Blind Ambition
Seeing is believing as Canada's visually challenged golfers tee it up with a little help from their friends and family and leave others wide eyed with admiration

BRIAN MCANDREW
SPORTS REPORTER

Marty Kush presents an odd sight on the green as he stands over the cup and raps his putter head loudly against the plastic rim. But it isn't the sight that matters. It's the sound that is his guide.

About 20 feet away, Jim Hamilton is listening intently as he lines up his putt. He and Kush, Hamilton's playing partner and coach, have already discussed the read of the green. Hamilton strokes the ball and stands absolutely still. He waits for that sweet kerplunk sound a golf ball makeswhen it reaches the bottom of the cup.

But it doesn't happen.

Much like every other golfer this side of the pro tour, Hamilton leaves his putt a few feet short of the hole.

Unlike most other golfers, however, Hamilton, a once-promising junior player, is blind.

Hamilton, 58, is president of a little known association of blind players called Ontario Visually Impaired Golfers (OVIG). It has 26 paid members ranging from those that are completely without sight to others with varying degrees of limited vision. Each player has a coach to assist them on the course.

The organization last year arranged nine tournaments, including the provincial championship at the Cambridge Golf Club. In addition, the Hunt Club offers one blind foursome a weekly round and the private Credit Valley club in Mississauga hosts a member-guest event each fall.

Blind golfers play by the same rules as everyone else with two exceptions. Players can ground their club in a sand trap because even among the partially sighted, depth perception is a problem And, they are allowed coaches who play alongside them every round.

Coaching is vital to blind golf - the group is eager to recruit more of them - because they provide the vision skills necessary to get around the course; everything from lining up the golfer on the tee and getting the club head behind the ball to describing putts and driving the golf cart.

"The first rule of these tournaments is don't let the blind guy drive the cart," hollers coach Perry Simardone, as he steers in a quick, tight circle toward the first tee with his father, Joe, hanging on tightly.

Joe Simardone had played golf for years before giving up the game after a degenerative eye disease known as retinitis pigmentosa slowly took away his sight and left him with what is commonly called tunnel vision.

"He can see shapes and colours and objects so you can say to him: 'There's the tee, there's a sand trap.' He can tee it up but when we get up to the ball he'll walk right past it because he can't see it," explained Perry.

Once he retired, Simardone started attending the Canadian National Institute for the Blind where a rehabilitation teacher, Iona Gherasim, told him about her participation in the blind golfers association, so he was encouraged to take up the game all over again.

He won the Ontario championship four years ago and headed off to the British Blind Open organized by the International Blind Golfers Association.

"I was in fourth place after the first day and ended up 14th out of 40," Simardone said. "I play about eight times a year but those guys in Britain play five times a week."

Perry Simardone is a member of the OVIG board of directors and relishes every aspect of the blind golfing game. "When else would I have this much time to spend with my dad? It's terrific," he says.

It's rare to ever find mention of blind golf competition on any sports pages but they play the game with the same passion, enthusiasm and frustrations familiar to anyone who swings a club regularly.

"I'm good off the tee but my short game is not so hot. I enjoy playing so I keep coming back," says Gherasim who has taught at the CNIB for more than 20 years and has played golf since 1992.

"It's outdoors. There's comradeship. Social interaction. I play well occasionally and hit a good shot and that brings me back," says Hamilton, a Mississauga human rights and disabilities consultant who began loosing his sight as a youngster and is now completely blind.

Barb Clark of Bramalea didn't get around to taking up golf until 25 years ago at age 50.

"The snow was up to the windowsills one winter and I thought golf sounds good," she says.

She's been coaching husband Ralph Clark since 1992 after he lost his central vision to macular degeneration, the most common type of disease leading to blindness as people age. They play weekly during the summer - she stands next to him on the tee and lifts his arm and points in the direction of the fairway - and every day while at their winter home in Largo, Florida.

The first blind golf outing in Ontario was held in 1949. Nick Genovese, a lifelong Dundas resident, remembers because he was there.

"I'm the last of the originals," said Genovese, 76. He started out his career with blind golfing great Claude Pattemore of Hamilton, who died last year at age 76.

Pattemore, blinded by a dynamite explosion while working road construction at age 21, won more championships than any other Canadian - the Ontario title 14 times and the Canadian championship 12 times along with several international competitions. He was the first blind golfer in Canada to break 100 and his record low score of 86 lasted until 1989. He became a member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1996.

If Pattemore was the best, Genovese, who lost his sight in an industrial accident at age 17, is a close second.

Genovese wasn't even aware he was about to take up the game. His mother signed him up but forgot to tell him.

"I didn't know anything about it," said the former insurance agency owner and a professionally trained tenor. "A car showed up the next morning and off I went with three other blind guys."

He shot a 189 that first game, took some lessons and won his first tournament the following year on the way to a total of 32 wins, including 19 Ontario and six national titles.

"I'm going to keep playing until someone whips me really good. Then I'll put the clubs away," said Genovese, who added that he's frustrated because his distance off the tee has slipped to 210 yards from 240.

Outside of Ontario there are blind golf associations in Nova Scotia, Quebec and western Canada. They recently met to try and revive the defunct Canadian Blind Golfers Association that would represent about 100 players, a relatively large group considering the U.S. blind golf association has but 60 members.

"There's a lot of people out there who don't know we exist and if they did they might join us," said Ontario board member Rick Andrews, advocating for a national association.

Member Glenn Babcock is working at getting a website up and running and is hoping to attract new members.

Blind since birth, Babcock has been playing golf for as long as he can remember. His father and grandfather are both golf pros. Watching him address the ball is a lesson in proper form all in itself. He prefers to walk the course, taking advantage of what limited vision he has.

"I have 8 per cent vision. It may not sound like much to you but it is to me.

"I don't have very good depth perception. It's like a low-resolution (computer) monitor. But when that flag blows, I can see that," he said with conviction .

David Burnett, 54, president of End to End Networking Inc., a Markham communications firm, is the provincial association's major sponsor and a blind golfer for 15 years after losing his site entirely from a degenerative disease nearly 25 years ago.

He has the advantage of being able to visualize what is ahead of him on the golf course while listening to Paul Burnett, his coach and brother. He also knows what every blind golfer gets from the game.

"The satisfaction comes from the feel of the swing and the contact with the ball," he said. "I get the satisfaction and the desire to do better. You can always make a better shot and that's a satisfying feeling. You're playing against yourself and how you score week after week is what counts."

There isn't a golfer who would disagree.

Return to Archive list