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Kevin and Anna Edwards of Paris
display the awards won at the Nation’s Cup tournament
held in Burford, Ontario in August this year. In
addition to winning the singles match and the United
States' overall victory, Kevin was presented the
"Critter Award" as the United States player who showed
the best sportsmanship and team spirit. |
It comes as no surprise to most people that Kevin
Edwards, who "grew up" on the course at the Carroll Lake
Golf Club, is an avid golfer. But more than a few eyebrows
are raised as people learn his greatest success has come as
a member of the United States and International Blind
Golfing Associations.
Ranked as the seventh best golfer in the United States and
21st in the world in his sight classification by the
international association as of November 1 this year, Kevin
epitomizes the PGA tour's motto "Anything is possible."
Incidentally, Kevin says, Lions Club International--long
known for its commitment in vision issues worldwide--has
partnered with the USBGA to help educate the public that
blind and visually impaired golfers need not lay down their
clubs.
That the blind can play golf and play it well is good news
in the sport that claims 12.8 million core golfers in the
United States, representing adult players who play, on
average, 37 times a year, plus an additional 14.6 million
occasional adult golfers and 2.9 million junior golfers
between the ages of 12 and 17, according to the National
Golf Foundation.
A look at Kevin belies his condition: he doesn't wear dark
glasses or any glasses, in fact, and he can get around
somewhat on his own, which causes some to question his
disability. The truth is that, like many legally blind
people, he retains some vision. A person is considered
legally blind when their best corrected visual acuity is
20/200, or their visual field is 20 degrees or less.
Kevin's visual acuity tests at 20/400, meaning he discerns
detail in an object at 20 feet the same way someone with
20/20 vision would view the object if it were 400 feet away.
Imagine looking at someone one and a third football fields
away, then bring that object up to about seven yards away
without increasing the detail, and you can get an idea of
what it's like for Kevin.
Add that to the fact that his peripheral vision and depth
perception are skewed and a fit into Kevin's shoes gets a
bit more uncomfortable. He recalls how awkward walking
became when the terrain suddenly flattened out as his vision
diminished: curbs seemed level with the road's surface;
hills appeared to be level ground.
Yet he takes it in stride.
"For the first six months I was depressed," he says. "It
took away my source of living and it was coming up winter,
and I had been married barely a year... Now I think it could
always be worse. Eventually, I started getting used to it."
Being able to continue golfing has gone a long way toward
helping him maintain and even enhance his life's
equilibrium.
His father, the late Glen Edwards--who in his heyday was a
member of the Army Corps of Engineers and helped build
several golf courses, and who was fire chief in McKenzie in
the 1960s--was commissioned in 1974 to rebuild the course in
Carroll County.
Kevin celebrates upon sinking
a short putt on the 14th hole on day two of the Nation’s Cup
competition in Canada. The putt gave Kevin and Brad Eaton a
one-hole up lead on the Canadian team and they went on to
win the match two-up with one to play. In the foreground is
Johanna Carmata, the number one vision impaired woman in the
world.
"My dad was groundskeeper and the first club champion in
1962," says Kevin, who also profited from the venture when
he was offered the opportunity to help his father at the
club.
"That was my very first job," he grins in recollection. "I
made $2.50 an hour and I was in the eighth grade. I thought
I was cool; I was making $100 a week and gas was 36 cents a
gallon."
He was 12 years old when he started playing the game himself
after his father bought him a set of clubs for his birthday.
He wound up playing four years at McKenzie High School
before graduating in 1981.
His game improved after high school, so much that in 1984
Bethel College Coach Jerry Wilcoxson invited him to play on
scholarship for the Wildcat team. Despite Kevin's love for
the game, however, he was less interested in the academic
role.
"The only thing he liked about college was golf, I think,"
his wife, Anna, teases.
He found his niche in the working world in 1988 when he
began working as a commercial trucker. He coasted along
happily until September 2000 when, practically overnight,
his world changed. A month earlier, however, the first
annoying signs of trouble had appeared.
On the job in Louisiana, Kevin awoke and was preparing to
head home when he noticed a gray spot in his left eye.
