Athletes of all stripes have been known to play through pain.

We’ve seen many a hockey player take a puck to the chiclets, get some stitching done on the bench and miss a shift or two.

Football players taking big hits from which you are laying odds the player will never get up again only to see him back after a series or two, making big hits of his own.

Even golfers have been known to show their brand of machismo, intestinal fortitude, courage or whatever you want to term it.

Starting with Ben Hogan who came within a whisker of dying in a car crash in February of 1949. He suffered a double fracture of the pelvis, fractures to his collarbone and left ankle along with a chipped rib.

Doctors figured he’d be lucky to walk again let alone golf.

But Hogan showed them all by coming back to lose in an 18-hole tournament playoff in 1950 to Sam Snead.

Then we have Ken Venturi who collapsed due to the heat (over 100F) during the third round of the U.S Open which he won the very next day.

Tiger Woods gimped around Torrey Pines in the 2008 Open on a torn knee ligament and a stress fracture in his leg. He won in a playoff against Rocco Mediate.

Now we can add to the list one Daniela Holmqvist.

The 24-year-old was playing in the qualifier at the Australian Open earlier this month when she felt like she was being stabbed in the ankle. It seems she had been bitten by a black widow spider so she let her playing partners know what was going on and while waiting for medics to show up she reached into her pocket, pulled out a tee and gashed open her ankle, squeezing out as much of the poison as possible.

Common sense would have dictated she pull out of the qualifier and get checked out by a doctor but this young lady decided to continue to play.

Fourteen holes later she ended her round with a two over par 74 missing the cut and had to catch a flight home instead.

They should have made room for her somehow, just for her mental toughness alone.

I’ve seen people quit playing because the mosquitoes were too bad.

Holmqvist’s response to what she did was simple.

“It wasn’t the prettiest thing I have done but I had to get as much of it (poison) out of me as I could.”

She got plenty out of it, including loads of respect.

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