3-6-10, by Chris Elsberry, CT-POST

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/ELSBERRY-Ken-Green-just-keeps-moving-forward-394942.php

One step forward. Two steps back. Sometimes it’s even 3 or 4 steps back but each time, Ken Green gathers himself and keeps moving forward. Forever forward. He keeps looking ahead because he refuses to look back. That’s the past. His eyes are focused on one thing, the future.

The former Danbury resident and 5-time PGA Tour winner is trying to do something that no one else has ever done — become the first player to compete on the Champions Tour on a prosthetic leg. Last June, returning from a tournament in Texas, Green’s RV blew a tire near Jackson, Miss., and crashed, killing Green’s brother, his girlfriend and his dog. Green lived but lost his right leg just below the knee.

He has spent these last 9 months defying the odds, learning how to play golf again. Everything is different. The swing. The stance. The results.

But the determination that burns inside the 51-year- old is more than enough to make up for whatever adjustments have to be made in his game.

“You have to keep trying. If you don’t keep fighting and keep playing, how are you going to improve? How are you going to get better?” Green said last week by phone from his West Palm Beach, Fla., home.  “If you make a fool of yourself, you do, but you’ve got to keep fighting. And I’m not ready … my brain’s not ready to say quit, so I won’t do it. I can’t do it.”

He can’t because Green made a promise. He promised that Billy Green and Jeannie Hodgin and Nip didn’t die in vain.

He wants to show the world that this can be done, that you can return to professional golf with an artificial leg.

And each day he fights through the pain in his stump and swings the club is one day closer to getting back on Tour.

Actually, he’s already has been back. In late February, Green and his good friend and caddy, Craig Thomas, played in a 2-day Treasure Coast Senior tour event in Jupiter, Fla., and last Tuesday, Green played one round in the Sunbelt Senior Tour event at the Rees Jones course at the Breakers Country Club.

In brutal conditions (wind gusts were 40 miles an hour and temperatures were in the low 50s), Green shot an 8-over-par 80 over the 6,670-yard, par-72 course. However, because of the pain in his right leg, he was unable to continue and withdrew during the 2nd round on Wednesday.

“I’m trying to look at the positives of it, but it’s tricky because I literally couldn’t make a golf swing out there,” Green said “The weather was just brutal. When the leg doesn’t work and it’s cold and windy, you just don’t make a turn and without a shoulder turn it’s hard to play golf unless you’re God. You’ve got to have a shoulder turn.”

Still, there are hopeful signs. Green says that he’s hitting his driver on the fly about 245 yards off the tee, an amazing stat when you think that before the accident, his best efforts were around 270 yards.

“So, if I can get 10 or 15 more (yards) back, then I’m literally where I was before, it’s just a question of bringing the consistency back,” he said.  “Besides the physical difficulties, like having to come up with a new golf swing that you’re trying to put into professional play immediately. It’s not an easy task. But realistically, where we’ve come and where we are is actually very good.  I know I’m pressing. I’m playing way earlier than I should be, so when you put all the facts together you’ve got to say, `Hey, this is pretty good. You’ve come a long way.’ I’m actually starting to get a little distance back and starting to his some more quality shots.”

Because of that, Green is not only playing in some of these smaller Senior events in Florida to see where his game stands but he’s also made the commitment to return to the Champions Tour for the first time since his accident on April 23-25 in the Liberty Legends of Golf event in Savannah, Ga., with partner Mike Reid [ see http://tinyurl.com/yhkx4ur ].

“I have committed to it and I’ve got to …it wouldn’t be fair to Mike, I’ve got to make a decision in a week or two whether I’m definitely going to play. He knows that we’re probably not going to be competitive, unless he goes on a run because I don’t know how many birdies I could make,” Green said.

“I do believe I’ll be ready to play with him. That’s my hope and that’s my goal. I can’t tell you how excited I am about playing and also how petrified I am. I don’t want to go there and make an absolute fool of myself. That scares the hell out of me. But people are going to be interested and wondering …so it’s something we’re going to have to keep working.”

And going forward.

Forever forward.

By Michael Arkush, Editor, Yahoo! Sports

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ma-playingthrough030510

Don’t ask Ken Green to make any sense of it. He can’t. Nobody could.

He lost his girlfriend, his older brother, the precious dog who once saved his life, and portions of his right leg in an RV accident last June and then, seven months later, his 21-year-old son to a cause still unknown.

