and endless people ready to tell their favourite Jarrod story, the girls certainly don’t need the book to remember the man he was, but when older will have his own words documented to surely be read again and again – something Briony originally didn’t envisage but is coming to appreciate.

“Throughout the whole process I never really stopped and thought about them (Lusi and Jemma) as readers until probably the very end, and it was prompted by a comment from somebody else and it kind of stopped me in my tracks, and I thought, of course the girls are going to read it. And they will probably come across this book, far earlier than they would come across other books of this genre.

“Lusi is only seven but is a great reader and loves picking things up and reading them and it would not surprise me in the next 12 months if she starts to read a few pages here and there. That will obviously open up a whole new range of discussion. They were never the target audience, so I don’t know why it took so long to sit back and think of course they are going to read it one day and hopefully proudly show it to their own kids.”

Briony and daughter Lusi release balloons during a memorial service held for Jarrod at The Sands Tourquay in September last year. PHOTO: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images.

With the admission that the book was never created for the Lyle’s themselves, it would be easy to think there is a particular message to be felt by all who read My Story. However, Briony believes there is something different for everyone who picks up a copy.

“I don’t actually know what people are going to get from it to be honest, there isn’t a single overriding message that we were hoping to project. We could have, it could have been a way for us to use it as a platform for something, but given what happened with Jarrod and I think that people are just interested in the story as it is, as it existed.”

Of course one of the themes in the book is Jarrod’s fighting nature and ability to bounce back from repeated setbacks to his health and golf career. The Victorian’s ability to do so with a smile on his face, while also thinking of helping others, during his life made him a hero to many that will surely only become stronger as people read his words – something Briony believes her husband’s unquestionable talent for the game of golf and desire to achieve at the highest level perhaps held him back from seeing in himself.

“Someone said to me the other day, 'Do you think Jarrod felt that he actually achieved anything because he didn’t win on the course and have a big victory, did he ever realise just how much he achieved without having to have that big professional victory?' And my answer to that was no, because that’s what he wanted, he was an athlete, a sportsperson driven by his performance on the course.

“So for him, he didn’t necessarily consider overcoming cancer to be a great achievement, it’s just what he did along the way as he was trying to reach his great achievement if you like. So some people will read the book and say ‘Oh he achieved so much’, whereas he wouldn’t necessarily have thought that. I really enjoyed considering that question and thinking, no he wouldn’t have considered himself to be successful, whereas other people had thought of him in that way from a very young age.”

A proud non-reader of books in his life, the suspicion was that Jarrod might have made an exception for his own. However, his real excitement was to undertake the very promotional tour ‘Bri’ is now embarking upon.

“The one thing in the book process he was looking forward to was doing a book tour. Talking to people, because he was quite comfortable doing that. And he thought if anything that might give him an opening after golf. So, it’s funny now that I am the one doing that bit.”

Despite having not read many books, the words in this one are certainly Jarrod’s and credit must be paid to Hayes and Blake for their ability to capture his essence and language from the recordings ... Although there was an issue as to just how much of the more colourful language Lyle was fond of using from time to time should make the final product.

“During the process of putting together a book, there is lots of meetings with editors and publishers and those sorts of things, but the amount of meetings we had to have around how to go about dealing with Jarrod’s swearing, it was ridiculous,” Briony says with a laugh. “Because I didn’t realise how colourful it was, I haven’t heard the recordings, I wasn’t there for them, so the majority of what ‘Hayesy’ and ‘Blakey’ have got recorded I have never heard, and one day I will, and I think I am going to be quite shocked as to how he went about telling his story to them.

“When the guys did their first few chapters it was quite evident to me who was responsible for each chapter, because Blakey had taken the swearing out and Hayesy had left it all in. Because Hayesy said, 'That’s how Jarrod used to talk to me, anytime of the day, in any context, unless cameras were rolling so that’s the voice that needs to come through.' I responded that firstly I didn’t really hear all of that language, it certainly wasn’t how Jarrod spoke to me or the girls. But I had to kind of plead my case.

"I know that’s how a lot of people will remember him as having colourful language but it didn’t transfer very well onto the page and we always used to joke that his fan base was made up of women aged 65 and over, so I really didn’t want them to sit down and read it and be left with a really bad taste in their mouth and probably sit back and think ‘I thought I knew him, I thought he was a fine upstanding young man.'”

Due to the nature of book and the subject matter dealt with there is of course some language carefully left in, but the editing process was undertaken with great care to ensure Jarrod’s voice was heard as readers turn the pages.

Even with Briony’s concerns regarding the language used in the recordings, she knows deep down that every fan of the game of golf in the country and of Jarrod will forgive a little bit of colour added for emphasises.

Briony touched on the endless streams of stories she is told constantly by those she knows and doesn’t about Lyle, that will only increase as the book hits stores in August.

“I love it when I hear something I haven’t heard before,” she said when asked of being stopped to hear yet another Jarrod yarn. “And what I love most about it is that, I think that with a lot of Aussie male sportspeople, you either love them or hate them and for some of them playing at the elite level. That’s what Jarrod achieved on the PGA Tour, you couldn’t go much higher, you can be really polarising and typically have as many lovers as you do haters. But with Jarrod, even though he died and people would not want to speak ill of the dead or whatever, I don’t even get the impression that people are keeping a bad story to themselves and choosing to share a funny one or a good one, the bad stuff doesn’t exist really.

“Every story seems to be funny and uplifting, more than anything funny usually, and there is no one saying we better not talk about that incident or event because there is no bad stuff. They’re not making a choice, it’s just this is my story and my recollection and there is nothing that sours that. For him to have that impression on everybody he came in contact with, regardless of who they were, I think that just speaks volumes for who he was.”

And that exact reason, the man he was, is reason enough to get out and get a copy of his book to either learn more about this remarkable man you might not have known, or fondly remember the outstanding and funny man you did.

"My Story" by Jarrod Lyle with Mark Hayes and Martin Blake is published by Lake Press and available at major retailers and www.challenge.org.au