Tough Love and Second Chances - EDGA Ben Evans (EDGA)

In professional tour golf at the very highest level, Ken Green has played with the very finest, and beaten them. He will tell you why the “extreme highs and lows” of golf are both equally necessary to feed the soul, and that his love of the game has helped many times in shoring him up through many troubled days and family tragedy.

During the 1980s, this five-time US PGA Tour winner and Ryder Cup player competed against the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros. 

In 2024, Ken plays as a right lower-leg amputee, but he often does so while enduring intense pain due to a chronic nerve injury condition. However, he peppers any interview with references to the joy and love for the game he has today.  

A 65-year-old who still competes to shine a light for others on the unique benefits of golf, his sport makes him want to get up in the morning and play again.  

Enjoy the latest EDGA Podcast here. 

Ireland’s David Quinn always said he would walk again after the car accident in the Wicklow mountains which so nearly killed him. 

The significant injuries to his back and right leg left the 21-year-old paralysed for some time; he would take eight months of rehabilitation before he could leave the wheelchair and walk out of the hospital on crutches, but he made it. His reward now is he can smell the cut grass on a beautiful golf course every day. 

David loves golf and regularly plays EDGA tournaments. Fortunately, his hell-for-leather days as a champion motorcyclist gave him an appreciation of engines that would lead to his dream job working at the fine golf course at Powerscourt GC. 

Enjoy David’s remarkable story here. 

In this edition of the EDGA Podcast we feature Michelle Lau, an English golfer who this January made her debut on the G4D Tour, the pinnacle of golf for the disabled (G4D), in the United Arab Emirates. 

This was a remarkable achievement for someone who only in May last year, when preparing for her first competitive G4D event, was fearing she would not ‘fit in’ with her non-visible disability.

Thankfully Michelle, who has Autism and ADHD, stuck to her task and received a warm welcome from her fellow players. As a golfer, she is now shining a light on just what is possible for others with related conditions. A great role model, a unique story, and a pretty decent golf swing. Enjoy Michelle’s story here.  

In this edition of the EDGA Podcast we write about Italian golfer Luisa Ceola. We featured Luisa a few years back when she was making her way in golf for the disabled after serious health struggles. But we had to chat to Luisa again, as added to her lasting love of the game, a focused competitive streak led to her winning the Italian Open in 2023 and then qualifying for the first ever ‘Net’ tournament presented by the international G4D Tour, held in the United Arab Emirates recently. 

A deserved honour, and a great achievement for the player from Padova, near Venice.

Luisa says: “I can't think of my life without golf. It is for this reason that I am very happy to talk about how good golf is for me because I hope that more people will become players and have these fantastic opportunities.”

Enjoy Luisa’s story with EDGA now. 

Ryanne Jackson lives in St Petersburg in Florida and loves golf. The 26-year-old is a current US national golf champion. Right from insisting to her family as a six-year-old that she was a left-handed player (even though she was right-handed in everything else), Ryanne has backed her own judgement.  

This trust in herself helps Ryanne in dealing with her condition, muscular dystrophy. Although she can’t play as often as she would like to because she needs good rest, Ryanne practises and plays ‘smart’ (ie, thoughtfully), and has found a healthy mindset for playing her best golf. 

In school her condition went undetected and classmates accused her of being lazy on the basketball court. With the help of her family, Ryanne would prove many people wrong, gain a golf scholarship to university and qualify for the most prestigious G4D (golf for the disabled) tournaments. 

Follow Ryanne’s remarkable story here. 

Lachlan Wood does not do things by halves, good or bad: “I can be a little bit obsessive,” says the 32 year-old Australian. He could be accused of that in a negative way when he threw away all the hard hours of becoming a fine golfer in his early twenties, at a point where he hated the game.   

To be fair Lachlan, or Lachie to his mates, faced mitigating circumstances in battling a traumatic injury and its aftermath caused by a car crash.

But obsessive behaviour can also help some people to survive. Ten years on from quitting golf Lachlan had practised, played and practised hard again, and there he was in December 2023 winning a major international tournament – the Australian All Abilities Championship; and on that day he would have gladly carried on playing and playing, hole after hole. Even after earning the victory he didn’t want it to end, such was the joy he was feeling through golf again.

Lachlan’s comeback is incredible because it has been so hard fought, and you can experience his story here.