Our guest this week lost his right arm in a 1993 workplace accident, but that didn’t hinder his passion for golf in the least. Al Gentry founded the Kentucky Amputee Tournament in 1994, which has allowed individuals with various disabilities to enjoy competitive golf. Gentry also helped established the North American One-Armed Golfer Association. Pull up a seat as he describes the nature of his incident, the disabilities commonly represented in the Kentucky Amputee Tournament, and the other means by which he has been instrumental in the growth and development of adaptive golf. Enjoy this hole-in-one episode.

To find out more about the North American One-Armed Golfer Association, visit www.naoaga.org

To learn about adaptive golf tournaments in other areas, along with a set of adaptive golf standards co-authored by Al Gentry, visit the United States Adaptive Golf Alliance web page www.usaga.org

Visit the Kentucky Secretary of State at vrsws.sos.ky.gov

Register to vote at vrsws.sos.ky.gov/ovrweb

As a disabled person, if you have trouble registering to vote or casting your ballot, call the Kentucky Protection And Advocacy Hotline 1(800)372-2988

Thanks to Chris Ankin for use of his song, “Change.”

The book "A Celebration of Family: Stories of Parents with Disabilities." is available from Amazon here.

Be sure to follow the Advocado Press Facebook page

Visit Appalachian Assistive Technology Loan Fund for assistance.

Visit Moving Forward, the Advocado Press blog.

Send comments and questions to [email protected]

Demand and Disrupt is sponsored by the Advocado Press and the Center For Accessible Living.

You can find the transcript in the show notes below when they become available.

Transcript

He developed a passion for golf at a very young age and despite losing his right arm in a workplace accident come about 1993, he continues to golf regularly and also helping inspire others in his shoes to golf regularly as well through his creation of the Kentucky Amputee Tournament which we'll talk about here shortly along with the North American One-Armed Golfer Association which he co-founded along with a few others, also the Fightmaster Cup which is also known as the Rider Cup of One-Armed Golf commonly, a lot of people refer to it as that and he also published a book of golf standards for individuals with disabilities maybe limited to one arm like Al is and so that's actually unique because it was the first of his kind to ever be published in the United States so all of these and even a little more that we can dabble in as we go along here with a man who's actually a state representative as well representing the 46th district which includes part of the city of Louisville and then somebody's coming to us today from the state capitol so please welcome via zoom in Frankfurt none other than Mr. Al Gentry.

Al it is a pleasure to have you aboard here thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule there in Frankfurt to join us.

Have you seen Andy lately?

Have you seen the governor floating around?

Yeah I run across Andy every now and then so we're not in session at the time when we are in session we meet pretty regularly but we're in what we call the interim session so we actually work on committee meetings on the committees that we work on but yeah from from time to time I bump into the governor.

Yeah I figured you did and I know he spreads his business across the state so no telling where he is today but at any rate we're sure glad you're here now how long have you been a state representative Al?

Well Sam I was elected in 2016 so my first legislative session was in January of 17 and in my if I can count right in my fifth term right now.

Yeah I was gonna say you've served continuously ever since so you know it's obviously still still going strong and momentum is certainly in your favor now you're a lifelong Louisvillian I know and you've held a steady passion for the game of golf most if not all of your life sir so first off why don't you tell us sort of when and how you developed an attachment to the sport?

Okay well it goes back to I guess I was probably 11 or 12 years old and and when I was a kid growing up I loved playing every sport I could I was very active and in my grade school years St.

