West Palm's Ken Green aims for one more golf win at USGDA Championship in Port St. Lucie
Ken Green wants just one more win. That’s all. Just one more chance to lift a trophy.
The West Palm Beach resident won five PGA Tour titles in the late 1980s during an up-and-down career that was halted by an RV accident in 2009 that cost him part of his right leg.
Undaunted, Green eventually started playing with a prosthetic leg in several PGA Tour Champions events before focusing on events for players with disabilities. The 65-year-old Green gets another opportunity this week when he plays in the USDGA Championship — formerly known as the U.S. Golf Disabled Open — at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie. The tournament begins Monday.
“I definitely want to win again, so I can have that feeling one more time,” said Green, who finished tied for fourth last year. “But golf is a game of unknowns. Some days I play well, others it’s like I never touched a club. It all depends on how my body feels that day.”
Many days, Green doesn’t touch a club because he constantly deals with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). He can’t practice regularly. And there are times when the pain will bring him to his knees.
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“When you can’t practice, it doesn’t bode well for fixing errors,” Green said. “So much depends on how my body is feeling. When it’s bad, it’s hard to focus. You just have to fight through it the best you can. But this is my boat, and I’m not leaving it.”
Green got a firsthand look at his main competition last week when defending champion Chad Pfeifer stayed with Green and they played several practice rounds together. The 45-year-old Pfeifer, who lost part of his right leg when he stepped on an IED in Iraq in 2007, won last year’s USGDA Championship by two shots over Jeremy Bittner.
“He’s one of the better players, if not the best player out here,” Green said of Pfeifer. “Giving up 40 yards to him (on each shot) is tough.
“Golf saved his life. He was in a bad place until golf came into his life. He’s like where we were at in our 20s when we still loved the game.”
Pfeifer knows he’s the player to beat as the defending champion, but that’s OK. He felt the same way last year when he won for the second time in the past three years.
“I do kind of feel like I have a target on my back because I’m hoping to inspire others to try and beat me,” said Pfeifer, an Idaho resident who was serving in the Army in Iraq in 2007.
"Some people have told me, ‘If I can beat you, I’ve got a good shot at winning the tournament.’ I enjoy inspiring people to work on my game. I do feel like people are gunning for me, but I’m glad if it gets them to work on their game.”
Jupiter resident Dennis Walters, a World Golf Hall of Famer, returns to defend his title in the Seated Division after winning by 18 shots last year. Walters also won the inaugural U.S. Adaptive Championship in 2022 that’s run by the USGA.
The USDGA Championship is run by the U.S. Disabled Golf Association.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Ken Green on USGDA Championship: 'I definitely want to win again"
