Dennis Walters - Part 3 (Out of Despair Springs Hope)

Mike Gonzalez 0:18

Great summer in 1967. Your game's developing at some point. Time to go to college. Of course, making college decisions for golf back in the 60s is a little different than what kids go through nowadays, isn't it?

Dennis Walters 0:33

Yeah, it's like um it's it was it was totally different. There there was um in New Jersey there were two two pros, Stan Mosul and Ray Ferguson. They went to North Texas, and I uh I got I got to meet them, and so they helped me get a scholarship to go to school. And uh because I said, I want to go, I want to play golf where I want to go someplace where I can play golf all year round. I said, and there's so many good golfers from Texas, I think this would be a great, a great thing to do. And so I went down there the first day I got there. The university course, the absolute worst golf course I've ever seen in my whole life. But I had more fun on that course than any course ever. Okay, the green's fees for students was a quarter, and it was overpriced. It had one bunker on it, and we called it the trap. And there were there were these these six, seven foot-high mesquite trees there, barren, it's a barren wasteland. It had a little grass on it, but it didn't bother you at all. And so the first day, I am happy as I can be, because I know this is September, and come January, there'll be some days when I can play golf. I know it's not going to be perfect, but it's gonna be every every week of the year I'll be able to play. And so I I I'm carrying my bag, I'm playing by myself, and I put my bag down on the first hole. Okay, it goes downhill from the clubhouse. I-35 is on the left, there's a pond on the right, and the ground is like cement. If you hit the ball in the center of the fairway, it would probably kick out of bounds because it was blown from the south like 30 miles an hour. So you had to aim in the pond in the pond in order to keep it on the golf course. Then the green was about the size of a uh maybe like a good-sized car and out of bounds over, and then um it's soft in the front. So you gotta, you know, it's a strictly local knowledge course. And so when I bent, I hit my first shot, it hit the green, ba-boom, out of bounds, right? And so I said, hmm, this is gonna require a little study here. And so, you know, I hit one of those jersey wedges up in the air, up high. Um, and I bend down to pick up my bag, and there's a tarantula right near my bag, and I don't even know what it is, right? So I later found out it was a tarantula. So then I I hit my drive, I go over to two, I hit my drive up the hill, and I notice in the middle of the fairway, there's a there's a space about maybe an inch wide for like 80 yards, and I'm thinking, what could this what could this be, right? And it's fire ants, right? It would have to take millions and millions of them to make a path, right? Through the clover and all the other crap that's on the ground, right? So um this course was it was like it required such local knowledge, but I was out there every day chipping around the greens because you couldn't hit too many of the greens. They're all pushed up and they're um really small. But I got really good at playing this course because we played a lot of our qualifying rounds on this course. And um our coach said we couldn't play for more than a quarter. But every day, if you wanted to, a lot of times we'd go to Dallas or Fort Worth to play, but a lot of times during the week you could play, you could go out you if you showed up at noon, one o'clock, there'd be 12 guys that would want to play. And these were guys that were like either your teammates or they were on the fringe of the team, and their dad owned an oil well or something. And so you you'd have like at one time you'd have like 75 bets going at for a quarter, quarter 75 bets, because you and I would wheel every combination, our force them against yours, metal, skins, everything. It was so complicated. We hired a guy to uh keep track of the day yeah, an accountant. And so at the end of the day, I'd go up to you and I'd say, you owe me 75 cents, and I you'd collect because you could buy a steak for three bucks. Yeah, and so I hated the food in the dorm, it was awful, and so I would it was a real incentive for me to play well, so I could go get you know a hamburger or fried chicken or something, and uh so that was the school course. One day the 10th hole went from north to south, and the 11th hole came back. One day I played them both into the wind. By the time I hold my putt on 10, a blue norther came in. Yeah, and so the 11th hole was a part three. It was a into the north wind, it was a driver. So you know Reeves McBee, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:09

Sure.

