Mark O’Meara club members help their assistant pro pursue his dream

Mark O’Meara golf club members recently paid it forward, raising $1,000 for their assistant pro, Adam Morano, which will enable him to go for his golf accreditation a year earlier than he had planned.

The 23-year-old Morano is hoping to become an accredited Canadian golf professional and will take the first step at a qualifying tournament in Cambridge later this month. His dream is to compete some day on the tour and to teach young people like himself the game of golf.

Morano, who is an assistant pro at the Grandview Mark O’Meara Golf Club, didn’t expect to start his pursuit until next year because of the costs. That all changed when Gord Creasor, a member of the club, asked Morano if he was going to “go for it” this year. Morano said no, not until next year.

“He asked me if it was the funds and if I was ready,” said Morano, recalling the conversation well. “I said no, I’m ready but right now I don’t have a thousand dollars. He said don’t worry about it. We’ll get the funds.”

Another member, Wes Posthumus, heard the conversation and agreed with Creasor. He said, “We’ve got to help him out a little bit.”

At the next Men’s Night, Posthumus told the members the 50/50 draw was for Morano and it brought in $600. At the dinner that followed, Posthumus again stood up in front of the group, this time to get to the $1,000 mark. “I mentioned to the guys at dinner that we were a few hundred dollars short and went into my wallet and got 50 bucks,” Posthumus recalled. “Before we knew it we had a thousand dollars on the table. It was our pleasure to do so.”

We were just thrilled to participate because Adam has been here (at the Mark O’Meara course) now for four or five years. He’s a great kid with a can-do attitude and one of the hardest workers we’ve ever had here. He always has a smile on his face and is always willing to go the extra mile. Wes Posthumus, O’Meara Club member

“I was a little nervous at first about taking that money,” admitted Morano. “Just the pressure I felt attached to that. But that was the first thing they stressed: no pressure whatsoever, no strings attached. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I’ll do everything I can in my power for them around here and clearly they will too for me.”

The first step in getting his card is becoming a candidate for membership. The first thing is the playability test which Morano will take part in in Cambridge. It’s a two-day event and you have to shoot a certain score and that just begins the process. After that comes seminars and courses.

Morano has been playing golf since he was six years old. His father, Domenic, took him out to provide much needed exercise for a disease called spastic paraplegia, which has forced Morano to overcome a permanent limp in his walk and stiffness in his leg muscles.

“It’s really just a stiffness of the muscles,” explained Adam. “From the waist down, your heel, your Achilles tendon, is all very tight and so we are not very flexible. It’s hard for us to move our toes and legs and feet. We just don’t build up a lot of muscle. Balance is tough. Some days are worse than others. It’s a matter of stretching and staying active.”

As far as his golf game is concerned, it’s a balance thing. “I can’t hit it as far as some others. It’s just the balance over the ball and golf is 90 per cent balance.

“Where I have excelled is hand and eye co-ordination and my dedication to the game where I found the balance and a nice swing. I still have flexibility in my upper body, but my lower body holds me back just a little bit. I can still hit the ball between 270 and 290 yards.”

Morano presently has a four handicap and just had his first hole-in-one in early June. Morano says if he can fine tune his game enough he would like to compete on the CPGA tour, but his real motivation is to teach kids the game of golf.

“We don’t have many qualified teachers around here,” he explained. “I want to be able to help people with their swing. Teaching at camps would be really fun. It doesn’t seem like work when you enjoy it as much as I do and other teachers do when they work with their kids. Your office is down on the driving range all day. Helping people.”

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