SURREY — Christian Marcoux remembers his first time swinging a golf club with one leg. It was at Coyote Creek.
And it wasn’t pretty.
“I got into the tee box, I put the ball on the tee and I swung,” Marcoux said from his Boulevard Heights home.
“I lost my balance, the driver hit my prosthetic, the shaft broke and I landed on my face on the ground.”
It was a tough first lesson.
But Marcoux would pick himself up, dust himself off and re-learn his swing to accommodate his prosthetic leg, which is something that Marcoux hardly even thinks about anymore.
“You adapt to it. Unless somebody talks to me about it, I don’t know that I am a handicapped person,” he said.
“I don’t consider myself disabled, I just do everything I want to, when I want to.”
Marcoux, who lost his leg in a 2008 accident while driving a mail truck for Canada Post, was one of 30 golfers competing in the recent 2016 Canadian Amputee and Disabled National Open at Surrey’s Northview Golf and Country Club.
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The 28th annual tournament featured six players from B.C., three from Australia and one from South Africa. It was the first time it was held in Surrey.
Alberta’s Robert MacDermott won the tournament by one shot.
“It was a really tight race,” said tournament chair Johannes Grames, who also played.
Grames, who lost his leg to cancer, said the tournament is a great way to feature amputees who are just as impressive on the course as what they call “normies” – golfers with two legs.
Grames says he’s inspired by playing with golfers who have so many stories to share about adapting to life after trauma.
Marcoux agrees, saying not only does playing with other great amputee golfers give him inspiration, it also teaches him a lot about swinging a club with one leg.
“I had a lot of fun and learned a lot of new tricks,” Marcoux said.
Approaching 60, Marcoux says he is free from the phantom pain, skin rashes and back pain that often come with losing a leg.
Really, the only thing that slows him down is stairs – and for that, he considers himself lucky.
“I play golf, I’m happy, I ride a motorcycle. Nothing stops me from doing what I want to. There is life after an accident for sure.”