HOUSTON - At first glance, Bruce Hooper seems like your typical golfer. But a closer look reveals he is anything but.
Hooper has been around the game since he was six and since, has made golf his life learning everything there is to know about it.
"I think golf is a game people can learn to play mechanically," said Hooper. "There is an artistic factor to it too, so the hand and eye coordination is really important."
An element which would get a lot tougher for Hooper after learning he had been diagnosed with macular degeneration at a younger age than most.
"I had trouble seeing street signs and I knew I had some problems with my vision," said Hooper.
"We were all teasing him saying that he needed a new pair of glass because he was getting old," said his wife Judy. "Little did we know it was much worse than that."
"It was just kind of shock," added Hooper.
Now the game he loved was going to look a whole lot different.
"That’s your first thought, that you’re not going to play golf ever again," said Hooper.
"Within weeks, you lose your job, you lose the ability to drive a car, what do you do?" added Judy.
That’s where his she stepped in.
"We had to do something. Golf is one of his loves so we worked together to try to get to that," said Judy.
After searching online for ways to play the game visually impaired, Judy and Bruce got involved in Blind Golf, a version of the sport that allows a player to be joined by a coach on the course.
"It was a whole new world for us, a whole new life," said Hooper. "One of the things we did learn about Judy is how much interest she had in the game of golf."
"Anytime you lose your job or your identity, the trick is finding a new one," said his wife, who was never an avid player. "When I look back, I have to laugh because I was giving him information he really didn’t need at all."
Now, she may just know more about it than him.
"I can’t tell you how many times, because she is a psychiatrist, that she has been out there and counseling me," said Hooper. "I remember she said ‘Do you want to lose this tournament? If you want to lose it, keep hitting that driver’."
"I like him to play well so we can’t just sit back and do nothing," said Judy.
Combine tough love with some necessary adjustments, and you get a player in Hooper who is playing better than he has since back when he was in high school, winning several tournaments around the world and shooting a 76 not too long ago.
"If I look straight down at the ball, then everything disappears," said Hooper, who has lost most of his central vision. "I have to what I call it, raise the curtain and see it in the bottom half of my vision or my peripheral vision."
And the two make a pretty special couple, in more ways than one.
"People are just really surprised at what he can do on the golf course with his limited vision," said Judy. "It’s amazing."
"It is difficult to deal with people that have disabilities I am sure," said Hooper. "She is just a wonderful person and I’ve just been really blessed to have her help me."
