Amputee Teaches Others to Play Winning Golf

Robert Wilson

It happened on a bright, sunny afternoon in the fall of 1974, when Robert Wilson, BA’64 (R), inadvertently stepped into the path of a steel cable traveling at more than 130 miles an hour.

The cable was attached to an aircraft carrier’s tailhook — a device that drags streaking F-4 fighter-jets to a quick stop aboard aircraft carriers — and when it struck the youthful flight-deck officer of the USS Kitty Hawk, it took off both his legs just below the knees.

In a flashing instant, the former FDU economics major became a double amputee who would spend the rest of his life walking on a pair of artificial legs.

But Bob Wilson refused to throw in the towel. Against overwhelming odds, he put his life back together and then went on to build a worldwide organization aimed at teaching disabled people how to triumph over their handicaps by mastering the “amazingly challenging” game of golf.

“I was 33 years old on the day I lost my legs,” says Wilson today, “and my oldest son had only been born a month before. So I asked myself: How in the world am I going to provide for my family?

“At that point, as a brand-new father, I knew I had to accept my situation and move on. I couldn’t afford to despair. I had to cope. It’s like that old saying in golf: ‘If you hit the ball there, you gotta play it from there!’”

Determined to build a new life, Wilson soon learned how to walk on two prosthetic limbs that allowed him to get to work each morning. Within a few months, he’d signed on as a counselor for injured soldiers and sailors at the Veterans Administration, where he would spend the next eight years helping other disabled vets adjust.

It was a difficult journey, he says today, full of “stress and worry and indescribable physical pain.” But he hung in there, and things began to get better, especially after he picked up a copy of Golf World — and found himself eyeballing a covershot of Bic Long, who’d just won the National Amputee Golf Championship.

“I couldn’t afford to despair. I had to cope. It’s like that old saying in golf: ‘If you hit the ball there, you gotta play it from there!’”

Enthralled, he stared at the glossy cover. Before his injury, Wilson had been a talented golfer with a 4 handicap. Why couldn’t he go back out there on the links and start whacking long drives and artful chip shots again — even if he had to do it while perched on a pair of metal-and-plastic legs?

For the gutsy Wilson, who’d grown up working long hours on a Wayne, N.J., chicken farm before putting himself through FDU at night, returning to the fairways would require great determination. But he did it. “I was utterly exhausted after my first round,” he recalls with a chuckle, “and I fell on my face two or three times.

“But, hey, I shot a 45 that day, and I was elated. I could play golf again! And that realization lifted my spirits enormously. All at once, I knew I could make it.”

What followed was a remarkable sports and public service career in which Wilson would spend more than 25 years building an organization — the National Amputee Golf Association, or NAGA (www.nagagolf.org), in Amherst, N.H., which is dedicated to helping disabled Americans cope with their injuries by teaching them how to become good at golf.


While serving two terms as the executive director of the 2,000-member NAGA (1986–1995 and from 2000 to the present), Wilson launched a magazine (Amputee Golfer) and a fast-growing program of golf-instruction clinics (First Swing) aimed at transforming struggling beginners with disabilities into accomplished golfers.

In recent years, First Swing has focused heavily on helping disabled veterans of the Iraq war deal with injuries sustained there. Says the smooth-putting NAGA chief exec, these days a 12 handicap: “If I can help just one amputee to a better life through golf, that makes my day!”

Wilson says he’s “very grateful” for the disaster that nearly destroyed his life. “This may sound hard to believe,” he reflects with a quiet smile, “but losing my legs was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Painful as it was, that event brought me to my life’s work of trying to help other disabled people cope with their injuries.

“I’m a hopeful guy, really. An optimist. Showing other disabled people how to hit long drives and nail challenging putts — hey, there’s no joy like it!”

— T.N.

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