Hitting a golf ball properly is difficult enough.  Doing it without the ability to see where you're hitting is
immeasurably harder. This afternoon, several dozen blind and visually impaired golfers from around Ontario will tee off at a local course proving that the game isn't the exclusive domain of the visual.

By Scott Radley The Hamilton Spectator

The swing is quite lovely. Starts with a smooth, controlled windup. A strong but not looking-to-send-the-ball-into a-different-area-code pivot follows. And the follow through is excellent. As a package, most golfers  would be happy with it.

Problem was, the guy attached to the club does what we all do too often. The instant his seven-iron makes contact with the ball, his head doesn't stay down, but jerks up to watch the launch. That one movement turns his Mona Lisa into a Velvet Elvis that slices angrily off to the right.

The air under his breath turns a mild shade of blue for a moment. Not because he gave in to the temptation to watch what he thought was going to be the majestic flight of his ball. But because it was so senseless.  Gary Saxon is completely blind.

"Oh, I call myself an #$!!&$% three, four, five times a round," the east end resident says, laughing at the inanity of the problem.  This afternoon, he'll be doing his muttering at Chippewa Creek as one of about 30 players competing in an Ontario Visually Impaired Golfers tournament. The 60-year-old retired teacher is not only OVIG's membership co-ordinator, but one of a growing group of visually impaired duffers who're taking up the sport that's been around forever but that's always seemed to stay in the shadows.

Legend has it that in 1937 at the Waterdown Golf Club, a Hamiltonian named Charlie Toot  played the first-ever round of blind golf. He'd been encouraged to give it a try by a coach of blind bowlers named Jock McCallum who thought golf could work for those without sight. Turned out he was right. Nine years later, Tooth won the first international competition ever, shooting a 61 over nine holes.

While that score was hardly anything to be ashamed of, two more Hamiltonians would come along and obliterate the mark over and over again. Claude Pattemore, who lost his sight in a construction explosion, won the Ontario Blind Golfers' Championship 14 times and the Canadian crown 12 times. He was the first Canadian to break 100 and on his best day, shot an 86. And Nick Genovese, whose sight was claimed by a welding accident, won the Ontario title 19 times and added six Canadia  championships. Both men died withi  the past year or so.

For a number of years, the city officially encouraged the sport by offering a grant that gave blind golfers the opportunity toplay at Chedoke for free. That was cut off five years ago.

"It's unfortunate because some of the guys really relied on it," Saxon says. Considering that all the usual rules of regular golf apply -- having the coach alongside, being able to set up the club in the sand in a bunker and picking up the ball after reaching five-over-par on any hole are the only exceptions -- the loss of that practice time hurt.

Not only do blind players naturally cover the course a bit more slowly -- more than a few walk holding their club face and using the shaft as a cane to feel their way along -- but they need a sighted coach to accompany them to help with direction, distance and spotting the ball.  Those folks aren't always easy to find though. That cuts down on playing opportunities.

And if you think you need time on the course to improve your game, throw on a blindfold sometime and see how much work you'd need to improve without being able to see what you're doing.  Canadian golfing savant Moe Norman used to tell people to close their eyes while practising to develop muscle memory and eliminate reliance on vision. It might've even worked for him but for mortal golfers, it's a thoroughly discombobulating experience.

It's not until the lids are down that you realize how much of the game is visual. Aiming at a target. Depth perception. Making the club face connect with the ball. Just check any golf magazine or watch the Golf Channel for a few minutes and you'll realize that nearly every teaching aid relies on sight.

In the dark, you're suddenly aware of every movement and you realize what an odd sequence of events makes up a golf swing. Then there's the whole issue of self-confidence.  Who's watching? How idiotic is it going to look to take a huge cut and miss everything? Or worse, to catch the ground a foot before the ball and jar your body so hard your spleen ricochets off your kidney?

And aiming seems impossible.  There are just too many variables that can affect the flight path of a ball without the ability to compensate or make adjustments in midswing.

"You do have some benefits though," Saxon says. "You don't have to go into the woods to get your ball.  You send your coach."

It's one of plenty of jokes he cracks about his game. Says they'd hold the tournament at night if they could because they'd get better rates but those darn coaches have to see the ball. Discusses the time he drove the cart for awhile. Sure the game is frustrating, but he laughs because it's fun, too.

Born with only 10 per cent vision, he spent most of his life seeing little. Swimming underwater with his eyes open is how he describes what he could see before the last light went out altogether about a decade ago.  He was an athlete who ran and participated in sports, but never golfed even though his dad was an avid player. Didn't even take it up when his son won the junior championship at Kings Forest.

"Golf was something that was, like, five hours," he says.  "I could go out and run 20 miles in that time."

But there was more to it than that. Until about 10 years ago, he did all he could to hide his condition. Many of his students never knew he couldn't see. He didn't want to be perceived as being different but eventually, keeping it secret became impossible.

So, five years ago as part of a greater decision to get on with life as a blind man, he took up the game. These days he gets out eight or nine times a summer but wants more. The feeling of a good shot is just too appetizing.

With no way to admire his shot visually, he gets his feedback by touch and sound. The two senses tell him instantly when he's caught a good one.  "The contact of the ball on the club doesn't feel hard or sound tinny," he says. "You just hear smack and you know you've got a hold of it."  Other blind golfers have even more refined senses of hearing and touch.  During a recent day on the course, Brantford comedian and avid golfer Gord Paynter was able to correctly identify the distance and direction of not only his own shots, but those of others simply by the noise they made.

"It's feel, sound, balance, tempo, rhythm," Paynter explains. Standing on the driving range of the Satellite course at Highway 20 and Mud Street -- a place once owned by Claude Pattemore -- Saxon picks up his five-wood, gets some help to set his club, and swings.  "That one felt nice," he says.

At almost the same moment the words tumble out of his mouth, the ball makes landfall. Three bounces later, it stops. It's sitting just past the 200-yard marker after a perfectly straight flight.

His head is still down.