Golf club member refuses to let anything hinder his passion for playing golf

Seven years ago Jacob Brumfield walked onto his first driving range with some friends, teed up a golf ball and took one good swing that would make him a golfer for the rest of his life.

Now a member of the newly recognized Redhawks Golf Club, which was founded last year, Brumfield has continued his love affair with golf, after playing it throughout junior high and high school.

"I've been playing for so long now, and I love it," Brumfield said. "When I hit that one good shot, I knew I would continue to play for the rest of my life."

As he competed throughout high school, his plans to play golf took a back seat to medical problems he was having -- specifically, vision impairment.

Three years into his playing days, Brumfield, at the time a sophomore in high school, noticed a change in the way he was seeing things in his everyday life. Noticing differences in how far he could see, what he could see and which direction he could see was alarming.

"I would notice a big difference in what I was looking at," Brumfield said. "I couldn't really see as far or as wide as I used to, and my scores in golf and in school were starting to slip."

Finally, after seeing an eye doctor, Brumfield was told he is legally blind. The impairment in both of his eyes left him unable to see straightforward and only out of his peripherals.

This unforeseen bad news understandably put a toll on Brumfield's confidence on the course.

"In golf, you rely on your vision a lot," Brumfield said. "You lose a lot of confidence when you can't see everything. You lose your feel for things, and you lose the desire to play every day."

As he lost confidence, his scores began to go up. Brumfield had to find a way to adapt.

Now a junior at Southeast Missouri State University, Brumfield has found his passion again.

Shawn Heuring, the president of the Redhawks Golf Club met Brumfield at a local driving range last year. Heuring, who was impressed with his style of play and unaware of Brumfield's vision impairment, asked him to be a part of the team.

"Looking back on the time I first met Jacob, it's just amazing to me," Heuring said. "He was shooting the ball harder and farther than I was from the very first tee we played together, and all this time I couldn't even tell he was legally blind."

Now that Heuring and the rest of Brumfield's teammates know, they are doing everything they can to help him improve his game.

"They help me get time on the course, and sometimes they have to show me where my ball is," Brumfield said. "It's even helping our team chemistry, I think, because we're becoming good friends off the course."

Even when his friends and teammates aren't there, Brumfield has a few tips and tricks he likes to use to make a day on the course go a little smoother.

Binoculars and bright yellow golf balls make an immense difference.

"When I hit a really long shot on a par 5, it's almost impossible to tell where my ball is," Brumfield said. "The yellow ball helps to a degree, but I usually keep a pair of binoculars in my bag just to get an idea of where it dropped."

His few tricks don't always make the difference. Brumfield admits to having more than a few bad breakdowns in which his game got so bad he took his anger out on his clubs.

Bad breaks don't slow Brumfield down for long, though. In his second year dealing with his disability, Brumfield had the best shot of his life during the sectional golf tournament his junior year of high school.

On a par 5 in the middle of the fairway on his second shot, Brumfield used a 4-iron from 200 yards out to put himself three feet away from the hole. He tapped in his next shot and landed the eagle.

Around Southeast's campus, coordinators and directors of the universities' Counseling and Disability Services are recognizing his efforts on the golf course.

"He's another example of the saying 'disability is not an ability,'" Millicent Odhiambo, coordinator of Disability Services, said. "People with disabilities can reach their goals no matter what. If you put your mind to it you can achieve anything."

Brumfield continues to prepare for the golf club's upcoming spring season, where he will continue to strive to make improvements in his game.

"I've had some of my worst tournaments in recent years lately," Brumfield said. "I have to keep making adjustments to the way I play, go to the driving range whenever I can and get ready for next season."