The Gallery: No Handicaps

Colorado Avid Golfer

The term “recovery shot” carries added significance for severely injured military veterans. Losing limbs, suffering severe burns, or enduring any catastrophic injury or trauma makes leading a functional life—let alone playing golf—an accomplishment in itself.

Since, 2004, the Vail Veterans Program has taken servicemen from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Brooke Army Medical Center and the Naval Medical Center San Diego through individualized world-class outdoor programs. At no cost to them, hundreds of wounded warriors have rehabbed with family members on skis and snowboards in the winter, and on horses, ziplines, mountain bikes and rafts in the summer. They fly-fish too, and, thanks to Red Sky Golf Club and its members, last August they played two rounds of golf.

“We had nine veterans join three pros in a three-team tournament over two and a half days,” explains Red Sky member Cheryl Jensen, who founded the Vail Veterans Program and serves as its executive director and chairman. “For these guys to have the opportunity to play with one another in competitive setting was wonderful for them and really fun to watch.”

The club, its vendors and membership offset all the costs associated with what Jensen calls “a feel-good event for the entire community.” The vets took on each Red Sky course and took lessons with former PGA Tour pro and Director of Instruction Larry Rinker. “I played tournament golf for a living and now I teach golf, not really living in the real world,” he says. “I’m proud to do anything I can do for these guys.”

Red Sky’s PGA Director of Golf Jeff Hanson seconds that emotion: “I could not think of a better way to share the lifelong therapeutic benefits of the game of golf.”

One of the surprising benefits, Jensen discovered, comes from the uniquely mental side of the sport. “We try to quiet our mind when we play golf. As one of the guys told me, ‘This is the first time in a while I haven’t thought of me and my buddies. It takes golf to shut off our brains.’ To be able to focus is another step to normalizing them.”

And for these vets, “normal” also means golf with just the guys. “When we asked them if they’d like their spouses to join the golf outing, like they do in our other activities, the answer was no,” she explains. “They never get to have this kind of quality time with one another.”

Jensen, an avid golfer, admits the event was an experiment. “But the outcome,” she says, “was better than I ever thought it would be.”

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TJ Tees Off

Among the participants in the Vail Veterans Program event was Army Sgt. Tim “TJ” Johannsen, who spent 2 ½ years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after losing both legs in an IED explosion in Iraq.

Johannsen provides further proof of golf’s power of to help fellow wounded warriors. He and his wife Jackie live in Elizabeth in a house provided by Homes for Our Troops (HFOT), a national nonprofit that builds specially adapted homes for severely injured veterans. HFOT has built 120 homes across the nation, with 12 in Colorado and six in Elizabeth and Parker. Shortly after moving into his house in 2011, Johannsen started the Mulligans for Military tournament at Spring Valley Golf Club in Elizabeth.

“This is TJ’S way of paying it forward for the next wounded hero,” says his friend and tournament organizer Dan McGrath. To help Johannsen accomplish his mission, Spring Valley owner Tim Haynes donates his course for the day, the club’s vendors provide free food and services, participants and donations pour in from the local community, and world-class auctioneer John Korrey volunteers his “chant of a champion” to the live auction. As a result, all $56,000 the tournament has raised to date has gone directly to HFOT.

“And our goal this year is to break the $100,000 mark,” says Haynes, who still marvels at his first encounter with Johanssen and another wounded warrior at the club. “The lot was packed, and those boys didn’t park in the handicap spot. They parked in back and walked all the way in.”

To expand the field outside of the immediate community will require similar perseverance. But Spring Valley’s PGA Head Professional Justin Cirbo promises everyone who attends will “be overwhelmed” by the experience. “TJ is an inspiring person who has already given so much and wants to do more,” says Cirbo. “So every year we make the event even more special.”

For more on Homes for Our Troops, visit homeforourtroops.org. For more on the Vail Veterans Program, visit vailveteransprogram.org

A number of other Colorado tournaments benefit disabled military personnel:

August 26
Mulligans for Military Tournament
Spring Valley Golf Club
Contact: Dan McGrath
303-881-1472; [email protected]

May 19 & 20
Gary Sinise Serving Honor and Need Tournament
Colorado Golf Club, Parker
Contact: Veronica Destefano
303-840-4705; [email protected]

August 12
Wounded Warrior Project Tournament
The Club at Flying Horse, Colorado Springs
Contact: Jay Kvale
719-548-9712, x305; [email protected]

August 26
Tee It Up for Wounded Warriors & Keystone Adaptive Center
Keystone Ranch Golf Course
Contact: Marci Sloan
970-453-6422; [email protected]

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