Franklin resident honored with Courage Award

By Marcus Stone, Sports Editor
mstone@williamsonherald.com

Franklin resident Mike Reeder was honored this week by being awarded the Old Tom Morris Courage Award as part of the first annual St. Andrews Golf Festival.

Reeder gained global notoriety in 2011 after becoming the first man in a wheelchair to play the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.

“I happen to be the first person in a wheelchair to play the Old Course at St. Andrews in its 600-year history,” he said. “But I know I wont be the last.”

The award, one of many to be handed out at a banquet on the campus of the University of St. Andrews March 31, was a shock to Reeder and came out of the blue. He was given the award Thursday at the Golf House of Tennessee and filmed his acceptance speech which will play at the ceremony.

“It came out of the blue,” said Reeder. “As I said in my acceptance speech: I accept this for golfers everywhere who play with a physical disability.”

Reeder has appeared on multiple television outlets, including ESPN’s E:60 news magazine program and became a big hit with the Scottish press after his score of 79 in poor weather conditions at the Old Course bettered Rory McIlroy’s 80 two weeks prior in the British Open.

Old Tom Morris Award presented to Mike Reeder by Dick Horton

McIlroy won the 2011 United States Open and is considered one of the most promising young golfers in the world.

“The press just loved that,” he said with a smile.

Having played golf for the last 23 years, Reeder has met an impressive list of people. At the top of that group he puts Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead.

He met Nicklaus, winner of 18 Majors, at The Vinny golf tournament at Golf Club of Tennessee last year. The two were side-by-side on the practice tee and got into a rhythm together according to Reeder.

As for Snead, he received lessons from him on multiple occasions and called the experience “pretty slick.”

“I think I stopped myself from saying ‘Gee Sam, my mom and dad used to gallery you back in the 40s,” he remembered. “I think I held that back.”

One other experience he spoke of was receiving what he called a “beautiful letter” from Tigers Woods congratulating him on playing the Old Course.

Reeder began playing golf at the age of 40 and was a natural. Within six months of learning the game he broke 90. Upon completion of his personally-designed wheelchair, he was scoring in the high-70s.

His best score to date is a 72 at Forrest Crossing, the course where he works as a Senior Ranger.

A Navy Corpsman in Vietnam, Reeder lost his legs when traveling with the 5th Marine Division and a mortar explosion occurred close by.

The event became life changing in multiple aspects as Reeder questions whether he would have ever came to the sport in other circumstances.

“I’ve said to myself: Would I have been this good if I was standing up? If I hadn’t lost my legs? Would I have even tried golf? Who knows?”

Reeder has been of the links since December due to illness. The warm winter and comfortable spring has made it tough though. On multiple occasions he has felt out of place without a golf club in his hands.

“I need to be out there playing or at least practicing,” he said, “but I just haven’t got the strength or stamina to do it. I’m getting a little bit stronger everyday so pretty soon I’ll be (on the practice green daily).

Orchestrated by the R&N, Links Trust, St. Andrews Links Trust, and Keepers of the Green, the St. Andrews Golf Festival will celebrate all things golf with lectures, historical and museum pieces, rules lectures, etc.

Each trophy awarded is the bust of Tom Morris, who is universally recognized as the founding father of modern golf.

SALUTING OUR HOMETOWN HEROES: Mike Reeder finds a safe haven in golf

By Carole Robinson, Staff Writer
crobinson@williamsonherald.com


On any given day, Mike Reeder can be found somewhere on a golf course. During his years on the course he has made a hole-in-one and he has hit the little white ball at the Holy Grail of courses – The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrew’s in Scotland, one of the oldest and prestigious golf clubs in the world – and several prestigious courses in the United States.

Over the years Reeder has broken several records, including his proudest moment 10 years ago when he shot a 79 at St. Andrews besting golf pro Rory McIIroy, who days before, shot an 80.

This is quite an accomplishment for a man with no legs.

An Excelsior Springs, Mo. native who loved music and always thought he’d end up working in the music industry, Reeder joined the Navy in 1967 when he was 19, “to learn something new.” The Navy offered him a position with the Navy band or chorus, “But I already knew how to play the drums and sing,” he said. He wanted to learn something new. The wisdom of youth

Reeder wanted to be on a nuclear submarine, but at 19 he was still growing and by the time he stopped he was well past 6-foot – too tall for a submarine.

“The Navy made me a corpsman and I spent two years at Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines,” he said.

In September 1969 the Navy had him “join” the Marines and sent him to Parris Island, SC to learn survival the Marine way. In January 1970 Navy Corpsman, Mike Reeder was on a plane to Vietnam with returning Marines who were all too willing to share stories of past deployments, which gave him a heads up when the plane landed and a mortar shell welcomed them. It hit the runway tarmac as the soldiers were deplaning at Da Nang airport.