Fate didn’t deal him a blow. Fate unleashed all its might.

“If they were to ever do a movie,” Green, 51, said on the phone this week from his rented house in West Palm Beach, Florida, “people would say, ‘That’s baloney.’ It’s been unbelievable.”

Unbelievable doesn’t begin to sum it up. No words do, and Green – a longtime PGA Tour pro – doesn’t seem interested in words anyway. Words will not bring their lives back. Or his.

His new life is defined by constant pain, physical and emotional. On the physical side, the feeling he receives in the stump below his right knee compares, he says, to the shock one gets from touching an electrical outlet – except the sensation never goes away. Some days are worse than others, the agony almost unbearable.

“All you can do is cry,” Green said.

As for his grief, where does he start? Where does he end? How can it ever end?

And it’s not as if Green hadn’t been through his share of troubles before June.  He has been through more than his share, and they are to blame for derailing a solid career in which he won 5 tournaments and played in the 1989 Ryder Cup. In 1996, he tied for 7th in the U.S. Open at Oakland Hills.

Green had plenty of game. Nobody ever doubted that.

But his toughest opponent, diagnosed in 1998, was depression, and it was kicking his butt. For three years during the 1990s, Green, who was divorced twice, thought every day about killing himself.

In 1999, he finally tried, swallowing a “gazillion” pills which knocked him out. He would have succeeded if not for his alert dog, Nip, who awakened Green’s girlfriend at the time. Green woke up in the hospital 36 hours later.

The depression came under control, thanks to medication, but the golf demons did not. They had been stalking him for years, whispering into his ear at the worst possible moments:  “You’re going to miss this shot.”

Which he did. He missed a ton of them. Every golfer, even the best in the world, is paid a visit at one point or another by these same demons. Only Green’s demons stuck around – for good, it seemed.

That’s what makes the tragedies over the past nine months more heartbreaking, if that’s even possible. Green was happier than he had been in a long time – with his life and his game. A rookie on the Champions Tour, the potentially life-altering mulligan for golfers 50 and older, Green was playing like his old, unpossessed self.

But on June 8, 2009, everything changed. Forever.

A day after tying for 37th at an event in Austin, Texas, Green was on Interstate 20 in the back seat of his 40-foot motor home, driven by his brother, Billy, 57, who also was his caddie. They were on their way to Louisiana for the night, then planned to spend a week at the North Carolina home of Green’s girlfriend, Jeannie Hodgin.

Near the town of Hickory, Mississippi, the RV careened down an embankment and struck an oak tree. Dead at the scene were Billy, Jeannie and Nip, the dog who saved Ken’s life. Ken Green went through the windshield, fracturing a bone in his left eye, and tore ligaments in his left ankle. But the right leg got the worst of it. One week later, it was amputated below the knee. In 30 days, he underwent 7 operations.

And yet, from the start of his recuperation, Green did not give up on his belief that somehow he would play golf again – and at the highest level.

Green was fitted with a prosthetic lower leg. Fortunately, because he wisely enrolled only six weeks beforehand in the PGA Tour’s health plan, many of his medical expenses have been covered. Given his financial difficulties, if he hadn’t been on the plan, he admits: “I have no idea where I’d be.”

Becoming an elite golfer again, however, may take nothing less than a miracle.

Green has already shot a 68, at his home course, the Breakers, but that was from the white tees, which measure only about 6,500 yards. He’s driving it roughly 240 these days, and says he’ll need another 15 or 20 yards to compete on the Champions Tour. There are some shots, though, from sidehill or uphill lies, which Green, who plays twice a week, simply cannot pull off – and may never be able to properly execute.

Doctors told him that his left ankle, which still has ligament and tendon damage, may never fully heal. Green needs the ankle to be at least 80% for him to play golf competitively, and it’s nowhere close.

He has trouble with bunkers – not with getting the ball out but getting himself out.

Green knows what the odds are, but they don’t scare him. What scares him is how he might feel if he doesn’t make it back to the Champions Tour. It would be another loss to add to all the others.   “It would be devastating,” he said.

Nothing, however, could possibly match the loss of his son, Hunter, who was found dead in his dorm room on the Southern Methodist campus in January. Green expects to receive the autopsy results any day.  A part of him doesn’t want to know if the death was accidental or if Hunter, who had some trouble with the law, took his own life. Father and son, after many years apart because of the breakup of Green’s first marriage, were becoming reacquainted. They played golf every few months, and texted each other frequently.  “He realized I was not the evil person he was led to believe,” Green said.

