MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Some of the best amputee golfers across the southeast are set to tee off starting Friday.
The 31st annual Georgia State Amputee Golf Tournament will kick off at The Club at Lake Sinclair on Friday and will run all the way through Sunday.
The event has been going strong since the 1990s, and over its three decades of history, the tournament coordinators Bill and Deborah Eason have been with it since the start.
Despite not being amputees themselves, they’ve stuck with it simply due to a love for the community.
“I guess it's a love for the amputee population and the camaraderie they have amongst themselves,” Bill Eason said. “Now, it’s almost like a family reunion. People will give up vacation time to make sure that July is on the books for them to come play golf. It’s just been something that we’ve loved to do.”
The Eason’s have been working the tournament before it made its way to Milledgeville. While the event has spent over three decades in Baldwin County, it once had its start in another part of Georgia run by a Prosthetist Ray Rice.
Rice designed, measured and fit different prosthetics for amputees for years and eventually brought many of them together for a tournament.
After Rice’s passing, the Eason’s took over, moved the event down to The Club at Lake Sinclair and even gave the event another name: The Ray Rice Memorial Tournament.
The event has continued to grow ever since. Bill Eason said that last year was one of their biggest turnouts yet.
While plenty of people come and go, Eason loves seeing all the familiar faces, but also just loves seeing all the new faces.
He said several of them are brand new amputees and it's interesting to watch them learn from their peers.
“It's just so great because you get to see people that are a brand new amputee and (everything's) kind of new to them,” Eason said. “They’re watching everybody else and (asking questions) and then they just bond with one another. It’s like a brotherhood, whether male or female.”
Eason said he tries to facilitate that “brotherhood” by creating a family-friendly environment. They invite the families of the amputees to also compete.
His daughter makes cupcakes for the banquet held on the second night of the tournament and his grandson has started competing in the tournament alongside himself.
He noted how some of the golfers have some Olympic experience and he can’t exactly compete with them. However, many, like himself, are there to have a good time
“The amputees, they’re real good golfers and some of them are just like everybody else,” Eason said. “They’re just a bunch of hackers, but this is great exercise. It’s great.”
On the final day, awards are given out including a $1,500 scholarship to an amputee or immediate family member participating in the tournament.
He said one man, who had participated in the tournament with his dad since he was 5, earned the scholarship and went to Kennesaw State to work on his Master of Science in Prosthetics and Orthotics.
“It’s been great,” Eason said. “We’ve got kids and given scholarships that have become Orthotists and Prosthetists, engineers, nurses, teachers. It’s been very rewarding to see these kids grow up.”
People come from all over to attend the tournament. From Illinois and Mississippi, across the Southeast and even an amputee from Hong Kong have taken part.
Eason has loved this opportunity to get to meet so many people from so many walks of life, and can’t wait for the upcoming tournament to make new friends and reunite with old ones.
“Every one of them have got a story and every one of them are a personal friend at this point in time,” Eason said.