Golf really is ‘a saviour’ for Victoria course senior champ
You can’t do this. You can’t do that. No. No. And no. Ever since John Peterson was diagnosed with polio at the age of five — leaving him with an atrophied right arm — that’s all he heard growing up.
Peterson, however, refused to listen.
He ignored the doubters and he ignored the kids who teased and made fun of him because he was different.
To the naysayers, it was Peterson who said, ‘oh, yes I can.’
Peterson emphatically said it again last week when he won the Victoria Golf Course’s senior golf club championship for the third time.
And it was Peterson who shouted it out when the ninehandicap golfer shot a 1-under 70 a month ago.
“I’ve never looked at it like I was handicapped. It was just me,” said Peterson with the knowing grin of someone who has it figured out: that you can only play the cards you are dealt and you don’t get to reach into the pile for another card very often.
“I just never let it bother me. If I had looked at life like I was handicapped I probably never would have played golf; I probably never would have advanced in life,” said Peterson, now 64.
Despite the disease, Peterson did all the things his friends did while he was growing up.
He played soccer where you don’t need to use your arms. But he also played hockey and baseball — the latter where he would catch the ball with his left hand, tuck the ball and glove under his right armpit where he could retrieve it again with his left hand to make a throw.
“I had a different attitude about it all. I didn’t let it bother me that I had the impairment. I did all the normal things and played all the sports other kids were playing,” said Peterson, sipping a cup of coffee in the clubhouse of the Victoria golf course.
“The two years I played baseball I had the best batting average on the team.”
Mostly, though, Peterson played golf. It’s a game he grew to not just love, but which he said helped him not only overcome the polio but also a stroke he had in the winter of 1996.
“Golf has been a saviour, really. It was a big part of my rehabilitation for both the polio and the stroke.
“When I got the stroke I lost the feeling in my entire left side. I couldn’t feed myself or anything.
“But I told myself I got over polio and I could get over this, too.”
Naturally, he did. Six months later, all the feeling came back to his left side.
“I told my brother, Bob, that I would be playing golf again as soon as the snow melted. Bob told me there was no chance.”
Sure enough, John was right, even though in his first game back he shot 106.
“I’d never shot that high in my life. I said that’s my blood pressure; that’s not a golf score.”
The score, of course, didn’t matter. What was important was that Peterson was back where he belonged — on a golf course.
“Golf is a teacher of life. It tells you that you can overcome any obstacle or limitation,” said Peterson, who was a clerk for the CN Railroad before he retired.
“But more than anything, golf has given me confidence.
“Golf is also a game of friendship. You meet a lot of nice people and I’m a people person.
“It also takes you away from your everyday problems.
“And, I like the competition,” said Peterson, who usually plays three times a week.
Over the years — when his game needs a tune-up — Peterson goes to see his friend, Matteo Piscopo, an assistant pro at Victoria, for lessons.
Piscopo said it wasn’t long before the two of them realized they had it all backward.
“All the time I was teaching him, he was the one teaching me,” said Piscopo.
“He’s taught me a lot more about life than I have taught him about golf.
“He’s taught me how to deal with life, persevere, never give up.
“I’ve never seen anyone with the determination he has. There’s just no give up. The word quit is not in his vocabulary.
“It’s unbelievable, really. I can honestly say that John is my hero.”
Because of the lack of strength in his right arm, he had to make adjustments to his swing.
“It’s not something you would ever teach anyone,” said Piscopo.
“He swings with his body. His right hand basically just sits on the club and goes for a ride. His left arm — and his body — does all the work.”
Peterson said he was about 12 years old when he started playing golf — or at least a version of it.
“A friend of mine, Rodney Lien, owned a golf club — an old hickory-shafted fiveiron. So, we built our own golf course.
“We dug holes in the boulevard of the Calder neighbourhood in north Edmonton and that was our golf course.
“We played up and down that boulevard for hours.”
While money was scarce, Peterson said he and Lien used to do a little gambling when they were playing golf. “You know what we played for? Jawbreakers,” Peterson said of the hard candy confectionary.
If Peterson and Lien cut the neighbours’ grass or did other errands, they often earned the 25 cents it cost to play the Kinsmen Pitch and Putt.
While Peterson was naturally right-handed, it didn’t take him long to figure out that with his withered right arm he would be much better off playing golf left-handed.
“Right-handed golfers lead with their left arm and it is the right arm that supplies the power,” said Peterson. “But with just a limited use of my right hand I knew I would be stronger if I played the other way. My right arm doesn’t allow me to pull the club through.”
For his 17th birthday, Peterson’s mother bought him a set of Kroyden, left-handed golf clubs, from Woolworth’s.
While Peterson said he had to learn how to swing a golf club all over again the results ended up being like “night and day. When I played right-handed I couldn’t compete with my friends. They were hitting it way past my drives.
“But when I switched I could compete with them.” Just like always. “I remember reading that the guy who first climbed Mount Everest, Edmund Hillary, said that the achievement wasn’t that he got to the top of that mountain, but that he went up and tried,” said Peterson.
“That’s the achievement. The courage to try and never be afraid to fail.”