"I didn't think much about it and didn't mention it," he
says. As time went by, the spot widened and eventually
showed up in his right eye as well. With his vision
beginning to blur, he scheduled an appointment at the
Wal-Mart eye clinic in Paris just before he was due to head
back out on the road.
Oddities in his peripheral vision exam led the tester to
declare, "There's something going on that I can't help you
with," Kevin says. She referred him to the Jackson Eye
Clinic for an appointment that was scheduled several days
later.
"So I went to Florida to pick up a load to take to
Pittsburgh," Kevin says sheepishly, belatedly aware of the
foolishness of his decision. Where he had previously enjoyed
driving at night on roads with less traffic, he found it
difficult to see the lines on the road. By the time he made
it home to Paris, he was walking like a drunken man, trying
to navigate curbs and steps that appeared to be flat.
From Jackson, he was referred to the Vanderbilt Eye
Institute in Nashville. By this time, he says, four weeks
had passed. His eyes were hemorrhaging and were cloudy and
glassy in appearance. He viewed the world as through a
kaleidoscope.
There, he was diagnosed with anterior ischemic optic
neuropathy, a disorder caused by a decrease in the blood
supply to the optic nerve--or, as Kevin puts it, a stroke of
the optic nerve. The resultant reduction in oxygen and
nutrition destroys to varying degrees the nerve function
that allows sight.
Kevin notes the only hope for improving his vision could be
an eye transplant, but the inherent risk of total blindness,
he feels, outweighs the possible benefits. Thus, he has come
not only to accept his condition but to count his blessings,
beginning with Anna.
"If it wasn't for Anna, golf would be out of the question,"
says Kevin, who plays in the B-3 category of the USBGA,
reserved for golfers with a visual acuity from 20/600 to
less than 20/200. Other categories include B-1, for players
ranging from the totally blind to those unable to
distinguish between a sheet of white paper and one with a
large black symbol, and B-2, for those who are able to
recognize the shape of a hand up to a visual acuity of
20/600.
Anna accompanies Kevin on his golfing forays in the
essential role of "coach".
"Really all that means is cheerleader, knowing what he's
capable of and keeping his confidence up," says Anna. "My
primary responsibility is ball finder."
Kevin clarifies her role, saying she reports the conditions
of the course--things like distance and wind direction--and
reads the green: with no depth perception Kevin can't
determine the slopes between the tee and the green beyond.
She breaks it down further, describing how she first
determines what he can see--a tree, for instance--then
fleshes out the rest.
"It's kind of my responsibility to write down what club he's
used before and in what conditions," she adds. "We rehash
every shot of every hole after every day."
According to the USBGA Web site (www.blindgolf.com) coaches
assist blind golfers in addressing the ball and with
alignment prior to the stroke, and players may ask for and
receive advice from their coaches, who have the same status
under the rules as a caddie. Players may have a caddie, as
well, who acts in the traditional capacity. The same rules
apply to the International Blind Golfers Association of
which the USBGA is a part, along with sister associations in
Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Republic of Ireland,
Japan, Northern Ireland, and Scotland.
Anna wasn't a golfer when the two met more than four years
before their July 1999 wedding, which was held on the golf
course in Puryear. Their first date, prophetically, also
took place on the golf course. Even so, Anna's interest
remained peripheral until Kevin's vision became impaired. "I
had to learn the game to help him play," she says.
These days, the pair are out on the golf course every week
when possible, though Kevin admits, "I'm not much of a
winter golfer."
His restful winter follows an amazing year of golf: "Along
with my accomplishments in national vision impaired
tournaments over the past 12 months I have also accomplished
two personal goals," says Kevin. "I shot a 78 at Futures
Golf Course in Puryear back in July, so I accomplished
shooting in the 70s again, and while practicing for a
four-person scramble, I had a hole in one at Sullivan's Golf
Course in Murray, Kentucky in August."