Dennis Walters 6:10

Okay, so Reeves hit this low hook. He was from West Texas, so one night he went, there was a tree on the right side. One day he went and chopped a tree down.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

In his way.

Dennis Walters 6:23

Yeah, it was in his way. And then the sixth hole was a dog leg left. We had the not only did we have the worst course, but we had the worst superintendent. He didn't do anything, and this dog leg left on six had he would he wouldn't mow it, and the weeds were like, you know, three foot high. But every year, just before qualifying, it would mysteriously burn down, and you could some guy throw a cigarette in there, burn the whole thing down, and and then you could cut across the dog leg.

Lee Trevino 6:54

So crazy.

Dennis Walters 6:58

So I when I graduated, my mom said, So, Dennis, you went to school here for four years. What'd you learn? I said, Ma, I learned to hit my short irons a lot lower because in the wind, you don't want to be hitting that high balloon ball. I said, hit it in there low with a little spin.

Mike Gonzalez 7:15

So well, your game must have developed pretty well. Of course, you were team captain at North Texas State University, and uh uh you won the Missouri Valley Conference Championship each of your four years.

Dennis Walters 7:26

Yeah, and the the the um I didn't play the first one, but when I was a senior, we played in Wichita, and I just came from Wichita. I played in the U.S. Adaptive Open. And so we tied with New Mexico State, and we had a 10-man playoff. And um the the course, the way I remember it was this was 53 years ago, but the what I remembered was the there was nice grass in the fairways, then there was the rough, it was like concrete because the sprinklers didn't reach it, and then there was a tree line. So these nine guys get up, they hit it all down the fairway. And I was doing this during the tournament on certain holes. I said, I'm going right down the rough line. It's pretty narrow, but if you if you pull it off, you're like 30 yards in front of everybody. So I did. I hit it right down the rough line. It's maybe, you know, 15 yards. And so I get out there, I'm 30 yards ahead of everybody. And so nine guys hit, seven hit the green, two are short, and I got a short iron to the green. I hit it up about 12 feet. So everybody else makes a par, nine pars, or they're gonna make a par because they they they knocked, they knocked it up for a gimme, they marked it. Boom, I make the putt. We win. So, and so I went out uh one day I went out to the Wichita Country Club because I wanted to see if my memory was correct, and I wanted to get some good vibes out there. So I go out there, they're redoing the Wichita Country Club. And so the hole we played, the hole we had the playoff was the 10th hole. And so there was green fairways, and then they're replacing the they're replacing the rough with fescue. And so there was a line, there was a space about 20, uh, 15, 20 yards, just like it was, and that was all brown, which was just the way it looked, and then there were some trees there, but the the pros said they had taken out some of the trees. So it looked almost like it did back in the day. So I I I thought that was kind of cool. Yeah. And so I I um I I really enjoyed the um the time I had there because we played in all the big tournaments with all the big schools, and uh we we came in we came in uh inside the top 12 in the NCAA tournament, the three years I played. Um so it was uh I was in a I was in a playoff with Andy North and Bruce Litzke and Ray Leach uh for the Tucker Intercollegiate. And I saw Andy the other day, and he he's he remembered it. And uh he and he and I both three-putted and uh Litsky ended up winning the tournament on the first hole. And uh but I played with all the guys my age, and and and Kite and Crenn Shaw and Andy North and Andy Bean and um all those all those guys who later became really you know successful tour pros and lifelong friends. And so I I enjoyed that a lot. And my senior year I finished 11th, I tied for 11th in the U.S. Amateur. It was metal play then, and the top eight got to play in the masters. So on the last hole, I went out about an hour early and shot 70 the last day, and I holed about a 15-footer on the last hole, and they had these little scoreboards uh, and they had your name on like a piece of cardboard, white cardboard, and they slipped it in there. And so when I left, I was in 10th place, and I'm going, you know, there's a lot of guys between me in the end. Some of them screw two of them screw up, I'm in the masters. And so I had to leave because I was late for school as it was, and I drove the next morning. I got up. There's no, there's no way to, you know, there's no sports center. There's nothing. You got it. The only way you find out what's going on is you read the paper. So I got up like six o'clock, got the paper, and I'm counting down. I'm going, oh man, I can't, I can't look. And and I'm and I not only did I lose, I lost the place, and I found the guys that finished ahead of me. Uh one guy hold a bunker shot, another 40-footer coming in, all this kind of stuff. So I'm still I'm actually still mad about it that I didn't get the play of the mask.

