You’ve never seen anything like Wednesday at the U.S. Adaptive Open.
On second thought, maybe you have.
As Kipp Popert, a 25-year-old British pro who has cerebral palsy, walked up the 18th fairway at Pinehurst No. 6, there was a sense of inevitability surrounding his victory. At the second-ever national open for disabled golfers, about the only surprise was that it’d taken two years for Popert to win the event.
“He’s like the Tiger Woods of disabled golf in Europe,” Conor Stone, tournament co-runner-up, said of Popert. “He just runs away with tournaments.”
Popert, who finished at two under in the 54-hole championship, was one of just three players to break par, and even a double-bogey at the last couldn’t derail him.
“Sometimes you got to win ugly,” he joked after his one-shot triumph.
Of course, most of Popert’s play was, in fact, a thing of beauty, with a total of 12 birdies on his cards over three rounds.
Popert’s mantle is quickly running out of space — not unlike a certain 15-time major champion’s — his near wire-to-wire victory at the U.S. Adaptive coming in the wake of a win at the Golf For Disabled Betfred British Masters and a runner-up finish at the R&A’s inaugural Golf For Disabled Open.
“It was nice to keep up with him,” Stone said of Popert. “I don’t think he had his best stuff this week, either, so if he had played better, I think he could have won it by a long way.”
Popert was far from the only winner at what were three blisteringly hot days in Pinehurst. He joined Ryanne Jackson — who has a form of muscular dystrophy — as the victors, respectively, of the men’s and women’s “overall” titles. In addition to the two trophies, the USGA also awarded 15 medals to those who finished as the low scorer in their respective impairment category.
There are 96 competitors in all at the U.S. Adaptive, both men and women, who play under eight impairment categories. Those in the event play by a modified set of USGA rules in order to accommodate their impairments; rules that provide expanded liberties to caddies and club-groundings, among other golf idiosyncracies. Otherwise, the tournament is identical to any other golf competition, in which every stroke, and mistake, counts.
Participants in the event deal with a wide array of impairments, from leg and arm amputees to those with intellectual and neurological disabilities. But there is a strong sense of community among adaptive players across all impairment categories, particularly those who travel far and wide to compete in the small but growing number of overall tournaments.
“I think the USGA getting involved in creating the Adaptive Open has really helped other states open up and create adaptive events,” Jackson, the women’s champion, said, a point that has been reiterated by a number of competitors over the last two years.
