Six Is Only Handicap Worth Mentioning to One-Armed Champion

Golf, you say, is a hard game. You think hitting fairways, avoiding bunkers, reading greens and breaking 90 without clubbing a ball washer in frustration is an accomplishment to celebrate?

Please. Try playing 18 holes in Vince Biser's body.

Biser, 21, from Baltimore, recently won the North American One-Armed Golfer Association championship played on extremely difficult PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the same course where the PGA Tour's Honda Classic is held. The winner suffers from cerebral palsy, has limited vision, virtually no use of the entire right side of his upper body and, as a result of surgery five years ago required to alleviate debilitating seizures, is missing a section of his brain.

What Biser does have is two tons of positive attitude and a USGA-certified 6 handicap to show for it. His career-low round at the Country Club of Maryland where he plays with father, Andy, is 74.

Able to swing clubs only with his left arm, Biser regularly hits tee balls 240 yards and uncorked a 290-yard smash during play at PGA National. He can launch arching wedge shots and putts like a guy carrying a 6 handicap should.

"Just a lot of time hitting balls,'' Biser says. "I feel pretty good about playing really well.''

Only a rock form could not share that joy.

Born with his affliction, Biser found early support in a Baltimore sports program for disabled children. "They were well know in the disability world for teaching kids they can before someone tells them they can't,'' Andy said. Vince liked baseball most but, more importantly, was drawn to all activities.

As he grew older, however, occasional seizures became frequent attacks. Vince was soon taking handfuls of anti-seizure medications that only served to knock him out.

"Sometimes he'd sleep all day," dad remembered.

By high school, with any quality of life diminishing by the day, Vince was judged a good candidate for a medical procedure called a hemispherectomy, an intensive operation that could relieve the seizures by removing a part of his brain that was generating the attacks.

The recovery was long -- well over a year -- and painful, but the seizures finally were gone and it wasn't long before Vince again was itching for activity.

"To be honest, the real reason we joined the country club was social," Andy said. "So he could play some golf and be around people. Bring him out of his shell."

Now everybody at the club knows Vince. And the smart ones want him as a partner.

"He's a tremendous young guy,'' said Alan Gentry. "He has unbelievable talent.''



Gentry knows from a first-hand look. The former hydrogeologist, who lost an arm from his elbow down to a drill rig, is the executive director of the North American One-Armed Golfer Association, and was at PGA National as a competitor and organizer.

The NAOAGA is in its eighth year of operation. It formed in Louisville, Ky., where, according to Gentry, "a few of us basically decided to put on a golf tournament for one-armed guys."

The idea grew from the simplest of reasons. Fill a need.

"We played amputee golf for several years and felt there was need for awareness for the one-armed prosthetic industry,'' Gentry said. "Arm prosthetics were just not moving forward like legs were in our opinion. The industry felt like there was not a market for it, to be honest with you.

"So we just decided to start this separate organization.''

The labor was a passion. Previously involved in amputee golf, Gentry had assisted with a program called First Swing, a group that provided rehabilitation professionals and physical therapists to teach golf to the physically challenged. He had seen and experienced what opportunities to compete and be active can do for attitudes and wellness.

"I was participating in those clinics and seeing the joy and inspiration on the faces of these patients and they wanted to get out and learn the game,'' Gentry said. "But some really had no place to turn to from a competitive standpoint. The amputee association is limited to amputees. Our one-armed association kind of filled a niche that was out there.''

Now the organization is growing with some 150 members who are proud of their handicap.

Ask Mike Carver of Granada, Miss.

He is the guy with one leg, one arm and only three fingers who on several occasions has shot 69 on 6,500-yard courses.

And, yes, he has become accustomed to strangers seeing him on a golf course, stopping, staring and finally asking about his handicap.

"It's single digit,'' he will proudly respond.

"I tell those guys who have lost a limb, I got mine the easy way. I was born this way,'' Carver says. "I didn't go through having it and losing it. That's a big difference. When I was born, I just adapted to what I had.''

As a child Carver often accompanied an uncle who played golf, riding and watching from the cart.

"I tried it,'' he said. "Well, I might be able to do this.''

Similar thoughts served as a common thread for the 47 players who gathered at PGA National, a cross section of maladies, accidents and challenges.

A number of participants had lost arms in automobile or motorcycle accidents. One was a victim of an alligator, another a utility worker who fell into live electrical wires. Still others were victims of birth defects, strokes or illness.

All were bonded by a shared desire not to be left on the sidelines.

There were two divisions: Unassisted, where the golfer plays with one hand only on the club, and assisted, where the player uses a prosthetic arm or hand or a residual stump as a result of a permanent disability.

While Vince Biser won the unassisted title, John Trenchik of Toledo, Ohio, took the assisted division.

"I just can't say enough about the association,'' Andy Biser said. "People can have a good time playing golf and forget about their disabilities because they can do it.''

Golf, as it turns out, is the easy part.