Over the years, people have been led to believe a lot of things about Green.

He was known as a true rebel on the PGA Tour, incurring fines for a long list of antics which included sneaking friends into the Masters in the trunk of his car; drinking beer on the 15th hole at Augusta National while paired with his hero, Arnold Palmer; and criticizing officials. Green accepts responsibility for some of his bad-boy behavior but contends he was often unfairly singled out.  “I’ve always spoken from my heart,” he explained.

No matter. Green, who lives with another son, 28-year-old Ken Jr., isn’t worried about the past. It is complicated and painful, and it is over.

The future is what he’s focusing on – the chance that maybe there’s another, better fate awaiting him.  “I’m assuming there’s a reason for this happening,” Green said. “I have no idea what it is. I think it’s too much for me to handle at the moment, but I’m working on it.”

*end*

I’m desperately trying to figure out something positive regarding my first step forward. I may have to go with the “step”.

My first round Tuesday from the 6,800 yard course at Breakers Rees Jones, Sunbelt Seniors Tour, in the cold and just brutal winds of 30+ was an ouch = 80. 10 pars & 8 bogeys.

I have to tell you, I had no chance as the cold weather sent the nerves off and I just couldn’t even come close to making a shoulder turn which equals disaster. As you can imagine, I’m limited with a shoulder turn now and the cold just made it tougher.

The score itself is not a complete disaster if you consider how nasty it was out there. The 2nd day was even harder, and when I lost a ball up by the green on 16 I just didn’t have it in me to go back and replay another one. I was well on my way to a mid-80 and was hurting worse than the first day. No real excuse but I was just zapped. I clearly got the message that I will never be able to play quality golf in bad weather again.

With that being said I am not throwing in any hankies just yet. I intend to regroup and play in the Fort Myers “Coors Light Open” event next weekend.  I do hope that normal weather does reappear soon.

I’ve been taken a godzilla amount of pills these past few days so my normal humor is comatose at the moment.

I don’t have any new news from my friends at PGA headquarters, although I was promised a update call today which I never received. I don’t understand why people say one thing and then don’t execute. Since I said ‘I do’ twice and didn’t, I must realize there was a valid reason. I still refuse to believe the right thing will not be done in regards to me getting my major medical year exemption given to me so I will not open my mouth any more and explain all the facts. Kind of like a lawsuit. Can’t wait for those facts either!!

Good day my friends and the best to all,

Ken

3-4-10, by Chris Elsberry, CTPost  

Ken Green of Danbury fought all the way to the end, through brutal winds and cold temperatures. This was not a golf day by any stretch of the imagination. It was the kind of day that if you didn’t have to play golf, you wouldn’t.

But Green did. This is part of the comeback, part of the plan. Success doesn’t come without suffering, and Tuesday afternoon, Green suffered.

Playing in just his second professional event since losing the lower half of his right leg in a horrific RV crash last June that took the lives of his brother, Billy Green, his girlfriend, Jeannie Hodgin, and his dog, Nip, Green shot a respectable 8-over-par 80 in the first round of the Sunbelt Senior Tour event at the par-72, 6,670-yard Breakers Rees Jones course in West Palm Beach, Fla.

[March 2-4 2010, “Ken Green's Comeback Trail”, Limited Field - Invitation Only,

WPB FL http://www.sunbeltseniortour.com/tourschedule.html ]

Green fought through 40 mph winds and temperatures in the low 50s, but the round came with a price. The pain in his amputated leg was so bad afterward that Green withdrew from the tournament before Wednesday’s second round.

“It really stunk. I knew I wasn’t close to being ready, this weather was just impossible for me,” Green said Thursday by phone from his Florida home. “The cold … it fires (pain) off the leg and my ankle was bad. It was just bad luck. It wasn’t a disaster, I shot 80, I grinded it out and tried my best, but it was just brutal out there. You would never have played unless you had to.”

For a former 5-time PGA Tour winner and a member of the 1989 Ryder Cup team, shooting 80 is simply unacceptable, and Green admitted he was disappointed after that first round. But he also knows what he’s trying to do — become the first professional to return to the Champions Tour with a prosthetic leg.

“It’s hard for my brain because you know how I think, to feel like that,” Green said. “I’m trying to look at the positives, but it’s tricky because I literally couldn’t make a golf swing out there.”