Mike Gonzalez 12:16

Well, you turned pro in in 1971, but probably long before then, you you already had it in your mind what you wanted to do.

Dennis Walters 12:26

Yeah, it was actually um was actually 72, I think, or so, and I wanted to uh I wanted to see if I could get better, and I went to um there was not there was actually nothing to play in. You could play there's nothing. There's no secondary, third uh third degree tour, whatever you want to call it. There's a few state opens you could play in. So I went back to Hollywood and I worked the that summer for Lou Barbero and I was gonna go to the Q school. And so um I uh I was in I I was in the state open. I lost I I tied for the state open and I lost I shot 68 and lost in the playoffs. It was an 18-hole playoff. And uh I was gonna try to I was playing some local things and I was going to uh try to go to the Q school and then I went I went the next year. I didn't go that year, I went the next year and I got to the final yeah, seventy uh seventy three. Yeah, seventy I didn't go in seventy-two. I went in seventy-three, and they just started having these mini tour events, so I went and played in that in Florida, and then I was gonna try to qualif cry to qualify for the tour. And I got to the finals, the the they only they had like a regional and then they had the finals, and so I was um so I got to the finals, but I didn't make it, and I was I I went over to play in South Africa and then I was gonna try again that next year, and I had the accident. So but it was nice. I I enjoyed myself over in South Africa. I I got to play with uh all the all the South African guys. Um I played with the Hunting Brothers and Bobby Cole, and I played I played about four or five rounds with Gary Player. I I played him, I played him in a tournament, and I actually beat him in the tournament. And so I um I kept the scorecard and he signed it and said fair and square. He wrote fair and square on it. And then um, whenever I'm with him, he tells he tells uh whoever I'm with that I beat him in a tournament. And I said, Well, he was a little nervous playing with me that day.

Mike Gonzalez 15:15

Should have been playing a Dunlop.

Dennis Walters 15:18

Yeah, right. Yeah. So that was that was a great experience, and um I wish I could have done more.

Mike Gonzalez 15:27

Well, let's let's go back to 74. You mentioned the accident. Uh you know, for those of our listeners, particularly the younger ones, uh uh they would remember three-wheel golf carts. No, they uh you know I I had the same experience, not the same outcome, but uh, you know, on a hill with one of those old, I can't remember some of the brand names back then, but some of these old kind of a rounded front, you know, uh uh kind of a three-wheeler. Yeah, push it.

Dennis Walters 15:56

Yeah, and and and you know, I didn't even have a steering wheel.

Mike Gonzalez 15:59

It had a bar was that yeah, had the exactly. And and you know, back at when we were younger, we didn't know as much about physics as we know nowadays. That wasn't the most stable vehicle on the fairway, that's not uh well tell us about uh the circumstances because as I understand it, you were uh uh you were at uh Rock to Ticket. Is that how you pronounced it, country club?

