Disabled golfers can play the game quite well. Here's proof.
by Rich Skyzinski and Sam Blair

SAM BLAIR is a golf writer who lives in Texas. This is his first contribution to the Journal in some time.

IS THE GOLF SWING really as difficult as most players make it out to be? Robert W. Montague and Dick Heartwell are living, breathing examples that the answer is a definitive "no."

Montague and Heartwell both maintain handicap indexes that don't waver very far from 7, pretty decent stuff in a world where the average is in the high teens. What makes their accomplishments special, however, is that both are amputees; each has had his left leg amputated.

"No, I really don't look at myself as an inspiration," said Montague, an emergency room physician from Chattanooga, Tenn., who's been on a self-induced golf sabbatical for several years, "and I guess the reason I say that is, I don't feel that it's that hard. . . . It looks dramatic to hit a golf ball on one leg, and especially hit some good shots, but if half the world had one leg, half of those people probably would be better than I am."

Montague and Heartwell, a 48-year-old manager at a Dallas energy company, came upon their golf successes from different directions. Montague didn't swing a golf club for the first time until he was 21, six years after he lost his leg to bone cancer. Heartwell held a 15 handicap before his leg was amputated in 1980, also to cancer, but then he relearned the swing and lowered his handicap by half.

"Golf really picked me up after I lost my leg," says Heartwell. "It helped me get my self-esteem and self-confidence."

Heartwell was an avid baseball and basketball player when he grew up in Fort Worth, where he graduated from Texas Christian University, and later found golf an enjoyable but not consuming pastime. After he lost his leg, he thought his entire lifestyle would change. It did for a while, until he was on a course in Huntsville, Texas, one day and his college buddy, Charlie Davis, invited him to get out of the cart and join him. Heartwell removed his prosthesis and took a swing at it.

"Charlie thought I should play from the women's tees and that I could throw out any ball I hit into a trap," Heartwell recalls. "Well, I got so good at that, Charlie moved me back to the men's tees and cut back on the strokes he was giving me. Now I have to give him strokes."

Like Heartwell, Montague has an artificial limb but still prefers to play on one leg.

"I had it (an artificial leg) for six or seven years and I just didn't like it," he said. "So I just put it in a closet and went on my merry way with my crutches. . . . And that first time, the first day we went out and rented clubs and hit balls, I just put it in the ground and put my crutches down and hit it."

Montague has tried to play with the artificial limb, but since he learned the golf swing using only one leg, doing it any other way has proved a difficult adaptation, one he's given up entirely.

"Frankly, it's a little bit difficult because I don't have the feeling of having done it on two legs. . . . This past winter, I went and just told the guy, 'I just want a peg -- kind of like Captain Ahab or something.'

"He said, 'What do you want that for?'

"I said, 'I want it to hit golf balls on and nothing else.'

"He said, 'Well, it won't look very good,' and I said, 'I don't care.'

"I just wanted the feeling, and I noticed some things right away. I noticed that, for a long time, when I'd set up, I'd have my hands high, and with another leg, I can't explain why, they just drop down lower. I hit probably a thousand golf balls last winter on this peg, and although I haven't played on it and don't expect to, you get the sensation of more of a weight transfer. I notice there's more things you can do -- you can stick the ball farther forward 'cause you get your weight over on your left side and hit the ball higher. With two legs you're parallel to the ground and to your target a little bit longer."

Golfers playing on one leg face two major obstacles: wind and awkward lies, the kind two-legged players might face when one foot's in the bunker and the other is out.

"I don't remember ever falling on a golf course," Heartwell contends. "Sometimes I'm in a sand trap, hit a ball and sit down, but that's not like falling.

"The wind can give me a fit. It's hard enough to balance myself on one leg. . . . I'm okay in a breeze, but gusts bother me. And real wet turf can foul me up."

"I think the main thing," adds Montague, "is that you need pretty good balance, and I've been on one leg long enough to have good balance. I snow ski, which has helped a great deal.

"But when I lose my balance, nine times out of 10 it's my own fault. It's not the wind blowing or it's not because I'm on one leg, because you can stay in balance pretty well on one leg if you've done it as long as I have."

Although neither is terribly surprised by the progress they've made, the reactions they generate when they play away from their home course can be classic.

Sam Woolwine is a sportswriter in Chattanooga, and every year he gets together with an old friend for a weekend of golf and catching up on old times. They each bring a guest, usually somebody different every year, and one time Woolwine asked Montague to be his partner.

"I called my friend and told him I was bringing someone with a big handicap," Woolwine explained. "I think I managed to get three strokes a side that year. As you might expect, they see Bob arrive at the first tee on crutches and they think I'm crazy or something. Bob hits first and booms a drive over the bunkers of this dogleg, and they just kind of stand there with their mouths open. If I remember correctly, we beat them straight up -- didn't even need the strokes."

Heartwell, who's won local and regional tournaments, would like to further participation in golf by disabled persons. As encouraged as he is by the growth of the National Amputee Golf Association, he wants to work with another old friend, Greg Jones, recent founder of the Association of Disabled American Golfers, to develop that group into an umbrella organization.

The USGA Foundation has, since 1992, distributed grants to more than a dozen organizations whose programs work with physically challenged golfers. Approximately $225,000 has been awarded thus far, including an allocation in 1993 of up to $25,000 to the ADAG for research on the effect of orthopedic equipment on golf courses. Special Olympics International has been a recipient in each of the three years.

"I don't know that there were disbelievers," said Montague, "but I had no doubt I could do it, and I think other people can do it, too. I don't think it's that hard.

"But it's not like turning on a light bulb; I don't know when it came. But I felt like from the very first hole my wife and I played . . . you know you can do it, and I knew nothing about the golf swing. All you have to do is work out how you do it."

THIS TRUCK WAS ARMED

AMPUTEE golfers face difficulties most others can't begin to imagine. So when your artificial limb is stolen, well, clearly, that's adding insult to injury.

It was early April when Wally Gross's pickup truck was ripped off. That wasn't a great surprise to the Portland, Ore., retiree; it had been stolen twice before, but each time he was fortunate enough to have it recovered only a few blocks from home.

Only this time Gross had his prosthetic right arm -- the one he uses to shoot in the mid- to high 80s on a regular basis -- behind the driver's seat. It wasn't as though he was intentionally keeping it out of sight because he feared its theft; that's where he always put it. And, as he asks quite logically, "Who'd steal an arm?"

The story of the hot truck with the prosthesis behind the seat was told in the Portland newspaper a week or so after the incident. After reading the story, a North Portland man wondered if the abandoned truck on the street outside his house was the one police were looking for. Sure enough, it was, and a short time later Gross was reunited with the prosthetic arm he had made especially to grip a golf club.

The thieves also took two pairs of golf shoes, leaving another pair behind, but Gross evidently wasn't distraught over the incident. A few days later, he had his prosthetic arm precisely where it belonged -- in place -- as he headed to the golf course.

-- Rich Skyzinski