The silhouette image of a curly-haired Terry Fox hop-stepping along a lonely stretch of blacktop on the Trans-Canada Highway has been burned into our collective consciousness. His 143-day, 3,339-mile Marathon of Hope in 1980 was filled with triumph and pathos. Fox ran in a state of exuberant torment. It ended in tragedy just outside of Thunder Bay when the cancer that once claimed his right leg spread to his lungs. He died days before reaching age 23.
The Marathon wasn’t completed, but the Hope part never died. Since 1989, The Terry Fox Run has raised over $750-million world-wide. He also hoped others would continue working to find holistic ways to assist the disabled. That’s still a work in progress – especially in the game of golf.
In a sport where the term “handicap” is featured prominently in its lexicon, you might think it would welcome the disabled. That’s not always been the case.
Remember Casey Martin, the pro born with a birth defect in his right leg known as Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome? It was so debilitating he couldn’t play on the PGA Tour without the aid of a cart. The snobby elites on Tour bristled at the prospect, and did what they always do – overreacted. They said pro golf was designed for the able-bodied and walking was endemic to its “tradition” – and blah, blah, blah.
The anti-inclusion bandwagon included some of the game’s greats, including Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. They preached this contemptuous conceit and even offered to give state’s evidence to keep Mr. Martin hobbled – both on and off the course.
The Martin case made it all the way to the Supreme Court before a 7-2 decision – based on Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and some serious moral outrage from the public – fell in his favour. It closed a shameful chapter in the game’s history of exclusion (remember the Tour’s “Caucasian-only” rule, or Augusta National’s rejection of blacks and women as members?), and sullied the names of many who should have known better.
Which moves us forward from the late 1990s to present day, and begs this multi-pronged question: does golf finally “get it,” and is it sincere in fully welcoming the disabled into the game?
Some say this paradigm shift is taking longer than Jordan Spieth’s pre-shot routine.
It’s a sun-splashed early afternoon in the waning days of winter, and Todd Keirstead, an able-bodied pro golfer and owner of Golf-with-Attitude (GWA), is sitting at a table in Jack Astors, located just minutes from Toronto International Airport. He’s in a giddy mood after delivering a presentation that morning to about 60 PGA pros at a conference centre near Niagara Falls.
His interactive show “nailed it,” he said, thanks in part to the subject matter: how to teach “adaptive golf.” He shows pros how to teach a swing to players with abnormal needs. In the adaptive golf world, you don’t swing the club from Point A to Point B, but from C to D, or E to F. The idea, says Keirstead is to open up the game to all – and focus on ability not disability.
While Golf Canada serves up heaping helpings of programs to youth-ify the game (part of its mandate as the game’s National Sports Organization), these mostly elite programs deliver mixed results to a select few. Keirstead is driven to broaden the base.
Instead of the Golf Canada mantra of “growing the game,” he wants to bring it back to a much bigger demographic that has been virtually ignored. He’s selling the game back to those dwelling in infirmaries or battling debilitating illnesses like MS, strokes, broken or aching appendages, mental or emotional challenges, and even those reaching the age-old malady of decrepitude.
It’s all about reclaiming the physical and mental rehabilitative qualities of the sport.
In an industry stymied because vast numbers of participants are leaving the game, Keirstead is preaching the gospel of stay and play. It makes both business and moral sense for golf to embrace inclusion.
“The best way to grow the game is to give it back to those who once loved to play it,” he said.
The numbers suggest he is right.
A report by the United Nations said 10 per cent of the world’s population (650 million) has a disability. According to a study conducted a while back by the National Center on Accessibility at Indiana University in cooperation with Clemson University, 22 per cent of those with disabilities played golf before incurring them, and a whopping 35 per cent with disabilities are not now playing golf but are interested in learning.
Here’s something even more startling. A Canadian Golf Consumer Behaviour Study, conducted for the National Allied Golf Associations (NAGA), which includes Golf Canada, focuses on the effective population – defined as those capable of playing golf.
The study eliminated big portions of the population based on age (too young or too old), health (infirmity or disability), finances (significantly below poverty line) and location (no golf facilities within a reasonable proximity.
Why eliminate anyone – especially in categories like infirmity or disability?
Exactly, said Keirstead.
The study concluded that the effective population base for the Canadian golf industry was 21.2 million Canadians.
No, it is not!
More numbers. A 2015 study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the U.S., said one out of five people had a disability. It didn’t pull out how many of the 53 million were golfers – but it’s easy to speculate that it was a hefty slice. The NAGA Study also revealed 22 per cent of those who once played the game quit because of physical and mental situations – a whopping 1.5 million. Adaptive golf is a readymade tool to help pull them back.
Also of note, Canada’s senior population will more than double over the next 21 years to 10 million. By 2036, one quarter of Canada’s population is forecast to be 65 and older, up from the current 15 per cent. Most of them are from the Boomer Generation that drove the explosion in the game from the 1970s onwards. Those who left for whatever reason can be drawn back, too.
Keirstead is on a mission to see it happen.
Adaptive golf doesn’t simply work on swing planes and put the badly disabled on para-golf carts so they get out of their wheelchairs and raise their bodies to a 45-degree angle so they can hit a ball down a fairway. This adaptive push is purely organic, and touches all the bases.