Lawrence Catholic school I played about every sport a man could play or a boy could play I should say so it was rare that you sat down yeah when I got into high school I was exceptionally talented in the game of golf so I played golf now I had two arms back then I was very I was so good at golf I really had to quit the other sports and focus on the one sport because you know how that works when you're good and you play at a certain level you got to do it all the time just to stay at that level and continue to improve yeah I really didn't like that a whole lot because I liked playing so many other sports so as the story goes by the time I made it to my senior year in high school I was being heavily recruited in division one college offers and and quite frankly Sam the last thing I wanted to do was play golf when I went to college so I declined them all and quit and went to school for geology uh-huh so you so by the time you got done with high school you decided you were about burnout on golf yeah and I I mean I went to the University of Louisville and did graduate work at the University of Kentucky and I became a geologist and eventually a hydrogeologist and and that's how I started the first part of my professional career and ten years later I was involved in a drilling rig accident that took my right arm and and um I was immediately introduced to the world of amputee golf and amputee game that I loved as a kid yes and you so by then you were probably itching to play again and you satisfied that itch thanks to to amputee golf but anyhow that's neat so um so geology was um your your bs at uh at UofL and I'm guessing um at UK your graduate work was um basically an extension of that or maybe some sort of branch of geology yeah I uh when I received my bachelor's degree at Louisville uh I immediately went to work and went to work for a mineral exploration company and was working primarily in the western US um but I had a kind of job I had one of those fun jobs where you I had a partner in a chocolate lab and a four-wheel drive truck and our only client was a diamond corporation in Belgium so we we worked the United States and and had kind of our own schedule we used one of them things called a fax machine to fax monthly reports and uh and and then I got flown home a week every month so we kind of when I was on the road we kind of worked every day um I think we got one day off for laundry and that sort of thing and and um and and then I had most of my days what would be equivalent to weekend days I had them all in a row at the end of the month and at my home in my hometown so that was the life of of uh being a traveling geologist on the road and it doesn't fare real well with family so that's what I did when I was single and and when you're you're young and experienced in that in that type of work you get laid off in the wintertime when it snows heavily and you cannot work in the mountains anymore so so during my layoff period first layoff period I went to graduate school UK for hydrogeology which was more in the environmental field and you know we're talking late 80s early 90s that's where most of the geology jobs were back then so that was kind of the thing to go into and so I transitioned when I was at UK I ended up getting a a job with an environmental consulting firm in Louisville so I never got to go back to the to west to work again after that first year so that even though that job was very fun it was pretty short-lived and and um and did most of my geology work in the environmental consulting field well at least you'll always have the memory so how uh how long did it take you to get your masters uh well I was going part-time right and the way that worked was I was working full-time in Louisville for this consulting firm and they were working with me to get my masters and so I was going to get my masters and right before I finished I had my accident oh okay so that's that's where our accident factor is in here in 94 yep yep and that happened in 1993 I was 28 years old and um I think I had one semester left with just one or two classes that I was getting ready to start in January of 1993 and on the 5th of January right before classes started is when I had my accident and then of course when I had my accident everything changed and it was all about um learning how to live in the new world that I christened into right with a disability so uh yeah so I never really obtained my master's degree even though I did 99% of the work right by the time and a few years later when I wanted to go back to finish um they no longer had a graduate geology program that had ended all the program had been discontinued huh yeah so it's kind of kind of unfortunate but uh that was the story of my college uh challenges even even after I lost my arm so well you know at least you know you did most of the graduate work with the help of uh of your employer and I know learned a great deal in the process so um let's let's talk a little more about your accident here in 1993 you said it was a um a drilling accident uh tell us more about uh you know the type of work you were doing and um the the nature of the accident more so specifically sure again we work for a private consulting firm and basically what we did sam is we we represented industry for the most part um as they were going through the regulatory process of uh sometimes they they've had a release or spill into the subsurface and so they would hire us to come in as their consultants to a assess um what had happened b to remediate or clean up what had happened and and in some instances c uh prepare a risk assessment uh to move on and kind of kind of take the industry but uh the company by the hand and walk them through the whole regulatory process and and work with the state regular regulatory agency to to to get to closure now that's kind of what we did and at at the time of my accident we were working for a major um automobile manufacturing company there in louisville they were in the process of removing all of their underground storage tanks and going to an above storage system and that that would include like uh fuels and paints uh for manufacturing uh process of of automobiles trucks that sort of thing