Two weeks later, Reeder was in the jungle with the 5th Marine Division. While meeting his new platoon the air burst with gunfire. A bullet grazed his neck. Not five minutes on the ground and Reeder qualified for a Purple Heart. The wound wasn’t serious enough to send him home.

Four months later on April 2, 1970, a hot, muggy day just weeks before the monsoon season, the squad was on patrol in the rice paddies. They stopped at a hooch owned by an elderly woman with a cornfield filled with ripe corn. In exchange for some of her fresh corn, the Marines offered to harvest the woman’s field.

Fed and rested the Marines, strung out in a column with “Doc” Reeder, the Navy Corpsman, in the center for safety, were in the paddies on patrol searching for “Charlie.”

But “Charlie” already had them in his sights. He had been patiently watching them for hours and he also knew the most valuable players – the Medic and the Radio Operator.

From the tree line he watched the American 82mm mortar round he had buried at the edge of the rice patty. “Charlie” watched as five Marines passed waiting until Reeder stepped near the explosive. He touched the wires to the battery and Reeder’s life changed in an instant.

His first thoughts, “The corpsman is not supposed to get hit.”

That’s why he’s in the middle.

But as he swung his legs to sit up – he knew – traumatic amputation of both legs below the knees and other wounds – but always a medic with a strong desire to live, he barked orders to the others for the them to staunch the bleeding and kept himself from going into shock. Once stable, he turned his attention to the platoon sergeant who was also hit. His arm was dangling by a little muscle and skin. Reeder stopped the bleeding and supported by their fellow Marines, the two wounded waited for the med-evac chopper to take them to Da Nang Hospital.

After two years in the hospital Reeder was back home in Excelsior Springs – home of healing mineral waters.

He did radio.

“I was the morning voice of KEXS 1090 AM,” he said. Although he couldn’t play his drums anymore, “I had the music in me – I had to do something associated with it.”

He went to San Francisco College for Recording Arts and stayed in California to work in the business through the 1970s when the music industry died in California.

To stay in the music business his choices were – Los Angeles, New York City or Nashville. A country boy at heart, husband and father, he was tired of the big cities so with a job at Columbia Records, Reeder and his family headed to Nashville.

While they were en route, Sony bought Columbia Records and he lost a job he never worked. But Reeder is a fighter and a doer. He worked as an independent engineer for several years and then became a househusband in their home in Forrest Crossing where he watched the golf course being built and played Mr. Mom to his three daughters while his wife Debby worked.

One day he went into the golf shop to buy a birthday gift for a friend.

“The guy asked me if I had ever swung a golf club sitting down,” he explained. “I said no. Then I tried and as the Golf Gods would have it, I swung perfectly into the target.”

He became a regular at the course where he practiced hitting balls any chance he could get.

I was told, “I was a natural,” he said. “I just picked it up – instinctively knew what to do – how to play. I am very proud to say, to my knowledge I am the only seated golfer who ever shot a par round of golf.”

Not bad for something that “was a fluke.”

Over the years, Reeder designed and developed a wheel chair specifically for playing golf. It has additional bracing and a unique golf spike that holds the chair “terra firma” so it doesn’t slide from under the golfer.

“I develop a lot of torque when I swing – even without legs,” he said. “It was very frustrating the first few years. I had to figure out something.”

Reeder’s only request to the manufacturer of the chair, when one ordered, “Forewheel Golf” is prominently engraved on the chair.

“When I’m on the golf course I’m in the great green cathedral,” Reeder said. “If I’m out by myself I’m in commune with the Lord and all his beauty. If I play with friends, then I’m having congenial banter. What I like best about golf is playing with strangers and becoming friends. Play golf and find a friend forever.”

Although Reeder spends a lot of time on the golf course, his wife, Debby doesn’t mind.

“It’s brought me focus,” he said. “I was scattered going in 14 different directions. You’ve got to focus before you swing – golf pulled me into focus.”

In 2009, Mike Reeder published the book, “From Where I Sit – Forewheel Golf, a Memoir of a Wheelchair Golfer;” it’s Mike Reeder’s story in 18 rounds of golf.

“Don’t forget the veterans,” Mike added. “So many are coming home now after their third, fourth, fifth tour overseas. They appear physically fine, but mentally at best, they are beat up. They are going to need love and understanding and a lot of years before they can shake it loose. It took me a good three years to shake it loose.”

When you see a veteran, tell them “Welcome home.”

Featured in Newspapers and Media Following Amazing Round at "The Old Course" St. Andrews in Scotland

Tuesday 14 September 2010

Featured in Newspapers and Media Following Amazing Round at "The Old Course" St. Andrews in Scotland

Double Amputee Veitnam Veteran Becomes Sponsored Golfer

News Paper Articles

Tee Times - On a Roll, Reeder Rules at St. Andrews

 

St. Andrews Citizen (1) - Golf Dream

 

St. Andrews Citizen (2) - Dream Come True!