Last year, Kevin had his first go at the national level
during the United States Blind Gold Association National
Championship held October 31 through November 3 at
Bonaventura golf resort in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
"The course was a typical Florida course: flat with lots of
sand traps and water hazards," he says. "After all was
played I finished fourth in the tournament, only ten strokes
out of runner-up. Not bad for our first experience at the
national level."
This year, he played in the Nation's Cup held at Burford
Golf Links in Burford, Ontario in August. Competition on the
par 71, 5,434-yard course included 12 golfers from the
United States playing in a Ryder Cup style match against 12
players from Canada. On the first day of the three-day
competition, Kevin was paired with Jan Dinsdale, the number
two vision impaired female in the world and the current
vision impaired world champion. They were pitted against
Brian McLeod, the number one blind golfer in Canada, and
Doug Stoutley, the number three vision impaired golfer in
Canada. Kevin and Jan lost the match five holes down with
four holes to play.
On day two, Kevin was teamed with Brad Eaton, the number six
blind golfer in the U.S., to win against Johanna Camarta and
Jon Ely. Johanna is the number one vision impaired female in
the world and Jon is the number two vision impaired golfer
in Canada.
The final day was singles competition, with Kevin opposing
Roy Bert, Canada's number six vision impaired golfer.
"I was one hole up after five holes played when the match
was called because of a severe thunderstorm. Play was
cancelled and the United States won the overall competition
eight matches to four matches for the Canadians," Kevin
reports. He was also presented with the Critter Award,
chosen by the Canadians as the United States player who
showed the most sportsmanship and team spirit.
In October, Kevin placed ninth in the 2005 United States
Blind Golf Association National Championship hosted at the
Wildwood Green Golf Club in Raleigh, North Carolina, despite
unexpected illness.
"Anna and I went to the national championship with high
hopes of a very good finish," says Kevin. "After all, I had
played some of the very best golf over the summer since
becoming visually impaired."
Kevin was among 48 players from the United States, Canada,
Scotland, England and Northern Ireland competing for the
title that for Kevin remained an elusive hope.
"There was no salvaging that first day," he says. "Not only
was the course very hard--with out of bounds on almost every
hole, tree-lined fairways, and many holes with hills or
blind shots off the tee--we also found that I had a pinched
nerve or something. It was very painful to walk much less
swing a club."
He also battled a queasy stomach, the result of a viral
ailment that sapped his energy as well.
"I somehow found the drive to finish out what amounted to
the second worst 18-hole score of my 31 years of playing
golf," he says resolutely. "I went to the golf course on
Wednesday knowing my chances of winning the tournament were
gone but I wanted to prove to myself that I could finish
what we came 600 miles to do. I finished the tournament in
ninth place out of 48 players."
Throughout his ups and downs, remaining a contender on the
golf course allows Kevin a greater appreciation of the
accomplishments of his sighted peers: "It made me very proud
as a McKenzie graduate and four-year player on the MHS golf
team to see them finish sixth in the Tennessee state
championships," he says, recalling that from 1978 to 1981 he
competed with fellow teammates Chris Edlin, Jeff Perritt,
Kurt Robb, and Jim Seaton to be one of the top players on
the McKenzie Rebels golf team.
"Now I find myself competing against players like Ron Plath
of Portland, Oregon; Bruce Hooper of San Antonio, Texas; and
Art Beauregard of Graniteville, South Carolina to be one of
the top vision impaired golfers in the United States, along
with the help of Anna, who has acted as my eyes on the golf
course," says Kevin.
His plans for 2006 include the May Indiana Regional
tournament in Fort Wayne, Indiana and a hoped-for invitation
to the North American Match play championship Wodsworth,
Ohio in July, as well as the national championship to be
held in Portland Oregon in November. His new goal: to become
best vision impaired golfer in the United States.
In addition to golfing together, Kevin and Anna are also the
parents of 16-year-old son Michael and two-year-old Macey,
and expect to add a new daughter, Maggie, to the family soon
after Christmas.
It's all a part of the Edwards' own American dream, and
proof that perfection doesn't have to be part of the plot
for the story to come true.
"Life deals with you," Kevin says, smiling. "You give up or
keep moving on with what you can."
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