um and what we did of course a couple of them leaked and had some releases so when that happened we came in and would drill and do subsurface soil sampling or groundwater sampling around a particular area to define the extent of contamination um on a particular day of the accident we were done drilling we were using a real small handheld drill because we were drilling under power lines and when you drill under power lines you can't bring a truck mounted rig in because it's too dangerous um so that didn't have a whole lot to do with the accident other than we were drilling in an area that had been dug up before and we call as geologists we call it fill material because you're liable to run into anything and fill material because humans dig holes and when they fill them back up sometimes they throw a lot of human things back into that hole so if you can imagine a wire coat hanger unraveled um the auger came connected with something like that underground so when we were pulling the augers back out of the ground um as the auger was spinning around this uh piece of copper wire was attached to a peg and swung around and snagged my jacket sleeve i happened to be standing right next to the oh goodness and so it was probably a million to one kind of thing that just happened when it grabbed me it wrapped my arm around the machine backwards so it disconnected elbow right away and pretty severe injury it was fighting for my life um so the emergency team had to come in and peel me off of it put me in a helicopter and send me down to the hospital emergency room so that's kind of how the accident happened and um we'll get into this because this is a great story but when i was a junior golfer uh there used to be a pro celebrity golf tournament a little that was born country club in fact that particular golf course just uh hosted a pga tour event this weekend but if if if you can go way back to an old famous actor called foster brooks he used to to play a drunk that name sounds familiar yeah and he he was from louisville and and he would have this tournament annually and raise a bunch of money and give to um a crippled crippled kid crippled kid was there um shrineers organization and there was a gentleman so so us junior golfers would go out and follow the pros and and the movie stars but we'd always end up following one guy and that one guy his name was don fight master oh yeah famous one-armed golfer and so we watched this guy with one arm play golf and we're blown away by it as kids so now fast forward 10 12 years later after i had walked away from the game of golf i had never met mr fight master but i remembered watching him at that pro celebrity event so as they were willing me into the emergency room i looked at all the trauma staff and i said look out don fight master i'm coming after you so uh the one of the gals there she was a nurse and she knew exactly who he was because her uncle i think was very good friends with don so she she called her uncle and talked her uncle and he called don and don came to my hospital bed so before i left the hospital i was introduced to the world of amputee golf which i had no idea even existed don don didn't happen to remember you from 10 12 years back did he no he he had never we had never met now the uncle guy that contacted don uh he was a local club pro at one of the golf courses and he remembered me from 10 years before he remembered me as a golfer being very good and then kind of disappeared from the game so he was like yeah i know that guy yeah how that all works so don came into my room and he basically told me all the magnificent things he had accomplished 30 years um being one-armored and he told me son your life's not over your new life is just beginning to move forward so and you were like if you know if he's done all this and you know why why can't i do at least a portion of that so uh about uh about how long was it uh from the time don came and visited you that first time in the hospital until the time you were uh able to play in your uh in your next first tournament shall we say well like i said my accident happened in january of course around here you know it gets pretty cold in the winter winter months so oh yeah i was out getting golf balls in spring and in uh september of that same year i traveled to tennessee to play in my first amputee golf tournament see so good later that year yeah yeah and i was planning to go down there and kicked all of them's rear and and i was blown away by how good these guys were which at that moment i couldn't even begin to carry a candle how good they were you know and i was uh not only uh tremendously humbled but i was tremendously inspired because i saw what i could become if i put the work and the effort into it i knew i knew i knew the game of golf i just had to figure out how to play one-armed golf yeah and um so that was my dream that you know i had a dream now i had something to work forward to and and uh as i went on that journey and that path and started experiencing some success it it totally changed my life because it uh the self-confidence and self-esteem that i started generating from a sport that i was familiar with carried on to everyday life and helped me every day uh battling the challenge of living life as with a disability oh yes i i can imagine so yes uh you know you knew you knew your potential was there when you saw those other guys in tennessee plus it gave you uh something to to work towards and you uh you know you were eventually able to to gain ground and still maintain your passion to this day now not long after the loss of your right arm sir you founded the kentucky amputee tournament and this has allowed many with disabilities uh to enjoy competitive golf with the benefit of a level playing field so talk a little bit about the the steps that needed to be taken in order to make this annual event a reality al well like i said at my first tournament i went to the tournament in tennessee right and when we were down there so blown away so inspired all that i looked at my father who had went with me down there and i and i said we can we can do a kentucky tournament we need to start a kentucky tournament and and he said well yeah we can