Tricks of their trade
Golf's showmen have hit the road with acts ranging from silly to sensational
By Jim Moriarty
Golf World May 3, 2002 

Dennis Walters came at it the only way he could -- sitting down. 
Walters had been a good junior golfer in New Jersey and attended 
North Texas State on a golf scholarship. He tied for 11th in the
1971 U.S. Amateur. Walters failed in his first and, as it turned out, 
only attempt to get through the PGA Tour's qualifying school. 
He played in South Africa for a few months and planned to try the 
tour again until July 1974 when the three-wheeled golf cart he was 
riding in lost its brakes going down a hill and crashed, paralyzing him 
from the waist down.

With the help of his father, Bucky, Walters began hitting golf balls into a
net in the basement of their home. On a trip to Florida he hit balls every
day on the driving range. It was there the seat he has given his
exhibitions in for the last 26 years was first fastened to the side of a
cart.

"The first demonstrations I did were entitled, 'How to Play Golf Sitting
Down.' I had no idea I could make a career out of this," says Walters. "It
was an escape mechanism for me. It was like mental and physical
rehabilitation at the same time. As rotten as I felt every place else, at
least when I came to the golf course, I felt better."

Walters remembered seeing Paul Hahn Sr. at a clinic when he was 15 years
old. He managed to get an 8-millimeter film of Hahn from the PGA of
America. He and his father rented a projector and showed the film over and
over on their basement wall.

"I remember that stuff vividly," Walters says. "There's not that many
people who've been able to do this. Every person who does it full-time has
his own niche, his own slant on things. I try to tell everybody that golf
was my dream. I figured I would just tell my story and try to encourage
others to reach for their dreams and to do the things in their lives that
someone told them were impossible."

Walters is the opening act for Tiger Woods at his Foundation clinics. "I
thought about Joe Kirkwood a lot when I was doing these exhibitions with
Tiger," he says. "He went all the way around the world with Walter Hagen.
They were barnstorming. In a way, 50, 60 years later, I'm kind of
barnstorming with Tiger. I thought that was kind of neat."