"Many Contest the Title of World's Most Aamazing Golfer "

By Randy Hill
FOXSportsArizona.com

RIO VERDE, Ariz. -- The name Bob MacDermott probably doesn't provoke an immediate memory click, but this guy has been defined as the "World's Most Amazing Golfer" by Golf Magazine.

The distinction was published in 2007, although we wouldn't be surprised to hear the relentlessly candid and humble Canadian is working on a five-peat. But the competition for Most Amazing is fierce.

And it seems to be all around him.

MacDermott had checked in at the Rio Verde Country Club and was getting the lay of the land in preparation for a national tournament. As an at-least-once bestowed member of the WMAG club, MacDermott was more than happy to dispense a measure of related wisdom.

"It's about having a positive attitude and going forward," he said moments before moving straight into a bunker, settling in on a prosthetic left leg, gripping a club with a right hand missing its thumb and bumping a cup-adjacent shot onto the green with the assistance of prosthetic left arm. "How bad to you want it?"

Regardless of how anyone factors the pursuit of their personal "it," MacDermott's practice partner before last week's 63rd Annual National Amputee & Senior Golf Championship is no slouch when it comes to perspective

"Golf's harder than surgery."

Credit that instant-classic quotation to Dr. Lucian Newman III of Gadsden, Ala., who was a seven-time tournament champion at his hometown country club. That was before his left arm was blown off above the elbow during a hunting accident six years ago. A lifetime golfer who played for his college team, Newman returned to the links with a prosthetic device and -- competing against the "normies" at his club -- finished second.

Oh, right. He also returned to see patients just 10 days after accidentally tripping the safety and trigger of a resting deer-hunting rifle with the foot plate of his hunting boot. Now assisted by an electric prosthetic, Newman still maintains a full case load.

"General surgeon," he said. "Blood and guts."

While crushing a drive down the center of the fairway, it was easy to deduce that Newman must be one hell of a surgeon.

We'll catch up with MacDermott and Newman in a bit. Between now and then, their amazing ability to remain positive and move forward will be multiplied by a few other members of the 128-player championship field, which this year represented 24 states, eight countries and the best we should hope to find in ourselves.

THE STAND-UP GUYS
According to several National Amputee Golf Association "lifers," humor isn't a crutch, it's a way of life around the golf course and 19th hole. Giving as good as they get, those who've lost an arm may offer little outward mercy for those missing a leg. It's a fraternal pass with liberal application.

Mike Carver takes hits from both sides.

"I'm an easy-way amputee," Carver, a lifelong resident of Holcomb, Miss., said. "I was born this way."

"This way" translates to a short stump where his right arm should be, a prosthetic instead of a right leg and a left hand with a thumb and two useful fingers that required surgical separation.

"You never miss things you never had," he said. "But growing up, I was never treated any differently."

Carver, a right-hander without right-hand portfolio, smacks his tee shots with the left hand ... tennis back-hand style. Given the circumstance, the distance is pretty credible. But the accuracy -- the biggest reason why Carver would go on to finish second in the multiple-amputee division of this tournament -- is nuts.

"My strength," he said, tongue firmly in cheek, "is my short game."

Carver -- who won two tournaments this past summer -- took on every sport he could manage as a kid, playing football in the front yard and baseball in the local Little League.

"He didn't play first base ... he was first base."

This well-timed moment of levity is supplied by Florida resident Kevin Valentine, who was sharing a few practice shots -- and yucks -- with Carver on the driving range.

"In the amputee world," Valentine said, "I'm barely handicapped."

But his story is miles from ordinary.

Valentine -- who grew up in Texas and played collegiate golf at the University of Oakland in Michigan -- was playing roadside Good Samaritan to a woman with a mini-van and a flat tire. He was hit by a car whose driver had taken a visual break from the road to change the radio station.

When Valentine eventually woke up in the hospital, he could hear his wife, Melissa, talking with the doctor about a patient.

"I had no idea what had happened to me," he said. "They were talking about someone who was going to lose his leg. I was feeling sorry the guy. But my wife kept asking questions, and I started wondering why she was so interested in that guy."

That was Christmas Day 1997.

Now navigating the course on a prosthetic right leg, Valentine -- a two-time overall winner at the NAGA nationals -- said his golf game is as good as it was in college. But his perspective never will be the same.

"In some ways, I'm more compassionate," he said, referring to his approach to people with struggles that may approach or even trump his own. "But this has made me less compassionate toward those who blow up issues that just aren't that important."

As if to underscore the point, he nodded toward Carver, who has returned to the practice tee.

"Look at Mike," Valentine said. "He's amazing."

Bill Harding agreed.

"Watching Mike is worth the price of admission," Harding said. "Well, if they charged admission."

THE LOCAL
Harding lives in Chandler and also is worth watching because he's won this tournament three times. His last triumph occurred in 1987, but Harding -- who lost his left leg to an industrial accident back in '66 -- still knows his way around any course.

