Shot of inspiration
Walters defies doctors, remakes himself as trick-shot artist.
Dennis Walters had every reason to believe he was headed for the PGA Tour. In 1967 he was 17 and had won the New Jersey Junior Championship, the Caddie Championship and the Public Links Junior Championship and was headed to North Texas State on a golf scholarship.
Four years later, when he finished 11th in the U.S. Amateur and advanced to the finals of Tour Qualifying School, the dream was coming into focus.
Then it happened. On July 21, 1974, he was driving a cart down a steep embankment at Roxiticus Golf Club in Mendham, N.J., when it flipped over. When he tried to get up he couldn’t move. Taken to the hospital, he was told he had severe spinal damage and would never walk again. And definitely never play golf again.
“I saw it as a hopeless situation,” said Walters, now 68 and a longtime resident at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter. “There were so many dark days it’s almost indescribable.”
What Walters did in the weeks, months and years to follow was to
defy those doctors, get out of that bed and back into a golf cart and become not only a trick-shot artist who has entertained millions, but a story of hope and perseverance that has earned him the highest honors the nation’s golf organizations can bestow.
Having already received the Distinguished Service Award by the Palm Beach Gardens-based PGA of America in 2008, Walters will be honored by the United States Golf Association when he is awarded the Bob Jones Award at this year’s U.S. Open in June. He is one of only nine to receive both, and the other eight have been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
“Put it this way,” Walters said, “if you know a guy that’s paralyzed from the waist down and makes his living doing golf shows, that’s a pretty tall story. If my life was a movie you’d say they made it up.”
It’s said every journey starts with a single step, but Walters has never taken one since that day. What he has done is travel more than three million miles; make more than 3,000 appearances; visit all 50 states plus Mexico, Canada and England; and perform before an estimated 1.5 million people.
Along the way he’s met (and in many cases worked with) everyone who’s anyone in golf: Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tiger Woods. Ben Hogan, who made an amazing comeback from a severe auto accident, wrote Walters a letter of encouragement when he was in the hospital. He’s performed at nearly every PGA Tour stop as well as Augusta National, home of the Masters; Scotland’s famed St. Andrews; 10 U.S. Opens and 15 PGA Championships.
“When I was laying in bed 44 years ago I never thought I was getting out of the bed,” he said. “I figured if I could get out it would be an accomplishment.
“I’ve been on tour for 41 years, which is not what I had in mind. But when I’m doing these shows I talk about accomplishing a dream, or a goal. A dream is not something you have at night. It’s having a positive thought in your head, in your heart, and doing whatever it takes to make it come true.
“And the other part of that is, if you have a dream and it doesn’t work out, the solution is simple: Get a new dream. Which is exactly what I did.”
‘I can do that one …’
It started when his father, Arthur “Bucky” Walters, sat him in a chair and had him hit balls. First inside, into a net, but then outside, on a driving range. And soon Walters wound up at Crystal Lago, a course in Pompano Beach, where he was pushed in his wheelchair down the par-4, 300-yard first hole and he actually got a par. It took 45 minutes to play the hole, however, so that wasn’t going to work.
Crystal Lago employee Alex Ternyei offered a solution, removing the seat from a golf cart and replacing it with a barstool minus the legs and bolting it to a platform. Legendary instructor Bob Toski, then teaching in Miami, later added the final touch, putting in a swivel so Walters could pivot his body and add power.
“He found a way to keep playing golf,” Toski said. “It was that desire and determination that did it. What he’s got coming to him now couldn’t happen to a better man.”
Three clubs had done fundraisers for Walters and he wanted to thank them by going back and showing what he could do. He just hit shots at the first two, but then had an idea.
“When I was 15 I was playing in a junior tournament and (trick-shot artist) Paul Hahn Sr. came and did one of his shows,” he said. “For whatever reason I was in the first row, and I thought it was really cool, but I didn’t go home and say, ‘I want to hit balls with a rubber hose,’ or anything like that.
“But before that third exhibition I said to my dad, ‘Remember when we saw Paul Hahn hit the ball off a 3-foot-high tee? Can you make me a 3-foot-high tee?’ So he did, and I went to the third one and everybody went nuts when I killed it right down the middle.”
Walters got a 16mm film of Hahn performing at the 1960 PGA Championship and watched it on the wall in his bedroom.
“I’d say, ‘I can do that one, I think I can do that one, I know I can’t do that one.’ So I just started picking things out for my own amusement. I never had an intention of making it a career. I hit golf balls all day because it made me feel better. As rotten as I felt everywhere else, when I came to the course I felt better.”
Gary Wiren, now director of golf at Trump International in unincorporated West Palm Beach, got him his first show, at the 1977 PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, staged inside the Contemporary Hotel.
“Dennis is an inspiration to me because of what he said, and then what he did,” Wiren said. “It took hours and hours of work and commitment to perform. Hitting trick shots is hard enough when we have our whole body, not just our arms and hands.
“How many shows has he done, all around the world? He’s influenced an awful lot of people. Maybe that’s even better than winning a major championship or two.”
Nicklaus offers helping hand
Walters’ dad wrote to courses all over the country seeking bookings, but business was slow until Jack Nicklaus, who then owned MacGregor Golf Company, entered the picture. Arthur Walters wrote to Nicklaus as a father trying to help his son and Nicklaus arranged a meeting with company president, George Nichols. A contract was signed and Walters was off, to junior tournaments, charity events, corporate outings.
“Every time we did a show my dad said, ‘Make sure you do as well as you can, because you never know who’s watching.’ So I started getting other shows and really started building. And I was getting better at it because I was doing more shows.”
Four dogs have been part of his act: Muffin, Mulligan, Benji Hogan and now, Mr. Bucky, named after Walters’ dad. Walters will ask Mr. Bucky questions about everything from math to golf trivia and the dog will bark out answers.
“We went to the Masters and people were asking him the par on No. 12. Three. What about 15? Five.
“This is how competitive Arnold Palmer was. He asked my dog what’s the par on the fifth hole, which is the most obscure hole on the course. He was trying to see if my dog knew his stuff. He did.”
After spending nearly 200 days annually in a motor home for nearly 40 years, Walters has scaled back his schedule the last two, doing a circuit through Chicago, New York and Cape Cod last year with plans to hit Chicago, Philadelphia and Cape Cod again this year.
“At this stage of the ballgame it’s a perfect way to do it,” he said. “Be busy, but less travel.
“How long I’m going to do it I won’t say . ... I’ve been in a wheelchair 44 years and I’m still in good shape. It’s the thing that makes me happy.”
The feedback over the years has been nonstop, first as phone calls, letters and telegrams, and recently as tweets and Instagrams.
“My message is to help people, give them hope, inspiration, showing what’s possible. It’s come to me as a gift. So to make your way in this world on your golf skills — which is really what I wanted to do in the first place — that’s pretty cool. But to be able to help and positively influence others has made it even better.”