do it at south park which was south park country club is where it started in 1994 and he was a member there so that's kind of where we kicked it all off at and um the tournament now is held at shelbyville country club in shelbyville kentucky um had a couple of guys take it over after i got it rolling for several years and as you probably know the kentucky amputee celebrate its 30th anniversary earlier this year and we had a year or two there we had to take a break from from covid but sure even though it's been 32 years or 31 years i guess since it started uh we've had 30 events now so yeah and of course um yes i did enjoy the uh the ket special on that and that's uh quite a quite an achievement to celebrate um 30 years uh you know it would be like you said 32 but minus those uh couple years that um it was forced to take hiatus due to covid you uh you know celebrated the 30th anniversary and uh always better late than never now um anyone who wants a glimpse of of diversity al they owe it to themselves to uh watch amputee tournament participants in action so why don't you discuss the wide range of disabilities that are commonly uh represented among these golfers okay i'll do that and i'll give a little bit of background as well in the 1990s amputee golf was very rampant and it was was everywhere we were uh that that was kind of the disability type that was widely recognized in golf although we had a blind organization back then um and in early two or in 2000 we started the north american one-armed golfer association so in one-armed golf you not only have amputees with you know an amputee golf you have uh individuals with arm and leg arms and legs off or either one uh in one-armed golf you have upper extremity disabilities that might call somebody to play one-handed even though they have two arms a good example that would be a stroke or what we call a brachial plexus injury which is a nerve injury that where you you know you lose uh use of one arm or you might have uh uh some sort of birth defect or abnormality in in an upper extremity that that would would call some level of disability or impairment um and then what we did in 2014 is we brought all the organizations together um that was under an organization called the united states adaptive golf alliance by the time we had reached 2012 something like that the the whole disability world in golf was much like the disney much like the disability world um with non-profits it's very siloed where organizations were focused on a specific type of disability and so what we did under the golf umbrellas we brought everybody together and did so that in such a way that all the existing organizations could still operate and operate autonomously but they would also operate as uh part of a larger group an alliance is what we called it and um so all the members were not the people it were the organizations that either taught the game of golf or held events for people with disabilities in the game of golf and then once we did that and had all of these member organizations together um we wrote the standards for what we call adaptive golf so uh we used the word adaptive instead of disabled because it's a more positive word right able to suggest that you're something less you know is the way we looked at it and now we all have strengths and weaknesses whether we have a disability or not so what we do every day is is something quite remarkable we adapt despite our challenges so we called our sport adaptive golf um to put a little more of a positive spin on it and what golf does for these individuals is it really provides medicine it's it's an environment where you can come and compete and be successful doing something on your own playing against someone who is somewhat equally impaired and so when we wrote the standards of golf we created 15 different sport classes and what i mean by that is if you have a lower leg disability uh like an amputation then you play against others with the same type of impairment if you are a one-armed golfer or there's you know when you look at the vision impairs of the of the blind guys yeah yeah we have people that play golf they can't see it all they're totally blind yeah i heard about one guy that did that this year yeah it's amazing athletes and um but there's also three different levels of of vision impaired and and basically the way that works is uh uh one level is you can't see anything at all and one level is you have vision impairment but you can see just um just uh you know you might be lacking peripheral vision sure and then a level two would be something in between where it's a little more extensive of an impairment but not to the extent where your total loss of sight so there's three different sport classes within vision impaired alone so you go up and down the line with with with arms and legs and more neurological type challenges or like intellectual sport class or what we have a neurological sports sport class which might include cerebral palsy spinal type injuries and you know various type things so in those sport classes you'll find somebody just like you that you can compete against yeah and so ever since the alliance was was formed that you know people with all of these disabilities have been competing in the same amputee tournament as you mentioned it was um 2000 when you and your aforementioned mentor Don Fightmaster and a couple other Kentuckians teamed up and uh created the the North American One-Arm Golfer Association so um why don't you um shed a little more light on the the uh purpose that serves and uh some of the other means uh in addition to uh you know the tournaments and so forth that um that we've touched on to this point by which it has enabled golfers to remain active yeah yeah back if you go back again to the 1990s I was attending uh off and on clinics that were uh called the first swing clinic that the national amputee golf association was running okay so we would have these learned to golf clinics and they would bring some of the players out uh amputee players to help teach these individuals that that are just learning how to play golf and I kept running into guys that were well like a stroke patient where they didn't have limb loss but