Paraplegic used will to get back in the game

By Randall Mell
Staff Writer
Posted February 1 2005

When Dennis Walters was told he would never walk again, he wept.

Barely waiting for Walters to regain his composure, the doctor delivered the hardest news.

"And you're never going to be able to play golf again," he said.

Walters, who was 24 when an accident in a golf cart robbed him of his PGA Tour dream, quit sobbing with those last words. Golf was his life, from sunrise to sundown, not so much a game as a religion. His dreams, the meaning of his life, his closest friendships, they were all bound to the sport.

The doctor's words, delivered so coldly, changed something.

They made Walters angry.

Straightening up as best he could that winter day in 1975, Walters cursed at the doctor.

"Listen, I'm coming back to this damn place someday," Walters said. "And I'm going to hit balls right off your front lawn."

Indeed, the journey Walters launched that day would take him back to the doctor's front lawn. Two years later, unannounced, Walters rolled onto the property at the Kessler Institute in West Orange, N.J., where the doctor worked. In a specialized golf cart with a swivel seat attached to the side, Walters delighted belting shots into the grass across the street.

Walters hit balls until the doctor came out and shook his hand.

"I wanted to make a point, and I think I made it pretty loudly," Walters said. "I don't think you should put limits on somebody's outlook, on their potential. He told me he was wrong, and I was happy about that."

A paraplegic, Walters learned to play golf again, so well that this year he has been nominated for induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame in the lifetime achievement category. Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Babe Zaharias are among the 104 members enshrined there.

Walters, 55, of Plantation, has been touring the country giving clinics as a trick-shot artist for 28 years. He performs his own show but also has served as the warm-up act for Tiger Woods during Tiger Woods Foundation clinics. He has performed with Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, Sam Snead, Greg Norman and countless others.

Life changed dramatically for Walters on July 21, 1974, when the golf cart he was riding in alone hit some loose stones as he turned a corner down a hill at Roxiticus Golf Club in Mendham, N.J. The cart flipped, rolling onto him and permanently damaging his spinal cord. He lost feeling from the waist down that has never returned.

"This is a man who has shown tremendous courage and become a great role model with an important message," said Player, the nine-time major championship winner from South Africa. "He shows people there is life after a tragedy, and I think it is appropriate that he be nominated for the Hall of Fame."

As one of 242 World Golf Hall of Fame International members receiving ballots, Player nominated Walters for induction. Nicklaus, Palmer, Woods and former President Gerald Ford have written letters of support.

A World Golf Hall of Fame advisory subcommittee will review the nominations and present a short list to the hall's board of directors for consideration in the lifetime achievement category in late March. The inductees will be announced in April with the ceremonies scheduled for Nov. 14.

"Dennis' golf show is about so much more than golf," says Barbara Herman, Dennis' sister. "It's about what is possible if you persevere. It's a good message for all the juniors he reaches, and I can't tell you the number of letters Dennis gets from people who have been involved in accidents or had strokes who have been inspired by him."

Walters presents the Hall of Fame's board an unusual test. How do they measure his contribution? Whom do they measure it against? There's never been anybody quite like him.

The great champions earned induction triumphing over the challengers of their generation. Walters never won a championship after his accident, but he is beating the most formidable array of opponents.

Walters has overcome tragedy, despair, depression, discouragement, prejudice and doubt in becoming the only paraplegic in the world who makes his living as a professional golfer.

"The lifetime achievement category was created for people whose contributions come outside the competitive arena," said Jack Peter, the World Golf Hall of Fame's chief operating officer. "Dennis clearly qualifies in that category."

That fateful day

Golf still gives Walters hope and purpose, but he says he never really came to terms with the accident and never found satisfactory answers for the questions that haunt him.

Why did it have to happen?

"It's still very difficult," Walters said. "I'm still mad about the whole thing. I can't believe it's been more than 30 years. The memory is still so surreal, so hard to believe. There isn't a day I don't think about it.

"Everything I do is affected by what happened that day. It's still maddening."

To this day, Walters has never seen a psychiatrist or psychologist.

"I know what my problem is," Walters said. "What's a doctor going to say?

"My father was my counselor."

And golf is the therapy that sustains him.

A former New Jersey state junior champion, Walters was a professional grooming himself for the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament when he visited Roxiticus Golf Club in search of a friend playing there.

