ROCKVILLE, Md. — Life, like golf, is a game of inches. Millimeters even.
The smallest margins can make all the difference.
Consider the story of Justin Delp and Nick Galante, a player-caddie tandem at the 2025 U.S. Adaptive Open here at Woodmont Country Club.
The two are longtime friends, a connection forged through golf but strengthened by eerily similar injuries that each man suffered in separate incidents.
Galante’s occurred in 1997, when he was, as puts it, “a directionless kid” in New England, spending his time “as a ski bum and a golf bum.” One wintry day, a big jump on his snowboard went awry and Galante broke his back. Though he made a full recovery, the accident was a wake-up call.
“I decided I was going to apply myself and start living life 110 percent, no matter what I did,” he says.
Along with playing golf, Galante was an avid auto racer. A friend alerted him to a place he’d never heard of: Monterey, Calif., a golf-rich region that happened to be home to the Laguna Seca Raceway. Galante didn’t need to hear much more. He drove across the country to begin anew, a fresh start he supported by landing a job at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
It was there that he met Delp, an adrenaline-sports junkie who’d gone to high school in Monterey. Both worked as range-pickers and cart attendants, but soon moved on to roles as caddies. In 1999, with money in his pocket after looping in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Delp invited Galante to join him on a snowboarding trip to Tahoe. Galante, who’d also worked the tournament but was keen to put away more cash, opted to stay behind and caddie.
A few days later, in a devastating echo of his own past, he got word of what had happened to his buddy: After falling on a big jump in the mountains, Delp had broken his back. Like Galante before him, Delp had cracked two vertebrae. Unlike Galante, he was paralyzed from the waist down.
“It was tough,” Delp says. “I was a good athlete and I loved being active and now I’m in a wheelchair. Mentally, I went through a rough time.”
Galante, too, was prompted to a period of reflection.
“Whether it was the angle or the compression, the difference in my injury just came down to millimeters,” he says. “It had been that close to bumping up against my spinal cord.”
Delp’s misfortune also had a silver lining. His spinal cord had been damaged but not severed. He soon embarked on a painstaking rehab process, progressing through a series of leg braces until he could stand again. Within two years, he was back to playing golf, unsteadily at first but gradually improving. His index dropped into the single digits.
Years passed. With support from the state of California, Delp went on to college at UC Santa Cruz and now lives in Oklahoma, where he works in geo-mapping for an oil company. Galante continued caddying while pursuing a career as an auto racer. In addition to looping, he competes on the professional racing circuit and serves as an instructor at Laguna Seca.
All along, the two men stayed in touch. Last year, with Galante on his bag, Delp fell short in qualifying for the U.S. Adaptive Open. This year, though, with his friend once more beside him, he got through, punching his ticket to this week’s championship here in suburban Maryland.
“It kind of feels like life coming full circle,” Galante said.
This paralyzed golfer can break par. Here’s how he does it
In the early going of Monday’s opening round, jitters got to Delp. Galante did his best to put his caddying skills to use, giving his pal a dose of perspective.
“He comes up to me as says, ‘Man, I’m nervous. This feels like a major,” Galante said. “And I’m like, um, dude, that’s because it is a major.”
Delp settled down to shoot an 80, which he backed up with a 77 on Tuesday, a solid showing that still left him on the wrong side of the cut. Not that he was going to let that get him down.
In the clubhouse afterward, he and Galante cooled off from the humid weather and reflected on the week. They were leaving, they said, with nothing but good vibes and a sense of gratitude, and the certainty that they’d reconnect next year to try again.
“This event is just awesome,” Delp said. “They treat you like your a Tour pro, the course is in great condition, and the other players are amazing.”
He paused at that thought.
“You see the kind of things that people overcome,” he said, “and it just reminds you of how fortunate you are.”
