Miss-Delectable
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STLtoday - Sports - Columnists
The putt was simple and true as it rolled slowly off the face of Kevin Hall's putter. It was a "gimme" that barely traveled two feet before the little white ball trickled over the trimmed edge of grass, dropped into the white plastic cup and made that distinctive plllllunnnnkkkk of a ball rattling around in the bottom of the hole.
But Hall didn't hear the ball rattle. He also didn't hear the crickets chirping in the tall reeds, or the gentle drizzle pelting the surface of the greenside lake, the wind whistling through tree branches, or the songbirds' sweet serenade.
These are the sweet sounds most of us take for granted whenever we play a round of golf. They are nature's Muzak, the background music Mother Nature provides as we hack our way around the course. Yet none of the competitors who toured the spectacular Far Oaks Golf Club on Tuesday afternoon could hear any of those sounds, because this was the first round of the U.S. Deaf Golf Championships.
If you stood back at a distance, you would never know that the 24-year-old Hall was deaf. He has the easy swing of a professional tour player. He has the confident swagger of an athlete who knows he can play this game better than most. But there is something different about Hall, a former Big Ten champion from Ohio State. He is the best deaf golfer in America, maybe in the world. He is the first deaf athlete to compete in a PGA event (he's played in five since turning pro three years ago), and currently earns his keep on the Nationwide Tour. In Tuesday's first round, he shot a bogey-free, 4-under 68 and sits atop the leaderboard of this four-day event.
He will head to the PGA Tour qualifying tournament later this year, and after two near-misses, he hopes days like this are hints that he's on the verge of securing his PGA Tour card. "I think I am pretty close," he said through an interpreter. "I just have to improve my mental game. If I can do that, there's no doubt in my mind I can get that card. I get impatient sometimes. That impatience influences the outcome of my scores."
If you have ever swung a golf club and achieved even some brief moment of golf perfection, you surely can gain a large level of appreciation for watching men and women like Hall and all the other deaf golfers play without the advantage of hearing. Golf is most of all a hand-eye-coordination sport. Yet there is no small benefit to the sense of sound in enjoying the game. The club swishing through the grass cleanly, smartly clipping the blades and slashing into the ball is one of the sport's sweetest sounds. A ball well-struck, with the echo of metal pinging into that compressed, dimpled ball and the distinct rattle of a ball falling into the cup are all auditory sensations that a golfer feeds off.
But Hall has never experienced those sensations.
He lost his sense of hearing when he was 2 years old and a bout of meningitis, which nearly killed him, robbed him of his hearing. "But he never slowed down because of it," said his father, Percy. "He bowled, he played baseball. He was good enough that they wanted him to pitch on a select team. But when he was 9, he was asked if he wanted to try golf, and he said yes, and the game just came natural to him."
He just can't hear what a sweet swing sounds like.
"I wish I could hear what it sounds like to strike the ball perfectly," Hall said, flashing a big grin. "But you know what you hear, I feel. I can feel it run through my body when the ball comes off the clubface perfectly. When I hit it good, it feels like water being wrung out from a sponge. It goes right up my hands, through my arms ..."
Even without the aid of his sign-language interpreter, Hall does not get lost in translation when talking about that perfect swing. He strokes his arm with his hand like he's rubbing lotion on his forearm. His laughter is contagious. He looks at the interpreter and laughs some more.
"... and it feels soooo good."
The putt was simple and true as it rolled slowly off the face of Kevin Hall's putter. It was a "gimme" that barely traveled two feet before the little white ball trickled over the trimmed edge of grass, dropped into the white plastic cup and made that distinctive plllllunnnnkkkk of a ball rattling around in the bottom of the hole.
But Hall didn't hear the ball rattle. He also didn't hear the crickets chirping in the tall reeds, or the gentle drizzle pelting the surface of the greenside lake, the wind whistling through tree branches, or the songbirds' sweet serenade.
These are the sweet sounds most of us take for granted whenever we play a round of golf. They are nature's Muzak, the background music Mother Nature provides as we hack our way around the course. Yet none of the competitors who toured the spectacular Far Oaks Golf Club on Tuesday afternoon could hear any of those sounds, because this was the first round of the U.S. Deaf Golf Championships.
If you stood back at a distance, you would never know that the 24-year-old Hall was deaf. He has the easy swing of a professional tour player. He has the confident swagger of an athlete who knows he can play this game better than most. But there is something different about Hall, a former Big Ten champion from Ohio State. He is the best deaf golfer in America, maybe in the world. He is the first deaf athlete to compete in a PGA event (he's played in five since turning pro three years ago), and currently earns his keep on the Nationwide Tour. In Tuesday's first round, he shot a bogey-free, 4-under 68 and sits atop the leaderboard of this four-day event.
He will head to the PGA Tour qualifying tournament later this year, and after two near-misses, he hopes days like this are hints that he's on the verge of securing his PGA Tour card. "I think I am pretty close," he said through an interpreter. "I just have to improve my mental game. If I can do that, there's no doubt in my mind I can get that card. I get impatient sometimes. That impatience influences the outcome of my scores."
If you have ever swung a golf club and achieved even some brief moment of golf perfection, you surely can gain a large level of appreciation for watching men and women like Hall and all the other deaf golfers play without the advantage of hearing. Golf is most of all a hand-eye-coordination sport. Yet there is no small benefit to the sense of sound in enjoying the game. The club swishing through the grass cleanly, smartly clipping the blades and slashing into the ball is one of the sport's sweetest sounds. A ball well-struck, with the echo of metal pinging into that compressed, dimpled ball and the distinct rattle of a ball falling into the cup are all auditory sensations that a golfer feeds off.
But Hall has never experienced those sensations.
He lost his sense of hearing when he was 2 years old and a bout of meningitis, which nearly killed him, robbed him of his hearing. "But he never slowed down because of it," said his father, Percy. "He bowled, he played baseball. He was good enough that they wanted him to pitch on a select team. But when he was 9, he was asked if he wanted to try golf, and he said yes, and the game just came natural to him."
He just can't hear what a sweet swing sounds like.
"I wish I could hear what it sounds like to strike the ball perfectly," Hall said, flashing a big grin. "But you know what you hear, I feel. I can feel it run through my body when the ball comes off the clubface perfectly. When I hit it good, it feels like water being wrung out from a sponge. It goes right up my hands, through my arms ..."
Even without the aid of his sign-language interpreter, Hall does not get lost in translation when talking about that perfect swing. He strokes his arm with his hand like he's rubbing lotion on his forearm. His laughter is contagious. He looks at the interpreter and laughs some more.
"... and it feels soooo good."