But the disappointment of having to drop out isn’t stopping or slowing Green down, by any means. Next up on the schedule is a 36-hole, two-day, Pro-Am event in Fort Myers, Fla., on March 13-14, called the Coors Light Open. Green will play with his good friend and caddy, Craig Thomas.

[ see http://tinyurl.com/yehwop4 ]

Green and Thomas played in a Treasure Coast Senior Tour event just before the Sunbelt tournament, shooting a 62 the first day but finishing out of the money in the two-day event.

“I played well the first day. I hit good shots but then the second day, I didn’t play well,” Green said. “Obviously, I’m pressing. I’m playing way earlier than I should be, so when you put all the facts together, you’ve got to say, `Hey, this is pretty good.’ I’ve come a long way. I’m actually starting to get a little distance back and starting to hit some more quality shots.

“I’ve got to keep playing because I know I have to. If you don’t keep fighting and keep playing, how are you going to improve? How are you going to get better? If you make a fool of yourself, you do, but you’ve got to keep fighting.”

*end*

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Pain-forces-Ken-Green-to-withdraw-from-Sunbelt-392365.php

Slap me silly, gentlemen.  All sorts of news flying round my little world these days. I’m not going to open my mouth too much and set all the facts straight right at the moment, as I told the Tour I would wait and hear from the director of the Champions Tour first.

I want to tell you all that I will absolutely tell you the whole truth after my conversation with Mr. Stevens. We should all try and remember that I am, and always will be, What & Who I am – period.  I will not play a PR game as most do in the world.  I will explain my point my way.  I will save my dog from any gator again!!!!

Well bull doggy to that political world…

We speak now of some neat new facts:

1) I can fly my driver 245 yards – not often but damn close – that will only be about 15 short of “systems all go”.

2) I have developed a new whacky looking stance for my bunker shots – the monster leg gets in my way.

3) I bowled a 233-189-205 to lead my team to first place – I started with a 117 average 6 weeks ago, and now have a 172 average – my goal is to finish with a 180 average.

4) I know I will be able to represent myself well when I tee it up at The Legends with Sir Reidomatic – not counting the choke factor. [ April23-25/Savannah http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/s504 ]

5) I have nothing else to say – Be good my friends,

Ken

“5-time PGA Tour winner Ken Green to play in ‘Coors Light Open’ at Fort Myers Country Club, Mar13-14 2010”
Feb. 19 2010, By Seth Soffian, news-press.com
http://www.news-press.com/article/20100219/ENT10/100219091/1002/RSS01
5-time PGA Tour winner Ken Green, who lost his lower right leg in a motor home accident in June that also killed his brother and long-time girlfriend, plans to make one of the first stops in his attempted comeback in the Coors Light Open, March 13-14, at Fort Myers Country Club ( see http://tinyurl.com/yehwop4 ). 

Craig Thomas, a long-time friend and caddie for Green who has played in the Coors Light Open for a number of years, said he spoke with the 51-year-old at his West Palm Beach home this morning to be sure Green still wanted to play in the 36-hole event.  “It’s a good golf course for him,” Thomas said today of 6,421-yard Fort Myers Country Club. “He’s kind of excited about that. He doesn’t hit it as far as he used to.”

Coors Light Open tournament director Rich Lamb said he would extend an invitation to Green, who is slowly adjusting to playing golf with a prosthetic leg. Players can use carts in the tournament. 

Green & Thomas played together in a Treasure Coast Senior Tour 2-man team event last week in Jupiter and finished just out of the money. Thomas said it was Green’s first competitive event since last year’s accident.  “He’s still having some pain issues,” Thomas said. “It’s quite a process right now.”

Strange day in the world of golf.  It’s time we leave the Tiger guy alone, but it wont happen.  I thought his Oscar performance was a sad day in the world of common sense.  I thought Finchem saying he didn’t know anything he was going to say was also sad.  It’s sad when the truth just can’t be said.  There are many poor ass media members out there in the press world, and he is right about that.  But when you have that many people in an organization, bad things happen.  There are 90% good writers who write good things.  So what we have all been burning in that world, but who cares.  That’s all I have to say about that.  Plus, I make no sense.

Pitiful morning for me in the pain world, but better now the Tour has chosen not to fulfill my request that I be given my year of eligibility back that I lost because of the accident.  I had 13 months left of eligibility, so I asked that when I got healthy, I would be given the right to play for 13 months.  Sad day in the world of common sense.

