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

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. 

In 1999, Frank Sorber lost his left leg after a motor accident. Four months later he drove a car 1,200km around Ireland. The 62 year-old long time student of the Japanese martial art of Aikido has a mindset of living in the present, enjoying seeking what is here now. And he seems to like what he finds.

Frank had been a non-golfer, but eight years after the accident he went to lunch one day at a restaurant on a golf course. There, he saw on the wall in front of him a large photograph of an older man, a golfer, playing what looked like a great shot out of a bunker. This man had the one leg, like Frank had one leg. His mind started working.

Enjoy Frank’s story with EDGA here.

It was a treat for our latest EDGA podcast to meet Norwegian golfer Mette Havnaas. 

Mette hears when she plays a good shot, she doesn’t see it. ‘Top notch’ is how she describes the sound when a putt has fallen to the bottom of the cup. 

It takes courage for someone who has lost their sight as an adult to learn a completely new sport as Mette has done, and then to travel to different European venues to play in tournaments. 

Central to her giving this interview Mette wanted to make other people with visual impairment aware that golf can be a game for them. At ‘G4D’ (golf for the disabled) events and ‘regular’ competitions, Mette is now a standard bearer in this area. We said hello to Mette, and her guide/companion on the course and husband, Birger, on the Algarve in Portugal when she was playing in the second of her first two EDGA tournaments outside of her home country.

Enjoy Mette’s fascinating story here. 

“I lost a leg, others have lost legs and arms, it’s not the end of the world,” Robin Singh explains. “I had an accident in 1991 and had the amputation carried out in 1992, and I never looked back. That’s life. If you are confident in what you’re doing, nothing is going to stop you.”

Fast forward to January 2024, and Robin ‘Rambo’ Singh was able to feel the intense satisfaction of competitive honours when he lifted up the handsome trophy at the end of the G4D Tour @ Ras Al Khaimah Championship, in the heat of the United Arab Emirates. 

Taking this title – the G4D Tour being at the pinnacle of golf for the disabled (‘G4D’) – was a special victory for the South African. 

Today Robin is 66 years-old. As a boy he fell in love with golf, and worked as a caddie to learn the layers of the game. In 1991, the game that drove him on and which he could play so well, was snatched away in a car accident. The sport then lost Robin for a decade and only a chance meeting in a supermarket with a fellow injured player would bring him back. 

It has been quite the comeback. Enjoy Robin’s story with EDGA today.