Business Advisor Enabling Golf Making Golf Courses Accessible To Golfers With Disabilities by Gordon Grant Garry Gore is a `thirtysomething' who loves to play golf, gets a big thrill out of making good shots, enjoys beating his buddies and shoots in the 90s. That may sound like a pretty average to good player. But the fact is Garry Gore can't walk and must use a wheelchair to get around a course. Garry, however, is more than just a golfer with a disability. He's an avid promoter of golf for the disabled as the President of the Disabled Golfers Association of Ontario. The DGAO is a non-profit organization whose goal is to create awareness of and participation in golf for people like himself. The reality of Garry's situation and that of others like him, poses a challenge to golf course owners. How do you accommodate golfers with disabilities who are just as keen and perhaps more so than your regular customers? And what does the law require you to do to make your course accessible to them? Gore isn't just a `one-off' golfer. He says he stopped counting how many rounds he played last year when the number reached 55. "And I'm not a fair-weather golfer, either," he told Golf Business. "I spent 200 bucks on rain gear and just love being out there, except when there's lightning." Starting off with his normal wheel-chair, Gary recently switched to the increasingly popular Lone Rider cart, a single-person golf cart designed for the disabled. What is the typical initial reaction when Gore shows up at a club with his Lone Rider? "Where the hell do you think you're going with that?" "My response to this is - "If you'll have a little patience, I'll show you." We go to the practice green and I show them there's no damage and usually everything's OK." Gary Robb, the golf specialist with the National Centre on Accessibility on the campus of the University of Indiana in Bloomington says "some courses are very receptive to making the game accessible to the disabled, but some courses are not. That seems to be because they don't have the knowledge, they're scared of things they don't know about."
It seems most owners and players in Canada haven't given much thought to the disabled golfer, because until recently there had been relatively few of them. Most have seen players with one arm or with walking aids, but few owners have even considered allowing disabled players' carts onto the most hallowed of golf ground territory the greens. In the United States, the picture is radically different. It is estimated that there are 54 million people with disabilities who could take up golf. And there's the Americans With Disabilities Act which has set standards for accessibility that new golf courses must follow. The requirements in the Act, however, are described as being "pretty benign" by Gary Robb. And the case of Casey Martin vs. the PGA has raised awareness of this issue. People with disabilities can play golf Ñ at any level, not just the PGA tour. Robb says ADA style legislation will get tougher and course owners will eventually have to view the untapped market of the disabled as a profit opportunityñand develop it. So getting the disabled onto the course may be not just a matter of following the law, it may also be good business. For example, almost every disabled golfer brings able-bodied people to the course with them. Disabled persons seldom show up alone at a course. Ontario disabled golfers president Garry Gore, who lives in Georgetown, became paraplegic in 1988 when he was involved in a car crash. He figured his days on the golf course would never be anything but a memory. He had a neighbor who works for Mizuno and "one day he was messing around with his clubs in his driveway. I went over and told him the things I really missed were golf and hockey. "He handed me a club and told me to swing it. I couldn't hit the ball well because the lie was all wrong. A couple of days later he showed up with the club and I hit the ball pretty well. He'd had the angles changed." That made Gore so happy he bought a set of clubs and started playing again regularly three years ago. He says he's only had one major problem and that was when an owner told him to "have your lawyer talk to my lawyer if you want to play my course." "I didn't bother showing up. I don't want to give my business to that sort of person," Gore said.
It's that kind of attitude that Gore and the Disabled Golfers Association of Ontario wants to change. The association wants to show course owners that carts like the Lone Riders do not damage greens and that disabled golfers know the rules and etiquette of the game. The association runs clinics and seminars for the disabled on rules and regulations and lets members know about equipment. It runs four tournaments a year and wants to get into a position where it can afford to buy about half-a-dozen single rider carts that it can lease to courses. "Courses would be able to get them from us to rent to golfers only when they are needed," Gore said. The DGAO will also help other provinces set up an association for the disabled golfer, as it is currently doing in Saskatchewan. Gore said one of the toughest jobs of the association is educating disabled people to the fact that they can play golf, a sentiment echoed by Cam Dougall whose company makes the Lone Rider cart. It's hard to get the message to people in chairs that they can golf and enjoy it. "The easiest ones to convince are young people, perhaps those who have had spinal cord injuries that are a recent thing in their life, said Dougall. "They're ambitious and energetic. They say Ð I'm going to play golf - and they do." Two courses in the U.S., Clemson University in Clemson, S.C., and Fox Hollow in Denver, Colo., have built courses with accessibility in mind. Says Robb, "They paid attention to such things as the location of cart paths in relation to greens and tee boxes. The Fox Hollow course is in the Denver foothills and it's very hilly. They've built a way into bunkers and a way out for single rider carts." There are a few courses in Ontario that have worked at making themselves accessible to the golfer who must be in a cart for the whole game, including National Pines in Barrie, and a par-three, Cedar Links, near Barrie. "Hornby Glen in Georgetown is accessible now that I'm a member," said Gore. "After my first year there it got a new owner, James Snow, who was the former transport minister of Ontario, and he's made some good changes," said Gore. Not coincidentally, Ed Membery had a hand in construction at both National Pines and Cedar Links. He's a former golf pro and a former president of the Disabled Golfers Association of Ontario.
And he can only navigate a golf course these days by riding in a cart that can go onto tees and greens. He suffered from polio as a youngster and while he was able to golf with the aid of canes for many years and do it well enough to be a pro Ð that's no longer possible. He must play from a cart from tee to green. Those who have studied the issue say carts don't damage the putting surface. Garry Gore says that he and his fellow Lone Riders don't wheel around the greens. "I wait until it's my shot and go straight to my ball and then get off the green. I don't make turns or sit on the greens." "Our carts exert less than eight pounds of pressure per square inch, which is less than when a golfer walks on a green," said Cam Dougall, president of Lone Rider, Canada's sole manufacturer of single rider golf carts. "The pounds per square inch of pressure on the green is no greater than mowing equipment, and the last time I looked most golf courses used machines on greens," Ed Membery notes. "That means they must have access, too." He added, however, it's "a long, slow process" for greens superintendents to get that message. He agrees with Gore that the initial reaction at courses in general is negative. "But when we explain and demonstrate on a practice green that the carts don't make marks or do any damage, they come around." Membery thinks there's greater awareness in the golf community about the disabled. In fact, the United States Golf Association has developed rules for the handicapped, such as being able to take the ball out of a trap with a one-stroke penalty, of course and playing from the grass. But he says no matter what happens, some courses can never be totally accessible to the disabled, "like getting in and out of pot bunkers or getting to tee boxes that have steps leading up to them." A final concern is pace of play. "Disabled golfers do not slow the game down," said Pretekin unequivocally. "And not only do they not hold up people, they're almost always well versed in good behaviour on courses. "In the scramble I played in with three disabled guys in solo riders, not only did we blow people away with our 58, we waited on most tees. A lot of people
learned something that day. When we received the first prize, the applause was thunderous." Gore said he understands owners' concerns about pace of play. "I would say four guys in chairs would be slower than four able-bodied guys. But our association teaches the rules of golf, including etiquette and urges members to let faster players through. So what if it takes us six hours for a round if we love playing?" As for Gore, he plays mostly with able-bodied golfers and beats many of them.