they definitely had a disability and they were falling in love with learning how to play golf and one-handed golf but then they didn't really have anywhere to go so we just created another organization where these kinds of individuals that had upper extremity non-amputee um impairments had somewhere to go and compete and play and we mimicked this off of an organization in the United Kingdom called the Society of One-armed Golfers um which by the way is probably the oldest not only um disabled golf organization in the world but maybe even the oldest sports disability organization in the world they were founded in 1932 a division by uh world war one airport uh airplane pilots there were a group a small group of them that they had these upper extremity disabilities I don't really know how that was created or started but yeah so that was 93 years ago yeah so that's yeah we right around the corner we'll have a hundred year anniversary coming up on that organization but yeah so that's the organization in in Europe and um they they've been around forever Mr. Fightmaster had went over there and won two world championships that's where he gained his celebrity status I guess as a one-armed golfer and he had told me all about it so in 1997 four years after I lost my arm um I went over there for the first time and played in their championship and was able to take my wife and mother and father and so we enjoyed a trip to Scotland and that was fabulous and um but anyway the one-armed association and it was kind of like the the first amputee term when I went to Tennessee and said well we can do this in Kentucky so when I went to Scotland I said well we can do this in the United States and Don said well let's do it but since it's a North American one-armed golfer association I'm you know I'm guessing it includes you know members nationwide yeah and this uh and not only nationwide but uh Canada and Mexico as well now in Mexico we're still working on trying to get adaptive golf down there uh but we do have a couple of players from Mexico and we have several from uh Canada we've had our championship in Canada a couple of different times and I think we're going to be there next year in Alberta so um it's definitely a North American organization and um and I will say this that um eight years later we started the Fightmaster Cup which we named after Mr. Fightmaster and that was the Ryder Cup competition where the Americans play against the Europeans against the society of one-armed golfers and both of us have qualifying point systems uh based on events in our country and and um our countries I should say and and uh so we qualify teams and it's a competition of the best of the best and happens every two years and and uh switches back and forth to from Europe to to the United States so um we haven't had one in Canada yet we might have to consider that here shortly but gotta you know gotta have something to to work towards there but yes this is uh the best of the best between um North America and um and Europe and like you said it happens biannually I think I read this year it was uh over in Europe was it not uh this year we we did not play we played uh last time it happens every two years also this was this was an off year then okay yeah this is no no no no no it hasn't happened yet oh it's on the way okay it will be in September uh mid-September in Ireland oh so it's in Ireland later this year yes yes and I'm honored to say that I am the captain of Team America so I get to take my team to Ireland and uh we I was the captain in 23 for the first time and and we won the the Americans won the cup for the first time in several years and and when we did that they asked me to do it again so I said well I've got to do it again so yeah you can't we have never traveled overseas and won the cup so this is going to be the first time we do that well I like that attitude way to go Mr. Team Captain now how many um how many will you have on your team do you know just yet yes yes we have 12 members um both sides it's 12 against 12 and the format is exactly the same as the Ryder Cup and the way that works it's a three-day event and there there will be four team matches of two against two in uh morning on day one and morning of day two also four matches team matches on the afternoon of day one and the afternoon of day two um and each one of those matches there each team plays eight players in a session so there will be four players sitting out that particular session of course there's two sessions per day and then on day three there's just one session and it's singles matches in uh every player from both team plays so it'll be 12 against 12 yeah well that's that'll be exciting for you come September you'll get a a weekend overseas and and uh you know like you said you'll be you'll be bringing back that trophy we know you will so it's uh it's really turned out to be just an extremely special event it's a tremendous honor to make a team um and really quite quite frankly Sam when we go to our national championships there's almost more focus on how many Fightmaster Cup points people are earning than winning a championship because they want to be on this team yeah there's there's bragging rights for people that you know earn more points it's kind of like the Ryder Cup and on the PGA tour you know it's yeah there's nothing like uh teeing it up and playing for your country and when you talk to most of the players they will tell you that they get more nervous in the Ryder Cup competition than they did in any individual event they ever played in that's something that tells you that you know they they take it quite seriously so I'm guessing Fightmaster Cup qualifying events sort of happened throughout the spring and and the summer then leading up to this yeah it happens over a two-year period since it's every two years and on the it's only the one-arm event so we have an annual meeting in championship every year which moves around the country at a different location um we also have what we call a winter regional competition which is in Florida in January every year over the weekend so it's nice for us to break away from our jobs especially we haven't touched a club in a couple of