The game’s rules have to be adapted to let everyone play. Courses must adapt to allow a player to get from the parking lot to the first tee and beyond. Club owners have to adapt tee sheets to accommodate those with limited energy or physical restrictions to allow them to play just 9 holes, or maybe only three or four.
They have to train staff how to serve them. They have to retrofit entry points to clubhouses and pro shops and locker rooms so walkers, wheelchairs or scooters aren’t hindered by stairs or tight elevators, or courses not properly designed for their use.
Course designers and superintendents have to think outside the box when creating or maintaining these playpens. Equipment manufacturers should start now in building clubs and carts and other paraphernalia that only serves the able-bodied. In a game where profit margins are already tight, is it a stretch to get a full buy-in from industry stakeholders?
The forward-thinking ones should be readying themselves for this change, said Keirstead.
This entire magazine could be filled with good news stories about what is happening throughout the industry. Leslie Hawkins, general manager of adidas Golf Canada, has invested both her personal time and her firm’s money and equipment to help make a difference.
Her relationship with adaptive golf started a few years ago when she was part of TaylorMade-adidas and saw a Facebook post stating Keirstead had broken another driver and would head to Walmart to replace it. A call went out to him from the TMAC office to learn more about what he was doing and what was needed. The connection was instantaneous, and revolved around a core belief, shared by both: “Through sport, we have the power to change lives.”
That relationship between TaylorMade Canada (also involved in Soldier On golf camps), and adidas Golf, as advocates for change, continues. Hawkins sums it up best when she said: “It’s not just about getting more people to swing a golf club, but using the game of golf as a tool to assist with mental, physical and emotional healing.”
Challenging the norms takes time, but future golfers can come from anywhere – and whatever their handicap. The Solider On program is an example. The Canadian Armed Forces created a path to recovery for many of its ill or injured through recreation and sport. Its three golf camps, in western Canada, Ontario, and the Maritimes, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the program, and it has introduced or re-introduced hundreds of ex-soldiers to the game.
The 2019 camps are held this year in Victoria (in late March and early April), at the Victoria Golf and Country Club, Highland Pacific, Bear Mountain, and Uplands, and in Ontario at Beacon Hall near Toronto (early June), and in the Maritimes, at Royal Oaks, Moncton (early August).
Soldier On sent many of its golfers to compete in the 2017 Invictus Games in Toronto, played over the iconic St. George’s Golf Club, host of the 2010 RBC Canadian Open.
Earlier this year it was announced that the first-ever Ontario Disabled Golf tournament will be held at Woodington Lakes Golf Club in Tottenham, August 24–26. This inclusive event will ensure a proper pathway and better competition for some of the highest performing disabled athletes. It will be included in the list of events eligible for world ranking points and will see both men and women compete in both low gross and low net categories.
The Ontario Golf Association’s Executive Director Mike Kelly would like to drill down further in the future to broaden its scope, and up the participation numbers.
Canadian Army Warrant Officer (Retired) Tom Martineau was on a military tour in Bosnia in 1994, when he was shot by a sniper. The bullet hit his spine and caused paralysis to both of his lower limbs. Some internal organs were also damaged and removed. Today, he is back to near full-function, and played with Team Canada in the golf competition at Invictus. He was also at Glen Abbey this spring to help roll out word on the OGA Disability Golf tournament.
He told Pro Shop Magazine and the Golf Industry Network that it was only through sport that he overcame his physical injuries, and two failed suicide attempts. The Soldier On program literally saved his life. The fact it also helps treat the “invisible” killer of emotional trauma and depression, makes it even more of a win-win for participants.
Can adaptive golf really fuel an uptick in participation levels in the game?
Golf Canada has modified its rules for golfers with disabilities. It is piloting a training camp and nine-hole competition for Special Olympics Canada athletes, in conjunction with its CN Future Links Pacific and Quebec Championships.
Keirstead said there is no ceiling, and he is eager to reach out further. He wants the PGA pros who took in his seminar, to act as emissaries and take the game to those who thought they couldn’t play it, or had left it behind.
Golf has always touted itself as a cradle-to-the-grave game.
While it has concentrated much of its energy trying to attract those at the front end, maybe it’s time to re-engage with those closer to the back?
In his interview with Pro Shop Magazine, Keirstead said Canada is “four or five years behind” the drive to adaptive golf that has swept through Europe and the United States. “But,” he said, “we can catch up quickly.”
Casey Martin wasn’t an outlier who needed to be expunged from the PGA Tour because he needed a cart to compete, but an inspiration to millions who saw him as someone who simply loved the game and wanted to compete at the highest level.
Terry Fox also soldiered on when others thought he was crazy to even start his Marathon of Hope. His mentor and wheelchair basketball coach, Rick Hansen, said it was that run that “challenged society to focus on ability rather than disability.”
In 1997, when Fox’s right leg was amputated, he was back walking within three weeks. How did he progress from there to his 143-day trek across Canada?
Well, he started by playing golf with his father.
He learned to adapt to his new life by adapting to the game. Now that game is learning to adapt to people like him.
That means there really is Hope for its future success.
