A full field of 50 golfers took to the field for the sold-out 2024 Queensland Blind and Inclusive Open last month.
Held at Emerald Lakes on the Gold Coast, the event saw golfers with blindness or low vision take part in the competition, which was the first to be co-organised by Empower Golf with Blind Golf Australia.
The competition aimed to empower disabled golfers, as well as encourage golf clubs to work with golfers with a disability, according to Empower Golf founder James Gribble. It was also a world ranking event, which means competitors receive points for global competitions.
Empower Golf is set up to be a comprehensive, multi-disability organisation and is working on developing its relationships with other peak bodies across the sector to offer tailored golf opportunities to people with a variety of conditions, including people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and people with limb differences.
How to make golf accessible
Gribble explained that blind golf is divided into four categories: B1, B2, B3 and B4, which cover different levels of vision loss with B1 corresponding to players with no sight. Different equipment is used depending on the level of vision loss – for example, someone with partial vision might use brightly coloured golf balls and tees, or paint the bottom of their clubs so they can see them while putting.
For those who are blind, they might use a whistle or other communication tool to hit the ball in the right direction.
Gribble himself is a para golf player; he uses a power wheelchair and stand-up machines to play the sport he loves.
Empower Golf is in the process of mapping out a tour of blind golfing events for next year to provide more opportunities for golfers with disability.
“There’s an appetite out there [among] all-inclusive, all-abilities golfers to play more competition golf,” Gribble said.
Changing the face of golf
Empower Golf was founded off the back of Gribble’s own experience after breaking his neck in 2008. The self-described “mad golfer” was focused on how he could get back into the sport, and still remembers how it felt to take his first swing as he went through rehab. He found a para golfer machine, and founded Empower Golf to help others like him experience the joy of discovering, or rediscovering, the sport.
Since then, Gribble has worked on enhancing the accessibility of clubhouses too, educating staff and owners about wheelchair accessibility and how to provide lessons for people with disability.
“We’ve worked with hundreds of golf courses around the country to improve the physical accessibility part, whether it’s ramps, whether it’s fundraising to have para golfers available on site, whether it’s just becoming a more inclusively-minded golf club. We now run about 500 golf clinics annually around all the locations, all our partners around the country, which is probably 45 golf courses,” Gribble said proudly.
“We’ve worked directly with over 100 PGA professional golfers [and] golf coaches who are now available to give individual lessons to people with disability. So if you’re a quadriplegic golfer, if you’re a blind golfer, if you’ve got a child with an intellectual disability, you can go to one of our golf pros and we’ve trained them to work with people with disabilities.”
Empower Golf is also creating an all-abilities accreditation for coaches who work with people with disability.
“The field of golf for people with disability is growing. I started in para golf ten years ago this month… and back then, there was no such thing as para golf or… the stand-up machines,” Gribble said.
“Before we started in golf, there wasn’t a single one of those in the country. There was no such thing as wheelchair golf. Since then, we’ve fundraised or worked with individuals to get about 62 of them around Australia now, so people can either hire them at their golf clubs or use them personally to play and compete.
“The sport’s come a long way. They’re pretty confident that by [the Paralympics] in 2028, and definitely by Brisbane in 2032, there will be some sort of inclusive or disability golf.”