Feel Good Stories....that make you feel *horrible*

The next time you're struggling on the range or embarrassing yourself on the course and feel inclined to blame your equipment, the playing conditions or the killer shoulder workout you did earlier in the week which simply *must* be affecting your swing, consider the following feel good stories which should at the very least keep you from ever blaming your terribly outdated, 2007, if-only-I-had-access-to-the-latest-technology-like-the-pros-I'd-break-80 driver for your golfing woes.

• There are a number of blind golfers who play staggeringly well. "Define staggering," you say? A blind golfer has shot a 74 during tournament play. Of course, you can take some solace in the fact that he was allowed to ground his club in a hazard, so he, too, had built in advantages you aren't allowed.
• So let's up the ante and take the hazard factor out of the equation. In March of 2005, a blind golfer just shy of 80 years old recorded a hole in one on the 170 yard par 3 11th hole at the Twin Pines Golf Club.

Complete lack of eyesight in a highly visual game not quite enough to convince you that blaming the new grooves rule for your nonexistent short game might not be the most empathy-inducing excuse at your disposal? Fine then, let's play hardball:

• Butch Lumpkin has *no arms* and ONE FLIPPER (yes, there's a horrible golf joke in there about keeping your hands ahead of the ball at impact). Yet he's a 9 handicap who some time back stopped considering it a big deal to break 80.
  
• Or how about George Utley, the Idaho golfer without the advantage of that one flipper. He has no arms or upper body appendages whatsoever, golfs using his armpits and has shot an 81.

"But golf's a game of using the legs," the most stubborn reader might insist. "Once you learn to use your legs and hips your arms might as well be non-existent; my instructor said so!" Well, you know where I'm going with that one. Predictable? Of course. But let's quickly profile a med student born with no legs who regularly shot in the 80s (from a makeshift stool so he could use regulation clubs....a stool which he would topple off of several times a round if really trying to carry a drive).

So there you have it: feel good stories, that if you're anything like me when it comes to explaining away a bad shot ("ahhh, these spikes are new, I can't transfer my weight as precisely as I'd like just yet until they're broken in a bit"), should make you feel pretty damn horrible.