Pain can’t knock Barkley off course
Shortly after Rory McIlroy ripped his Nike polo to shreds in memeworthy fashion after a Sunday 74 at the DP World Tour Championship, he was in the locker room tearing the temporary nameplate off his locker.
Not out of frustration, but out of kindness.
He did so to gift the plastic piece to Chesterville, Ont., golfer Kurtis Barkley, a competitor at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai last month just like the four-time major champion.
McIlroy even signed it.
Of course, Barkley was unaware McIlroy had gone all Hulk Hogan moments before the interaction; he wouldn’t have approached him if he was. But while gathering personal items after his runner-up finish in the European Disabled Golfer’s Association’s Dubai Finale the day before, Barkley espied the Northern Irishman and asked for the autograph.
McIlroy obliged, providing the 34year-old Barkley the perfect ending to a week spent rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s best golfers.
Barkley, who was born with scoliosis, earned an invite into the eightman Dubai Finale through qualifying tournaments this past summer in Scotland and England. He currently carries a plus-0.6 handicap index, is ranked fifth in the world among golfers with a disability and carded rounds of 72-75 in Dubai for a 3-over-par total, four shots behind Brendan Lawlor of Ireland. Barkley had the deficit down to one with a few holes to play, but bogeyed the 16th and 18th while Lawlor made two birdies coming home.
During a Zoom call with his good pal and caddy in Dubai, John MacPherson, Barkley lamented his performance on the par-fives. Too conservative, he said, with decisions made from fear. He was 3 over par on those holes alone and he’s already planning a different approach if he qualifies for the tournament again.
“Little sidenote,” mentioned MacPherson, “the course that we play (Cedar Glen, south of Ottawa) doesn’t have a par-five anymore. But they are lengthening one hole to make it a par-five, so maybe we can ask the owner if they are doing that to help Kurtis out in Dubai next year.”
Barkley started swinging clubs at four, and took up the game competitively during the three years his family spent in Australia — from ages eight to 11 — for his father’s work. It is no small feat what he does, with a spine that curves three ways — the most extreme of which is close to 50 degrees — and ribs missing from one side of his body. Surgery wasn’t an option because it would have meant using a wheelchair, so he deals with constant pain “in his own way.”
“I know what I can handle. A lot of people don’t see the stuff I deal with off the golf course,” Barkley said. “There have been times I was in bed for three days because I couldn’t get up and couldn’t get out and I couldn’t move. They see the golfing side, but they don’t see the harsh stuff.”
Which begs the question of how Barkley manages to play the game at all, with the golf swing as hard on the spine as any athletic movement.
“The way I look at it is a mindset,” he explained in a measured cadence. “I’m very mentally strong because I’ve always had to be. When I’m on the course, John and I set a game plan, and when I’m up on the first tee I’m not thinking of my back. I’m not thinking of the pain I’m in. I’m not thinking of anything.
I only have one thought and it’s the shot I have to hit right here, right now.”
Said MacPherson: “I’ve watched Kurtis golf at our local course here for quite some time, so we see Kurtis bang around there and he beats us all the time. But to see him go out and play on a pro-level course and navigate around the course the way he did and read the greens, it was quite special and gave me a new understanding of how good these players are. They still call it disability over in Europe; here in Canada we don’t use the word disabilities.”
Barkley doesn’t like the word disability either. To that end it’s worth noting the inaugural Canada-wide competition at Toronto municipal course Humber Valley — which Barkley won in September by a whopping 16 shots with rounds of 69-67 — was called the All-Abilities Championship.
“I don’t see myself having a disability, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am different,” he says. “It doesn’t define who I am. It’s more of a motivation. People say I can’t do stuff and I sit back and say, ‘Well, watch me.’ ”
There are plenty of expenses as he vies to reach No. 1 in the world, although any debt he’s incurred doesn’t take the shine off his week in Dubai, where he was treated like a tour player everywhere he went.
It wasn’t just that the EDGA golfers were staying at the same resort as the European Tour players; they played the same course under the same conditions on two of their tournament days. In addition to McIlroy, Barkley shot the breeze with Ian Poulter, Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa and more.
“I came second, but it didn’t feel like a loss, do you know what I mean?” Barkley concluded. “I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.”