 

Daily Record - Bold Course

 

St. Andrews Scorecard

 

 

 

 

NATIONAL AMPUTEE GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPS

Plenty of good shots

Competitors show uncanny skills while getting off one-liners

BY ERIK BOLAND
Newsday.com STAFF WRITER

August 25, 2005

Photo
Mike Reeder (Photo by Howard Schnapp)
Aug 24, 2005

Mike Reeder put a good stroke on the 30-foot uphill putt on the 17th hole at Bethpage Green yesterday, but as the ball approached the hole, Dennis Ithal, one of Reeder's playing partners, saw it needed a verbal nudge.

"Get legs! Get legs!" Ithal exhorted, drawing a loud laugh from Reeder.
Reeder, of course, doesn't have any legs.

Welcome to the 57th National Amputee Golf Championships, where there are no sacred cows, there's some really good golf and politically correct terms such as "physically challenged" and "differently abled" are avoided like three-putts.

"Oh, we're gimps, amps, whatever," said Reeder, a Marine who lost both his legs below the knee in a booby-trap explosion in 1970 in An Hoa, Vietnam. "We're not very P.C."

"If you spend any time around this group, you'll hear a number of hand, leg and arm jokes," said Marty Ebel, an attorney from Massachusetts who, like Reeder, is a double amputee. "Things like, 'Lend me a hand' or 'I don't have a leg to stand on.' They're mostly bad jokes. Normies [non-amputees] hear that stuff and their jaws drop."

Ebel, Reeder and the rest of the 85-player field have golf games that can cause a similar reaction. Three-time defending champion Ken Green from Middle Tennessee State, who wears a prosthesis on his left leg, shot 2-under-par 68 on the Red Course yesterday to lead the three-day event heading into today's final round.

Ebel, 47, never leaves his cart. Riding in a 700-pound SoloRider, Ebel maneuvers to his ball, picks a club from the bag strapped to the front, and swivels his seat into position to hit. He regularly exceeds 200 yards off the tee and is around most greens in regulation.

Ebel's SoloRider is a story in itself. A golf purist might cringe when Ebel drives the cart onto a green to putt. That same person would shake his or her head while searching the green for any indication Ebel's cart had been there.

"It exerts less pounds per square inch than a person does," said Ebel, who lost his legs in 1984 after an accident involving a front-loader vehicle.

Ebel played golf before his accident, but Reeder, 57, did not start until 17 years ago. In a golf store with a friend, Reeder picked up a club for the first time, smacked a ball cleanly into the net, and was hooked. Reeder, a 10-handicapper, tugs a wheelchair behind his golf cart, then shifts into the chair to hit balls off the tee or in the fairway. For short chips or on the greens, Reeder waddles to his ball on his stumps and uses a cut-down wedge or 22-inch putter.

"It [golf] has meant a lot to me," said Reeder, a ranger at Forest Crossing Golf Course in Franklin, Tenn. "If I could get Debbie [his wife of nearly 30 years] to play, my life would be complete."

Bethpage hosted last year's Eastern Amputee Championships, Bethpage superintendent Dave Catalano's first exposure to amputee golfers.

"I love having them here. It's great for the game, great for Bethpage," Catalano said.

He then added: "I'm envious that they play so much better than I do."
Friday 18 August 2006

National Amputee Golf Championships

No Handicap

To shoot even par -- that's every hacker's dream. Hey, I'm no different. I've come close a time or two. I carry a 9-handicap and every now and then, when the putter gets hot, I'll threaten par. But I was never able to quite hold it together until Sept. 17, 2001.

I am the "ambassador captain" (senior ranger) at my local course, so I get to play several times a week. On that day, after getting the shotgun off, I dropped in on the 17th tee expecting to play two holes and go home. But I checked with the starter and No. 1 and thought I just might as well play a few more. I had a tap-in birdie at No. 4 and a chip-in birdie at No. 6 and another birdie at No. 11. After a couple of pars and a couple of bogeys, I made it to my last hole. I bombed my tee shot, put a short iron on the green and two-putted for par. I then went back and added my score up. Hmmmm, Three birdies, three bogeys, 12 pars.
Even-par 72. I'd done it!
Not bad for a guy in a wheelchair.

Mike Reeder
Franklin, Tenn.



Editor's note: Mike Reeder lost his legs while serving as a Navy corpsman with the Marines in Vietnam. According to the club official Mike Heil, Reeder plays the Forrest Crossing Golf Course in Franklin, Tenn., from 6,000 yards and drives the ball more than 200. He gets off his chair to chip and putt.

 

As seen in Golf Digest, February 2002