With that info and the fact that MIKE REID is still willing to take me as a partner, I will be playing the The Legends event at the end of April.  I’m about to bust my ass for the next 2 months.

Good day and God bless you all,
Ken

= = = = = = =
2010 Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf Tournament
Friday Apr 23 – Sunday Apr 25, 2010
The Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf is a golf tournament on the Champions Tour. It is played annually in April currently in Savannah, Georgia at The Westin Savannah Harbor Resort. Liberty Mutual is the main sponsor of the tournament. It is often called “The tournament that launched the Champions Tour”…
http://www.pgatour.com/2010/tournaments/s504/01/27/lmlog.extension/index.html

2010 Tour Schedule for the Sunbelt Senior Professional Golf Tour
March 2-4 “Ken Green’s Comeback Trail”
Limited Field – Invitation Only
Tuesday-Thursday, The Breakers, West Palm Beach, FL
http://www.sunbeltseniortour.com/tourschedule.html

Smith, 40, and Green, 51, barely knew each other when Smith was starting his tour career in 1996, about the time Green’s was winding down. But the two golfers are now linked, by horrific car accidents that killed members of their families last June, and by the unprecedented act of support instituted — but not announced — in December by their extended family of PGA Tour professionals.

The news came out last week that active PGA Tour players voted almost unanimously to donate half of their 2010 earnings from Wednesday pro-ams to the two foundations benefiting Smith and Green. Ross Berlin, the senior vice president for player relations with the PGA Tour, estimated the 2 foundations would each net about $200,000.

A member of the Player Advisory Council, which recommended that the board of directors approve the measure before each tour player voted whether to opt in or opt out, said there was no opposition.  “Nobody even hesitated,” said the former council member, Paul Goydos, who was tied for the 36-hole lead at 10 under par in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. “To me, that says a lot about the membership. Chris and Ken had a rough time.  “Let’s be honest; we’re giving away on the order of $110 million to charity every year, we’re playing a game for an average of $5 million a week for a living. We probably can’t give back enough. We can’t do enough charity.”

Because he had played sparingly on the PGA Tour in the 3 seasons before the fiery car accident that killed his wife, Beth, and severely injured his daughter, Abigail, 16, and son, Cameron, 12, Smith said he was taken aback when Berlin called him to tell him about the player vote.  “It blew me away,” Smith said. “It was just unbelievable. I told Ross I would really appreciate it if at some point you gave me an avenue to thank the membership and to thank the tour because the tour has really done some amazing things.”  Smith will be playing his first competitive golf in 7 months next week in the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico, in no small part because of the persistence of his children, who have pushed him to get back in the arena; to his friend and fellow tour pro Jerry Kelly, who lobbied for Smith with the tournament; and to the Mayakoba tournament director, Taylor Ives, who went to his board and secured the invitation.  “We compete against each other every single week, but we are a big family,” Kelly said. “And we really feel for anybody in our family who goes through the kind of stuff that Chris and Ken have gone through. That’s — you know, it still sends chills up my spine just talking about what happened. Chris was one of my best friends out there, and so was Beth, and to be able to do this for both of them was the best part.”

In a recreational vehicle crash in Mississippi, Green’s girlfriend, brother and German shepherd died, and he ultimately had to have his right leg amputated. Green was fitted with a prosthesis below his right knee and has been trying to work his way back to the Champions Tour by relearning the golf swing that won five tour events. He suffered another blow when his son, Hunter, 21, was found dead of unknown causes last month in his dormitory room at Southern Methodist.

He sometimes wonders what the point is, Green said, and at times he feels things are getting better. He said he was flabbergasted by the tour players’ voting him a share of their earnings.  “I was humbled — again,” he said. “Let’s face it, a good portion of those kids that are out there now don’t even know me, and they’re still doing this for myself and for Chris. It just shows that there’s a lot of good heart out there.”

Tour pros make up the largest group of independent contractors in major professional sports. The small percentage who reach the PGA Tour tend to be highly motivated, fiercely competitive and self-reliant individuals who go their own way much more than other athletes do.   They have no teammates or owners, they tell their managers what to do, and they fire coaches whenever they want. And this year, they all agreed to give away half of their Wednesday pro-am earnings.   “All of the players have actually stepped up and agreed to it on their own,” Kelly said. “That says an awful lot about our membership.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/sports/golf/14tour.html