months and and we all get together and in Florida and have a little winter competition um and then based on your performance in those two events you acquire points and and you know whoever acquires the most points uh or get to get on the team and and we have uh 10 automatic qualifier spots and then whoever the captain is gets to select two captain's picks to complete the team okay so two of them are your picks and and the other 10 are are automatic now as you alluded to we talked about uh a few minutes earlier you were instrumental in the establishment of the uh United States adaptive golf alliance in 2014 this made it possible I know for um you know people with all sorts of disabilities to sort of come together and and uh play in the adaptive golf Kentucky tournaments every year when when that happens and uh to talk about some of the other events that have been made possible through the alliance and the sort of the other pursuits that the alliance partakes in every yeah yeah the games pretty much exploded over the last 10 or 11 years and since the incorporation of the alliance and by the way we now have 57 member organizations involved with the United States adaptive golf alliance so it's a massive deal we we have generated over 50 000 free lessons to people with disabilities each year that's that's what our that's what our organizations are doing collectively we also run over I think uh this year 44 different golf tournaments across the United States including the United States adaptive open which is hosted and ran by the United States golf association is the governing body of golf in the United States just like we have a a U.S. open a U.S. women's open a U.S. amateur we now have a U.S. adaptive open so we were able to to get the powers to be at golf to step up and embrace our sport which has given us some tremendous amount of exposure which has allowed us to really increase our outreach to people that acquire disabilities in life and introduce them to us so yes the U.S. is currently taking the lead right now on worldwide trying to get our sport into the Paralympics Paralympics if we can get the sport in the Paralympics then we can tap into funding that we can't tap into right now there would just be tons of funding coming in and more and more funding we can produce and more and more services we can provide to people with disabilities because these uh these tournaments and events are phenomenal and they they change lives and and the biggest barrier for our players participating in tournaments is cost you know there's travel costs associated time would be number two because many of our many of our athletes do work and do have family obligations and so on and so forth and you know if you only get two weeks off a year for for your job it's uh it's difficult to play it more than one or two times absolutely yes it might only be a couple of days long but you know you got to go do a trip with your family too or even if you can afford a couple of trips a year so we would like to get this where our sponsors take care of a lot of the base costs for and travel stipends for a lot of players so that they can participate more in these events that really help these individuals get through life and incidentally i should tell your audience that if you go on to usaga.org uh-huh usaga.org you can see pictures of all this and you can access locations and times on the calendar of every tournament across the united states oh even the adaptive tournaments yeah yeah that's great yeah we're around kentucky we not only have the kentucky tournament in june but uh we have tournaments in uh indianapolis and in missouri and ohio and um you know so a lot of the neighboring states have events in different times of the year as well so yeah anybody listening that knows somebody with a disability would be interested in playing golf or maybe is already a golfer with a disability but doesn't know of the organization they can go on there and and see where these tournaments are being held and how to reach out to usaga and and get involved and we'd love to have you yeah absolutely i'll link uh folks to that webpage and in the show notes as as well now speaking of usaga.org uh we can also go there to access the very first set of standards for competitive adaptive golf we talked on talked about it a little briefly earlier this was the first set of standards to ever surface here in our nation and uh also you uh established a ranking system for like you said 15 sport classes so give us some more insight into the the steps taken to establish the standards and ranking system and the guidance that you use to assist you in this undertaking okay i'll do that first of all i guess the biggest guidance was just 30 years of experience oh yeah doing it personally and uh we talked about it for a few years before we ever actually put this organization together and then once we put the organization together we started having conversations with the groups with different disabilities and and um let's see i guess um it was 2014 15 i guess 15 before usaga was really operating and it was 2019 before we published our standards so there was a good solid three or four years of just conversation and figuring out what we were going to put in the standards how are we going to do this what was important all those things and there were just numerous numerous uh conversations this this was sam this was not something that we just sat down one day put on papers yeah i can imagine it was definitely time consuming something that yeah we we we took very seriously and spent a lot of time with it and at the end of the day the end product we tried to accomplish four things in the standards of number one was to create an eligibility criteria now luckily we had somebody else who already led the way on that and that is the paralympics they govern a variety of different sports for people with disabilities so we adopted strictly from an eligibility standpoint and what that means is are you disabled enough or have enough of impairment where you're considered having a disability right they qualify the paralympics had done extensive work on that instead of trying to recreate the wheel we just adopted their criteria from