Life Saving PGA HOPE Program Teaches Golf to Military Veterans
Life Saving PGA HOPE Program Teaches Golf to Military Veterans
By Tom Lang
Michigan PGA section member Bob Bales has been called a hero, but he wants no such praise.
He heads up the PGA HOPE program at the U.S. Veteran’s Administration Medical Center in Battle Creek, one of six golf skills training sites across the state this year. Bales is the GM at Angles Crossing south of Kalamazoo. Also helping led the lessons is Dean Kolstad of Gull Lake View Resort, and Dean Marks of Milham Park and two others.
“After we finish this PGA HOPE program, the Veterans come up and thank me for being a hero, and I go, ‘no, not at all, you guys are the heroes.’ I’m just showing them how to play golf.”
Bob Bales
“I’ve had countless number of Veterans tell me that this program saved their lives,” Bales added. “One in particular said to me he was going to take his own life, but was introduced to this program. He said playing golf he was able to get his mind in a better place and was able to channel what he called his addictive tendencies into golf instead of into destructive things. He has since gotten married and started a family, and he’s told me, ‘if it hadn’t been for this program I wouldn’t be here.’ And if saving one person, it’s worth it all.”
PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere) is the flagship military program of PGA REACH, the charitable foundation of the PGA of America. PGA HOPE introduces golf to Veterans with disabilities to enhance their physical, mental, social, and emotional well-being.
The program introduces the game of golf through a developmental 6-8 week curriculum, taught by PGA Professionals like Bales, Kolstad and Marks who are trained in adaptive golf and military cultural competency. All programs are funded by PGA REACH and supplemented by PGA Section Foundations, so the cost of programming is free to all Veterans.
The Michigan PGA is offering six PGA HOPE programs in 2023 including Rochester, Grand Rapids, Grand Haven, metro Detroit, and Midland. They are full this spring.
Two friends and U.S. Army Veterans that came to the Battle Creek session are from the Lansing area who told me that as women wanting to learn the game of golf they wanted to do so with others like them.
“I have been interested in learning golf because it’s a great way to get outside and move, but I’ve always felt very intimidated to walk onto a golf course and try to hit a ball the first time – not knowing what I’m doing, and having others around me,” said DeDe Luebbert, of DeWitt. “So, learning about golf and doing it around people I’m comfortable with, like other Veterans, peers, friends, in a low-pressure environment and in a program that is doing such great things for the people I respect and admire so much.”
Her friend and fellow Veteran Kerri Kruckeberg of Grand Ledge, concurred.
“I always wanted to learn to play golf, and learning how much they do for this hospital and all, makes me even more interested in it, knowing how much (the instructors) are giving back to the Veterans here,” she said. “It’s a really cool program.”
According to Bales, the VA Medical Center in Battle Creek – which also has a 9-hole par 34 golf course called Custer Green, built by area teaching pros after WWII not far out the front door of the main hospital – cares for Veterans mostly dealing with mental health challenges like substance abuse issues, PTSD or traumatic brain injuries. Many patients served there are inpatient and on site. Some also have physical injuries, “but most of what we see here is not necessarily seen as an outward challenge.”
Bales also described a blind man who had never played golf, so he had no preconceptions of what was going on. But at the end of the program they played a golf scramble, and on the first hole the player’s team chose to hit a shot out of the bunker. “This blind gentleman hits the bunker shot and holes it out,” Bales said. “He didn’t see any of it, but the reaction of everybody else, he could be part of that.
“He was as much a golfer as anybody else.”
Which is the main point of it all.
More information can be found at: https://www.pgareach.org/services/military/
… which includes a video from Jack Nicklaus featuring other Veteran testimonies.