Dennis Walters 16:25

It's close enough. It's it's it's actually Roxydo. Some kind of an Indian word or something like that. And um so I was going out to meet my buddy Ralph Terry. He pitched for the Yankees. Yeah, oh yeah. He played on the PGA tour, he played on the senior tour. What a life he had. He was amazing. And I met him when I was 15. We played, we got paired together in the state open, and so I was out driving him by like, you know, 20, 30 yards, and um then we became really good friends and we'd we'd play matches with these other guys on Mondays and stuff. A couple times we'd go, and he had just left uh his baseball career was just over when I met him, maybe like a year or so. So we would go play these matches, and then we'd go sit in the bullpen at Yankee Stadium, go in the clubhouse, and or we'd go over to Shea Stadium for playing on Long Island, we'd go play there, and then we'd go in the clubhouse, watch the game from the bullpen and stuff. So it was really cool. So one time Ralph and I were playing there at Roxiticus, and so there was an old mansion behind the 18th Green, which was like a clubhouse. So we're out there fooling around, practicing and stuff. So he I my second shot, I had a six-iron. So he says, I don't think you can get there with that. I said, I said, I know I can get there with that. He said, listen, he said, I don't care where the ball goes. He says, I want you to swing as hard as you can and see how far you can hit it. Okay. So I hit it, it cleared the green, it went through a window, and it was rolling around on the floor where these old ladies were playing bridge. So I said, we better get out of here, you know. So and so um we we would play these money matches with these guys, these pros on Monday. The the pro would bring his best amateur and you know, me, Ralph and I, you know, so we're you know, like ragtag, you know, we don't have any much money. These guys are all, you know, straight lace Wall Street types. And um anyhow, we would we we would kill them, you know. You get up on the first hole, you know, and they're they're they they think they've already won, you know, but we would we would dust them all. And uh so yeah, so I was going out to meet them, and they were they were like on the uh back nine. So I go out in one of these carts and I'm gonna join them, and I'm gonna go down the I see them, they're over on the I see them like a hole before, and I'm gonna go down this one path and I'll meet them on the next T. So the path had these little blue stones on it and it and a sharp turn at the bottom. And I wasn't going that fast, but I remember the thing starting to slide, and that's about all I remember. Next thing I remember, I was on the ground and I I couldn't get up. I I I didn't have a scratch on me, no nothing, no blood or nothing, and I said, Man, I I couldn't get up. And so when when I fell, I dislocated a vertebrae which pinched my spinal cord. And so I didn't I don't think anyone actually well, I think the doctors knew, but no one actually told me and um that this was gonna be permanent. And so I was in a hospital for four months and then and I was in rehab for four months. And so I actually thought I was gonna get better because I didn't really think there was I couldn't feel anything that was wrong, but I couldn't feel half my body either, so that wasn't, you know, that wasn't good. And one day I was in the rehab and I went into the doc to the doctor, the head of the thing, and I said, Listen, I said, I want to know what's the story here. I said, I said, I'm not getting any better. And he said, You're not gonna, you're not gonna, you're never gonna be able to walk again. And I said, I started crying. And I said, What about playing golf? He says, forget it. And I said to him, two words, and they weren't happy birthday. And I said, I'm coming back to this dump one day, and I'm gonna be hitting golf balls off your lawn. And and I actually did that. And um I uh a lot of people think I got that from my dad. Two words, and it ain't happy birthday. I actually got that from my mom. And she she used to say that once in a while, not too often, but every once in a while she would say that. That that's when I birthday shortly thereafter is when I figured out I had gone to Florida and I came back, and that next summer, the summer of 76, I went back to that place and I started hitting golf balls. Across the road. Now, ironically, when I was in that rehab center, across the road was a golf course. And it was killing me every day to look out at this golf course because I in 71 I that's the course that I was the medalist on for the U.S. Amateur. And so that was actually really hard to look at. And uh then in in night well, when they had the first adaptive open, it was 2022. And so I played in the US amateur in 71, so that's like uh 51 years between USGA appearances, which I think if anybody can beat that, yeah, that's gonna be hard to beat.

Mike Gonzalez 22:54

Pretty amazing. Yeah. Well, you spent uh uh as as I've read, four months in the hospital, five months in rehab. Uh had to be probably the mental part of that, I would guess, Dennis, had to be far more difficult even than the physical part going through all that.

Dennis Walters 23:11

Oh God. I mean, you'd be we were in this room, there's four four people in a room. One one for a good bit of the time I was there, there was a young kid, maybe like ten years old, and he's screaming, and you know, everyone's crying, and I mean it was it was a nightmare. It was like the worst horror movie you could ever watch. And yet it's not it's not a movie, it's you, it's your life, and it it's one of the funny things, and it's always humor if you're looking for it. So, like the first day I'm there, they're teaching me how to use a wheelchair. That's how base that's how basic everything started. So I'm going down the hallway and there's a closet open. And there there has to be at least five hundred Trojan condoms there. And I say to myself, what the hell kind of place is this? You know?