an eligibility standpoint so the second thing we did once we had the eligibility now we got all this diverse variety of of impairment groups so how do we classify so that was the second thing we did is we classified each impairment group and we classified based on how we play the game of golf to try to make it fair in each sport class and we came up with 15 different sport classes so that was the second thing with you the third thing we did it was we provided what we referred to as distance allowances which is the same thing golf does so if you go on to a golf course and play golf you'll see different tee boxes there'll be what's referred to as a men's tee regular tee you'll you'll see a maybe a men's senior tee so if you're you're a senior level age then you get to move up some and then women tees will move up as well and then sometimes you might have what a pro tee or something like that or for the young studs where they kick them back even a little bit farther so so the object being that there are distance allowances provided for gender for age in some cases even ability like the pros might play farther back but so we did that in the world of of disability as well so if you're you're totally blind or you're playing out of a wheelchair you know you're you're gonna if you're a seated player you're gonna be moving up quite a bit because you have stronger challenges than somebody with maybe just a you know a foot off that has a top of the line prosthetic and if you didn't have shorts on you might not even realize that they had an amputation oh yeah totally different animal in the wheelchair yeah and still i don't want to uh i don't want to dismiss their disability everybody has some of them are a little more challenging the others as it goes into playing golf so certain sport classes we provided distance allowances so that was the number three thing we did and then the last thing we did in the standards uh publication is we created a ranking system so when you go play in one of these 44 tournaments around the country based on your performance and based on the difficulty of the course that the tournament is played on you receive a rating for that particular event a constant uh rating that that the organization uses for every athlete to participate and and that is a rolling 18 month schedule so after 18 months your scores from 19 months ago fall off basically also they're right not how long did it take you all together to uh to create this you remember uh i would say you know most of the time were discussions and then once um once we kind of knew what we wanted to do it was probably just a matter of months putting it all together so most of by far most of the time was just having discussions trying to educate ourselves on you know disability types that maybe we weren't real up on you know yeah you know we had to we had to do a lot with um vision impaired because we didn't really understand it because not only does the united states have certain criteria we found out that the criteria internationally might be slightly different and we wanted to make sure we did something that was inclusive so if um if one of if a different impairment group had two different classification systems and one tended to be a little more exclusive then we tried to lean toward the more inclusive one because we didn't want to turn people away that right yeah yeah most definitely yeah it took a while and actually we're still working on even today because once we implemented and got rolling with it uh we created a what was called a competitions committee which leaders of the different organizations sit on the bigger ones sit on the committee or they appoint somebody to sit on the committee and their primary role is to make any amendments as we go along to our standards as needed because no plan is ever perfect in the beginning as we know and as things change with uh with whatever with life then sometimes with experience and time small change here and there and whenever we make changes to the standards we want to make sure everybody's represented to make those changes yeah so those those standards might always be adjusted like so for instance i know for like blind and visually impaired golfers they're allowed to golf with um sort of like a a coach behind them correct to sort of tell them like where the hole is yes yes yes challenges of uh you know challenges of that that hole presents and you know how hard so you don't ever want to upset your your coach because he might direct you in the wrong direction this is true yeah he could aim you away from the hole on purpose so yeah always advice to blind golfers out there make sure you always maintain a good rapport with with your coaches for sure now uh lastly al looking ahead to the future of adaptive golf you said you know obviously you'd love to see it in the paralympics so we'll cross our fingers and and toes for that um what um uh what other uh aspects personally would you like to see adaptive golf continue to thrive and evolve in the years to come yeah the um i'm glad you asked me that sam because we have a major challenge right now that we're going through and it involves the paralympics um the paralympics has their own kind of set of let's say uh how they look at classification okay and without getting too technical here i'll try to explain this the best we can you know the paralympics is is something that's over several sports now those sports may have uh different um different things that require you to be good in that particular sport what i mean by that is is golf um you know if you only have one arm it's going to be a lot more difficult to be good at golf than it is running a track event yeah so as i had stated briefly earlier when we did classifications for our sport we classified based on how we all play the game of golf now they don't necessarily do that paralympics they classify based on um what what they would call is a functional challenge to a body in other words um if you have an arm impairment or if you have a leg impairment and whatever aids we might use to play our sport doesn't really matter to them it's more they look at equality as uh based on the physical uh ailment so to speak we're going