Blind athlete tees off, swings for the fences

Anyone who has spent a day on the golf course has experienced frustration. Heck, trying to guide a little white ball into a hole situated hundreds of yards away is humbling and humiliating to the best of golfers. Bad lies, trees and shrubs, narrow fairways, water hazards and sand traps are common irritants on the course. 

Ted Fass deals with all of the course’s nuances, but he does so from a completely different perspective. He’s blind. “The trees don’t bother me much, because I can’t see them,” Fass said. “The different lies are the most difficult challenges, but like everything else, you just adjust to it.”

Blind golfers use a sighted coach/caddie who assists with distance, direction, characteristics of the green, and club head alignment prior to the stroke.

Fass, who began playing golf less than a decade ago, recently competed in the Corcoran Cup Masters Invitational golf tournament at the Mount Kisco Country Club. The event, which is sponsored by the Guiding Eyes for the Blind, consisted of the top 16 blind golfers in the country. Fass finished in fifth place. 

The 58-year old Fass lost his sight while at summer camp when he was 11 years old. “It started out with headaches, and then I had a nose bleed,” Fass said. “I thought I had allergies. The counselors thought I just wanted to get out of taking part in some of the activities, but that would have been really unlike me. The headaches got very severe, so my parents came up and got me.”

Fass had a tumor which was putting pressure on his optic nerve and decreasing the blood flow. He went to the doctor for a standard eye test, but when covering up one eye, he realized he had no sight out of the other. Fass would undergo 11 surgical procedures, and missed an entire year of school while in the hospital. He’s been blind ever since.

Golf is just one of the activities Fass participates in. He water skis and snow skis, but is best known for his role in bringing the game of Beep baseball to the area. Fass is the co-founder and executive director of the Long Island Bombers.