Feeling cynical about golf? The U.S. Adaptive Open will restore your faith

ROCKVILLE, Md. — When was the last time you believed in golf?

I don’t mean enjoyed it. Golf, like late-night food and cold beer, is good even when it’s bad. I mean believed in it. In what it stands for. In its ideals and principles. In not only what it is but also what it is supposed to be.

If you would like to believe in golf, I know a place. The practice range on Monday morning at Woodmont Country Club here at the U.S. Adaptive Open, where about half of the field of 96 mostly amateur golfers was preparing for the opening round at golf’s biggest event for disabled players.

The players come from all over the world, and for all kinds of reasons, but money is not one of them. The Adaptive Open has no purse or payouts, and is operated at a heavy loss by the governing body that runs it, the USGA. In a refreshing inversion of the current professional golf climate, everybody at the Adaptive Open loses money, and nobody feels too badly about it.

That’s because of who’s on the tee sheet.

Some players are missing limbs, either because they were born that way (Juan Postigo) or because life decided it was a part of their story (Jordan Thomas); others have custom-fit prosthetics (Meredith Dwyer). Some have swings meticulously grooved to find the slot with only one arm (Andy Austen); others play despite remarkable physical challenges (Max Togisala tied his own PR on Tuesday with a 67 … shot from the seat of a three-wheeled VertaCat golf cart). Still others compete under the category for intellectual impairments (as was the case with Kody Conover — otherwise known as “Kody with a K” — perhaps the field’s most joyful competitor, who has Down Syndrome).

Some shot scores as low as nine under par (Kipp Popert, who won his fourth straight Adaptive on Wednesday afternoon with a closing 63); others carded putt-’em-all-out 113s (Kellie Valentine, a legendary adaptive golfer who competed for three decades before the Adaptive Open came around, and who won’t stop competing anytime soon if she has any say in it).

Some came even though they weren’t in the field at all, driving or flying to Maryland only for the chance to spend a few days supporting their people … and maybe to feel a little bit supported, too. (Matt Parker, an adaptive player from Chicago, failed to qualify for the Open but came anyway, to caddie for Jordan Thomas.)

They — along with the USGA — are united by a single word: community. For too many years, these golfers existed on the fringes of the sport. Hidden from the people and places and competitions that mattered. Shunted into ceremonial roles, forced to compete under archaic rules explicitly rejected by the USGA or, worse yet, forgotten about altogether.

Now, these athletes annually convene at the Adaptive Open, an event with all the trappings of elite tournament golf: ritzy player dining, designated parking, travel stipends (courtesy of Deloitte) and old-school mantle-worthy trophies. For three days, they compete for overall men’s and women’s prizes, and also against others with similar disabilities, in one of several categories stipulated by the USGA.

All for national-title bragging rights.

“This is incredible,” said Jordan Thomas, a double-leg amputee who won the low score for the men’s lower-leg category. “Adaptive golf is on the rise. I have friends who I see all the time at events. And, yeah, we have events now, and some of those events are even paying money. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

It is something. It hits you on the practice range, which is filled not only with golf clubs but also with wheelchairs and motorized scooters, with crutches and canes, with prosthetic legs and seeing-eye caddies. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen on a golf course — or that many of the players themselves have seen.

“It’s absolutely our Super Bowl,” Thomas says. “Are you kidding me? Look around at this. There is nothing else like this.”

For so many of the competitors, the point isn’t even about representation or ability — it’s about the simple joy of time outdoors competing with oneself. You can’t know how good those simple miracles feel until you’ve genuinely wondered whether you’ll ever have them again.

Asked Tuesday what message she had for her fellow paraplegics, Annie Hayes, a 63-year-old in the seated ladies category, said, “You should play the game. You don’t have to give it up.”

Hayes was speaking soon after a round in which she had made her first-ever eagle.

That sense of perseverance applies far beyond just the seated ladies category, where Hayes was the lone competitor this week. It also applies to those who wondered if golf could ever ascribe to its highest calling as a unifier and connector without falling victim to its pitfalls of exclusion and cloisteredness. At the Adaptive, you don’t have to give up that dream, either. You can believe.

And when it hits you that golf can be this way, that it can be this good? It’s a bit overwhelming.

“When you talk about the unifying power of golf, is there a better event than this one?” USGA president Kevin Hammer said Wednesday. “This is the single most joyful event I’ve ever attended.”

My job for this week has been simple: To cover golfers playing in their national championship. To open our increasingly clouded and dispassionate and cynical eyes to a golf tournament that is none of these things. To tell the stories of players who have overcome towering challenges, and who have chosen compassion over bitterness. I could not tell every story in the field. Not even close.

I can tell you that this week felt like community. Like something to care about. Like belief.

When was the last time you believed in golf? When was the last time sports made you believe in anything?

If it’s been too long, there’s a quick fix: Visit the range at the U.S. Adaptive Open.