to classify you that way and then you have a sport that you only have so many medals and you have tv and you have all these other things that kind of creep into the picture and what ends up happening is you have a classification structure that is much um less they have a lot less sport classes when you have a lot less sport classes what happens is now you have a lot of individuals within your sport that are competing against somebody that uh they can't really compete against very well because they're a little bit more impaired than those individuals does this make sense yeah you want people to be you know competing against so although although we want paralympics because there's a lot of positives to paralympics obviously what we have to be careful on what other sports have have done and made mistakes with is they've allowed their entire sport to be governed and classified by the paralympic standards so in golf this is even more of an importance because we have to kind of thread the needle and pushing forward with with paralympic inclusion but at the same time when that happens we cannot allow those um only you know four six or eight sport classes to define the entire sport of golf because paralympics really you're only going to be dealing with the top five percent or less in your sport anyway and we have to make sure that that our standards and classifications govern everybody that plays so that people don't quit and run away from it because they don't feel like that they can compete under those rules does that make sense yeah it does most definitely so yes we we you know we definitely need some adjustment in the uh paralympic classifications but uh yeah once that happens it'll definitely make for a you know a better uh more more enjoyable experience for the uh adaptive golf sports yeah so what we have to do is make sure that there's a great working relationship between usga who's taken the lead on who's over all of golf uh who's taken the lead on paralympic uh inclusion and usa ga who's over just adaptive golf because there's a lot of things that usga may not be aware of and we have to make sure that that the line of communication is very strong between the two organizations yeah so usga and usa ga they need to maintain a collaborative effort because like you said you see usa ga is the one running 40 something tournaments across the country for adaptive golfers where usga runs one which is the u.s open which is a huge one but and uh so we have to make sure that uh that that they continue to use their clout to get us into the paralympics but at the same time allow all the different state organizations who are helping grow our sport to use the classification system that we use well yes more solution absolutely because like i said you know if you only have uh one arm that you know that's not going to necessarily limit you as much in track because you're mainly using your two legs right right but uh but with one arm you know if you're golfing there's definitely going to be uh more limitations posed that need to be uh taken into account for sure so like we said folks that go to usga.org which i'll link you to and then you can access uh the publication of golf standards there among other you know useful information about tournaments and so forth uh if you've got any questions about any of the ground that we covered today you can also uh email al it's al.gentree at kylegislature.gov and uh let's see there's also another website i'll link you to it's nagoaga for north american one arm golfer association dot or so you can find out more about them and uh any other means al that you would suggest people uh find out more about um maybe specifically the kentucky tournament and other things happening in our parts yeah if you if you go on to the usa ga website could the link to the kentucky tournament will be on there as one of the tournaments so that instead of giving you 30 different email address our website addresses yeah that's the main one to remember and of course if you're a an upper extremity guy i'd like to have fun with the one arm guys we are the best group out there by the way we have it ain't bragging if it's a fact so you can definitely go out there and and have your fun make lots of friends with the with the al of the game so just go to usaga.org and click on kentucky you can find out all you need to know about uh it's him i'll also say too i didn't mean to interrupt you there no you're fine naoa ga has a junior organization so if you know of a kid that has an arm uh impairment oh okay we can introduce them to the game of golf and we raise money and uh we will fly the the kid and the parent to our annual championship which they'll go through a clinic and they will see the the pros at it and um and know what what they can grow up to be like so that's awesome so they can get a feel for what they can do and i'll tell you how successful this has been this year on our fight master cup team for the first time ever there are two juniors that have qualified for the best 12 players in america so out of the 12 two of them are juniors and they were graduates of our of our junior program at a very young age and now they're 16 17 years old and and uh they're playing on their high school teams and and uh they're playing great golf and they're doing it one arm so junior alum shall we say and now they're you know in their mid teens and playing with the with the big boys that's awesome so you know it goes to show that the possibilities are uh you know almost endless even for those with uh with just one arm trying to uh make a name for themselves in the world of golf well uh al thank you so much for joining us we've learned way more of than we could have ever uh possibly imagined i hope you've enjoyed it sir oh yeah you know i can't thank you enough anytime i can get on any kind of outlet or show or whatever and and share the wonderful world of adaptive golf i will always do everything i can to fit that in so thank you samuel for for you know the the platform you've provided me with today you take care and uh keep them all straight up there in frankfort for us all right well i know that's almost an impossible task that's all we have all right same