Walters hopped into a three-wheel golf cart and went looking for Ralph Terry, the former New York Yankees pitcher who was part owner of Roxiticus. Walters is like one of Terry's sons, Terry says today. Riding down a steep hill on his way to the 16th hole, Walters' cart began skidding on some loose rocks as he made a turn.

Walters says he wasn't going that fast, but he remembers the cart flipping, seeing his golf clubs fly over him, though he can't remember feeling the cart crash onto him. He said he felt no pain, either. Flat on his back, looking skyward, he was unable to move his legs when Terry and others came to his aid.

Terry, 69, living in Larned, Kan., says Walters was gasping for breath and frightened when he knelt by his side.

"He said, `Ralph, this is serious, I can't feel my legs,'" Terry said.

Trying to comfort his friend, Terry told Walters how he lost feeling in his legs after a car accident years earlier and the feeling returned. Still, after a doctor playing racquetball at the club arrived before the ambulance, Terry learned the worst. The doctor poked Walters with pins, and Walters couldn't feel anything below his navel.

"The doctor knew right there," Terry said. "Away from Dennis, he told me, `He's going to be a paraplegic.'"

Walters suffered a dislocation of the vertebrae at the T-12 level, the dislocation permanently damaging his spinal cord. He clung to the hope he would recover until that doctor at the Kessler Clinic delivered him the devastating news seven months after the accident.

Suicide considered

That fall, employees at the Kessler Institute tried to get Walters interested in repairing watches, a career many disabled patients there were trained to do. The thought depressed Walters, and he considered committing suicide.

"I thought there must be some black pill I could take, but I never found that pill," Walters said.

Instead, he asked for a golf club to hold in bed, and he practiced his grip, a little ritual that proved in some way soothing. Later, on weekend retreats to his parents' home, his father encouraged him to try hitting balls from his wheelchair.

Almost seven months after the accident, he hit his first ball outdoors from a wheelchair in the front of his parents' condo. With a persimmon 3-wood, he barely made contact his first shot, the second squibbed about 100 yards, but he hit the third shot flush, sending it about 160 yards.

"I wasn't sure how to cope with what I was going through, but hitting golf balls in that wheelchair, it made me feel better," Walters said. "It was great therapy, a great escape from my problems. It gave me hope."

After returning full time to his parents' home, Walters became more serious about learning to play with his disability. His father, Bucky, helped. So did a close friend, Wayne Warms.

Walters moved to Pompano Beach with his parents for the winter, and a pro, Alec Ternyei, watched Walters struggle with the limitations the wheelchair presented at Crystal Lago golf course, now Crystal Lake. Ternyei was handy, and he cut the legs off a bar stool, mounting it on the side of a golf cart. It was the first crude model of what would become the design that enables him to play aside a golf cart today.

Walters also learned to chip and putt one-handed from crutches.

About 18 months after the accident, Walters remembered as a boy watching trick-shot artist Paul Hahn Sr. He was inspired.

Gary Wiren, the PGA Masters instructor from Palm Beach, and Bob Toski, the Hall of Fame teacher, helped Walters in the art of giving clinics and with connections that would lead to shows. Nicklaus heard about Walters' plight and steered him to McGregor Golf, which backed him financially as a major sponsor, a breakthrough that ignited his new career.

"Dennis had a dream that he was going to play golf in the big time, in front of large galleries on a great stages," Wiren said. "He is a world-class golf performer today. He made it, just in a different way."

A gifted helper

Walters, who gives about 90 shows a year, performs a one-hour act with his gifted dog, Benji Hogan, an integral part of the program. Walters can drive a ball more than 200 yards, but his show is filled with unusual shots, including blindfolded shots, and shots through fire. He hits shots off 3-foot tees, off watches and with eggs balanced atop balls.

Walters says his low score for nine holes is 4-under-par 32 at Jacaranda.

Walters hasn't escaped more heartache. His father and inspiration, Bucky, died three years ago, and his mother, Florence, shortly after that. His sister, Barbara, continues to be a close confidant and aide.

"It's unreal what Dennis has gone through and how he has put his life together," said Terry, who rebounded from giving up the famed seventh-game World Series homer to Bill Mazeroski in 1960 to become the World Series MVP two years later. "I think life isn't about what you achieve, it's about what you overcome. I don't think there's anybody in the Hall of Fame who has overcome what Dennis has overcome. He's doing something nobody's ever done."

Randall Mell can be reached at rmell@sun-sentinel.com