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Yeah.

Dennis Walters 24:17

So and so I'm nosing around here, I'm trying to figure out what in the world, why would they have 500 condoms here?

Mike Gonzalez 24:28

Must be a medical use for those somewhat different than we're accustomed to, I guess.

Dennis Walters 24:34

Yeah, well, what happened was they the idea was based on what the level of your injury is, that's what type of function, internal functions that you have. So the lower you are, the more functions you have. But if you're above that at certain spot, you have to use you know extraordinary methods just for like your bodily functions. You you can't go by yourself. You have to have a catheter, you have to have this, that's someone with the function, I I'm what's called a T12, thoracic twelve, and it's like right on the borderline. And so whether you need a catheter, you can't go by yourself, but I don't want to get too graphic or anything, but anyhow, they they g they they had back in the day, they would take one of these condoms and they'd cut the bottom off of it, and then they would attach it to a tube by putting like a like a it was part of the uh tube. They would make it, it was almost like a very small rubber band, and they would attach the condom to this tube, then you'd put it on, and if your bladder was o was not normal, but it had some kind of function, you could get away with one using one of these external catheters instead of an internal catheter, which is bad. You know, I mean it's bad, it's worse, it's it's it's necessary, but anyhow, um first time didn't work, second time didn't work. And I said to this lady, I said, What do you call these things? She goes, they call them a a Texas catheter. I said, Well, I had good luck in Texas, maybe it'll work. So it it act it eventually worked, and um but that's what they were doing with these things. Now, if you fast forward a little bit, they started to make commercial products that were like this. But in the old days, that's what they did, and that's what all those Trojans were doing.

Mike Gonzalez 27:06

I know. I know. With what you've come to learn about all this, uh the the the you know the the medicine behind it, uh had this accident happened today, would there have been a different outcome?

Dennis Walters 27:19

Well, that's that's it's still unknown. You can't answer that. But yes, I mean you at least you would have a chance because they have all these things. They say if if you have a spinal cord injury and get to a get to a hospital and they give you this injection of some sort, you can knock it back and almost, you know, you have a chance of being normal, functioning normal, or more you would might regain more function. They also have uh all kinds of different steroids and different medicines and different uh different things that are technologically light years from when it was uh 50 years ago. In fact, when I this winter I was in this thing, it was called an exoskeleton. Now it doesn't heal you, but it allows someone who's paralyzed to walk by uh it's like a suit you put on, and it's only the beginning of it. And eventually it'll probably get miniaturized and it'll be a lot better. But there's all kinds of research. I don't think they've come up with a um I don't think they've come up with a cure or nothing, but they think they have ways to make it better if you get there in time. And they have these uh what do they call them? Uh uh, you know, where they uh they recycle your blood and um stem cells and stuff like that. So there's there's work, but it's still pretty tough problem to fix.

Mike Gonzalez 29:00

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So as you near the end of rehab, tell us a little bit about the encouragement and support that your father was able to provide.

