Dennis Walters holds a USGA record that likely never will be broken. The 75-year-old World Golf Hall of Fame member and trick-shot artist extraordinaire, who will compete in the fourth annual U.S. Adaptive Open this week in Maryland, went 51 years between USGA championships.
When Walters first heard that the USGA was creating a championship for disabled golfers, he called the USGA and asked if his service dog, Augusta or Gus, Gussy or Gus Man, his co-star in his inspirational hour-long golf show, could sit in his cart during the championship. When told that Gussy would be allowed, Walters hung up and filed an entry.
Golf trick-shot artist Dennis Walters.
“So Gussy gets all settled in his seat on the cart and he sits there and he doesn’t move,” Walters said. “At nine, I give him a pee break and lunch and then at 18 he gets another pee break and a snack.”
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Walters won the seated division of the inaugural U.S. Adaptive Open Championship, a tournament open to male and female golfers with confirmed world rankings in eight separate impairment categories, in 2022, a span of 51 years since he had competed in the 1971 U.S. Amateur, which at that time was contested at medal play, at Wilmington Country Club in Delaware. The top eight at the time qualified for the Masters. He finished 11th, two strokes out. “I’m still upset about it,” he said.
Walters is the Adaptive Open’s oldest player this year. Of the 96 players in the 54-hole event field, 72 previously played in one or more of the past iterations of the USGA’s newest championship and 24 will be making their championship debut, which begins Monday. Walters is the most famous seated golfer in the adaptive golf world. He plays and performs from a specialized golf cart with a seat that swivels, allowing him to strike shots, while strapped with his legs dangling from the side of the cart. In 2019, Walters was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame and previously was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Member of The PGA of America and recognized as a winner of a Ben Hogan Award for Courage.
Dennis Walters addresses the audience at the 2019 World Golf Hall of Fame Induction reception at the Sunset Center in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California.
This week he returns to Woodmont Country Club (South Course) in Rockville, Maryland, just a short drive from our nation’s capital. Fifty-three years ago, on Woodmont’s North Course, Walters advanced through second stage of PGA Tour Q-School. He flunked out of Final Stage at Silverado Resort in Napa, Calif., and planned to try again. But he never had another chance after being paralyzed from the waist down in a golf cart accident at age 24. Since 1977, Walters has hosted “The Dennis Walters Golf Show,” a one-hour golf trick shot clinic, traveling over 3.5 million miles to conduct more than 3,000 performances.
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“I cut back last year, I did 52 shows. I used to do 100. Had a motorhome and went for like six months,” he said. “Now I go for like 3 ½-four months, 120 days at the Hampton Inn. I’m not crazy about that but I’m all in on my shows and trying to learn how to play golf better. I still enjoy the shows and I’m enjoying the challenge of trying to get better at golf at 75, which I think is kind of cool. It’s just what I do. I think about it every second of every day. I’m a golf nut. I just played in a night golf tournament the other day. One of my friends says, ‘You can’t get enough golf during the day? You are real sick boy.’ First hole, I made a 40-footer. I said, ‘I can’t make a 40-footer in broad daylight.’ ”
But he did sink a 20-footer on the final hole to shoot 74 on Oct. 29, and break his age while playing in the Florida Adaptive Open at Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort, the site of an annual PGA Tour event, near Tampa.
“That’s a pretty good feat for anyone let alone a guy who has been sitting in a wheelchair for 51 years,” said Walters, whose scorecard is displayed in his locker at the Hall of Fame in Pinehurst, N.C.
During the winter Walters, who makes his home in Jupiter, Florida, often tees it up at the Palm Beach Par-3 Golf Course, where he is a threat to shoot even par when retired PGA Tour executive Duke Butler, a friend since 1968 and among the first to visit him in the hospital, comes to town.
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“He has the best attitude of any golfer I have ever met,” Butler said.
Breaking his age has boosted Walters’s confidence, who said his biggest opponent is “father time” and the likes of two-time seated division defending champion Max Togisala, who is 54 years younger than Walters. But Walters loves the challenge and prepped for the competition with a few practice rounds at Oakmont Country Club, site of last month’s U.S. Open. One of golf’s great inspirational stories, Walters continues to spread his motivational story. Even though he can’t walk on his own two legs, he stands tall. He hopes that golf fans will learn the stories of all 96 competitors and tune into the final round on June 9, which is being televised by Golf Channel for the first time.
“I played with a guy in the U.S. Adaptive Open and it was like 95 out and it took six hours to play. We went in the clubhouse afterwards and he took both legs off and had a beer. I said, ‘Holy cow,’ you know, and he broke 80, too. So, I mean, there’s a lot of great stories out here.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: U.S. Adaptive Open: Trick-shot artist Dennis Walters returns to USGA event