"I'm competitive," he said. "I still play to a 5-handicap. But the big thing around here is the camaraderie. Here, you don't see any frowns. It's all smiles and giggles.

"But there's just as much competition here as there is in any tour that's played."

THE PRO
Kim Moore, a working golf professional at Elcona Country Club in Elkhart, Ind., seemed to be jones-ing for competition. She was friendly, self-effacing and quick to acknowledge the amputee golf circuit as an important part of her life. Now 30, her resume includes a run through Q school and the LPGA Futures Tour.

Moore absolutely murdered a practice tee shot at Rio Verde, and the guys around her shook their heads.

But despite sharing and appreciating the karma, this was a business trip.

"I try to play the whole field," Moore said, "not just the ladies."

By the end of the week, she had beaten all of the ladies in the National Amputee & Seniors Golf Championship nine years in a row. This year, her score placed her fourth overall, regardless of gender.

Moore, born without a right foot, grew up in Fort Wayne, Ind., and developed a love of competition in an otherwise typical life.

"Everybody treated me the same," she said. "I usually was the only one out there like that (disabled), but it was pretty normal to me."

"Out there" included the basketball court, where speed and agility requirements rose exponentially as Moore and her peers became older.

Golf became her competitive salvation.

"The rules are the same for everybody," Moore said.

THE VET
When the rules at venerable St. Andrews became more the same for everybody, Mike Reeder went to work.

Golf carts no longer would be out of the question, and Reeder was focused on finally playing the legendary Old Course in Scotland. The golf cart really comes in handy for Reeder, who has stumps where his legs used to be.

"A mortar round took my legs," Reeder, a medic in Vietnam, said after providing a detailed, verbal replay. "April Second ... Nineteen-seventy.

"That was 41 years ago ... in a galaxy far, far away. That's how I start the story when I talk to kids."

Like many of those around him this week, Reeder doesn't mind trading on his disability for a chance to become an inspiration for others new to similar situations. It didn't hurt that his St. Andrews quest, his "big ta-da moment" -- chaperoned into reality by the Challenged Athletes Foundation and Perry Golf Tours -- was co-opted by ESPN's "E60."

"It was supposed to be a casual round of golf," Reeder said, "but it turned into a three-ring circus. They (ESPN) finished with over 300 hours of video."

So just how did Reeder go from legless Vietnam vet to inspirational golfer?

"Twenty-three years ago," he said. "It happened as a fluke."

Reeder was in a golf shop, attempting to make a gift purchase for a friend.

"A guy there asked if I'd ever tried swingin' from a wheelchair."

Armed with a five-wood, Reeder gave it a whirl ... and a ride.

"I caught it dead-solid perfect," he said. "I thought 'Damn, now I gotta learn how to play this game.' "

After 23 years, Reeder still relishes this annual reunion of fraternity members whose national-championship zeal was muted somewhat early in the week by the passing of Don Bigler.

"He was a major force in the NAGA," Reeder said of Bigler, the tournament chairman and former Arizona State football player who died after a massive heart attack a week before the tournament. "We really lost a friend."

BACK TO MACDERMOTT AND THE DOCTOR
"Golf is a big-muscle game," Newman said while explaining how the loss of limbs can be mitigated by generating power through the torso. "Guys who focus on the hands or feet are making a mistake. Out here, you'll see many examples of guys who've adjusted.

"Our club pro has video of me before and after the accident. My swing now matches almost perfectly to what it was before the accident. It's amazing how similar it is."

It also should be noted that when he's not in surgery or golfing, this doctor still hunts.

"If you have a car wreck, you still drive, don't you?" Newman, who would go on to finish first in the above-elbow flight of the NAGA tournament, said. "It was just a stupid accident."

For MacDermott, Aug. 23, 1987, was just a rotten day all around.

And it all began with his decision to skip a local golf tournament and assist his father in harvesting wheat. The first domino was a power pole that MacDermott -- miscalculating the distance while aboard a tractor -- took out with the cultivator. A couple of bad, anger-provoked decisions later, he was in the back of an ambulance, still conscious, heading for the hospital.

"I had taken the fourteen-five (14,500 volts)," he said before going chapter and verse on how the electricity entered through his hand and took a quick detour south. "My feet were still sizzlin' like roast beef through my running shoes."

That was the relative good news.

During an 80 mph rush to the hospital, two blown tires helped escort the ambulance into a field, with MacDermott going out the back doors and into the world of amputee golf.

"It was going septic," he said. "It was either my limbs or my life. But I never lost a year of golf.

"Golf became an addiction," said MacDermott, who went on to win the multiple-amputee division and finish seventh overall at Rio Verde. "It's been therapy. It helps you keep your sanity when you're trying to overcome some things. These are just opportunities to test yourself."

And if this event helped translate the message for a few newcomers to disability, the Most Amazing Golfer sweepstakes would be impossible to judge.