Dennis Walters 29:11

When I when this happened to me, I was in the hospital for four months and I was in rehab for four months. And the last the last month of rehab, you could go home. So it was about an hour from my home, and I would go home. So I was watching in uh it was like January of 75. I was laying on the couch, I had my head on my dad's lap, and we're watching the Bing Crosby tournament, and I'm crying my eyes out because a lot of my friends from college were playing, and I thought I should have been there too. And so my dad said, Come on, champ, let's go hit some golf balls. I said, How do you reckon I'm gonna do that? He goes, out of that blanking wheelchair. If you knew my dad, you could guess the descriptive adjective that he gave the wheelchair. So right down the street, there was a little building that had a net in it. So I went to, we went over there, and I had this Byron Nelson Threewood. It was my favorite club, and I took it with me. And so we got to the net and he goes, Here, have a shot. And I said, Nah, I said, My legs are in the way, I don't think I can swing. He says, wait right here, I'll be back. So we went and got this pillow. I had this big pillow. I was in uh Walmart the other day, they still make them. It's a big pillow and it has arms on it. And the idea is the kids, the kid sits, the pillow. I used to, what I did was I set the pillow up against the couch where my parents were sitting and my sister. And then I would have my arms resting on these arms. Anyhow, he took the he took that, he took the arms and he folded them underneath me and he picked me up and put the pillow underneath me while I was sitting in the wheelchair. So he goes, I said, Wow, that's a lot better. Lifted me up about eight inches. And so I said, I said, but I I can't swing because I I can't hold myself up. And so he goes, Okay, stay right there, I'll be right back. So he went home and he got this big strap and he tied it to the around my waist and around the back of the chair. He says, Okay, go ahead. So I took a swing and the chair almost tipped over. He said, Don't do that again, I'll be right back. So he comes back a third time and he's got a rope and he ties it to this pole uh so it doesn't tip over. And I started hitting balls that day, and I I got where I could, you know, I was I wasn't doing too bad. And then I came back the next weekend, and the next weekend, whack, I'm hitting them. It's hitting in the back of the net, whack. And I'm going, I'm I'm hitting these things solid. So the next day I said, I want to go outside and hit some. It's about 38 degrees in Jersey at the time, but he gets the pillow, the strap, and the rope he ties to a tree, and I take a swing with the Byron Nelson three-wood, and I I topped it, and I wasn't too happy. The second one I hit on the sole plate, thin, but the third one I killed. It went about 130 yards right down the street, didn't hit a car, nothing. It was a perfect shot. And and at that, and my dad was jumping up and down, high-fiving me like I won the US Open. And at that very moment, I realized that when I hit the ball right in the middle of the face, it still felt good. And so I said, I think I'm gonna try to pursue something like this. I don't know how to do this, but I'm gonna it I want to do this. So a friend of mine owned a course in Florida in Pompano Beach, and he invited me to come down. And I was supposed to stay for like two weeks, but I stayed like three months, and I met a guy who was teeing balls up for me every day on the range, and uh because I brought the pillow with me. And so I was doing this for about a month. I was hitting my driver about 180, and I said, I said, Man, I want to go play. So the first hole was 310, and it and so these two high school kids pushed me over to the first T and they set me up with the same setup, the pillow, the strap, and the rope. We had like a spike that you tied your dog to and let him run around. And so we did that, and I hit my drive 180 down the middle. So now I got 130. They take everything, they disassemble everything, they push me down there, then they reassembled me, and I I hit a five wood, it was pin high, about maybe a yard off the green, maybe 30, 40 feet from the pin. So they're getting ready to they disassemble, they're pushing me up there, get they're getting ready to do it. I said, forget it. And I leaned out the side of the wheelchair and I putted it one handed, knocked it up for a gimme. Probably the best par ever made. And I and I hadn't played a hole of golf in over a year.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Yeah.

Dennis Walters 34:14

So I went back to the clubhouse. Now everybody could see what was going on because the clubhouse right behind the first. Hey, everybody's cheering. Hey, that was great, you know, greatest bar ever. And I said, Yeah, okay, fine. I said, it it took like, you know, 40 minutes to play the first hole. It's gonna take me like 12 hours to play. So the guy that was helping me said, he saw me sitting on a bar stool, and he said, Hey, kid, I got this figured out. Tomorrow when you come back, I'll have something for you. So, anyhow, that that night and the next morning, he cut the legs off the bar stool and he put it on the passenger side of a golf cart. And I immediately was much higher, and my legs are out of the way, and that's really how I got back on the course.

Mike Gonzalez 35:03

That's pretty cool. Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Good of the Game. And please, wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, spread the word, tell your friends until we teat up again for the good of the game.