Balancing Act

Amputee golfer Steve Cornell makes the best of good breaks – and bad

by Nathan Fox

Like all golfers, Steve Cornell desires new equipment. The difference is this: if Cornell gets his new gear, it might actually improve his game.

While we’re salivating over the latest $400 TaylorMade driver, debating the relative merits of the Titleist Pro V1 golf ball vs. the Pro V1x, or succumbing to the infomercial charms of dubious miracle gadgets, Cornell’s eyeing a single big-ticket item: A $35,000, microprocessor-controlled, hydraulically stabilized “C-leg” prosthetic knee/shin system.

If you’re ever paired with him, on the first tee go ahead and announce proudly that you’ve chosen the Pro V1, at $44.95 a dozen. Unless it’s a tournament, Steve Cornell – one-legged champion of the North Shore – will whip out a scuffed Maxfli Noodle.

And then, more likely than not, he’ll whip you.

* * *

One day in 1968, when Steve Cornell was 12 years old, he hopped a freight. As the train made its way through a lumberyard in his hometown of Malden, Cornell ran alongside, swung aboard, rode it about a hundred yards, then safely leapt off. That night, Cornell recalls, his mother warned him against ever repeating that sort of stunt. “But at 12 you’re fearless,” he says. “You can do anything.” So the next day, while racing friends through the lumberyard, he tried it again.

Thirty-six years later, Cornell walks and plays golf on a prosthetic leg that starts just below his left thigh. An above-knee, one-leg amputee – "single AK” in amputee parlance – Cornell's rounds average in the low 80s. According to Chris Costa, the 31-year teaching pro at the Middleton Golf Course, the average two-legged golfer shoots between 105 and 108. Cornell, who is mostly self-taught, but has taken a handful of lessons from Costa over the past eight years, is “in the top 10 percent of all golfers,” says Costa.

How does a one-legged man climb to the top 10th percentile of a maddeningly difficult game predicated on, of all things, balance?

Cornell’s answers aren’t secret, yet they elude most golfers. Many have heard the maxim that golf is “a game of misses,” but far fewer – Cornell among them – actually apply this insight. It’s human nature that we remember our best shots far longer than we remember our worst ones. But while we go for the green, Cornell plays within himself, and wisely lays up. We rarely notice our lucky bounces – and when we do, we attribute them to skill – but we notice every single one of our unfortunate bounces and curse them as rotten luck. Cornell is steady, accepting both good and bad.

If golf’s a game of managing your misses, an exercise in embracing and making the best of imperfection, then perhaps Steve Cornell’s “disability” is what enables him.

The second time Cornell tried to hop a freight train his foot slipped, and his hand missed the ladder. The train, carrying a load of gravel for the construction of the I-95 extension, ripped his left leg from his body.

“I put my hand under my thigh,” Cornell recalls, “picked the leg up, and scooted away on my butt. I was so worried about what my mother would say. I remember asking them in the ambulance if I was going to die. They told me no, and I remember feeling at ease. Then I blacked out.”

Cornell is 48 years old, of medium height and medium build. He is perpetually grinning and scraggly-toothed. He is swarthy, and on the golf course he wears his collar unbuttoned far enough to reveal a gold chain, a small crucifix, and a somewhat hairy chest.

Cornell plays about 20 rounds per year, relatively few for a low-handicap golfer. While most of us never practice, just play, Cornell does the opposite. He might play once per week, he says, but hits balls three times. Cornell’s drives aren’t long – maybe 220, 230 – and have a low, left-to-right trajectory that Cornell abhors. The golf swing is particularly difficult for him, he says, because as a right-handed golfer he is supposed to finish on his left – artificial – leg. At the end of his follow-through, he is forced to take a small step forward with his right leg to keep from falling down.

But if Cornell’s shots aren’t pretty, they’re consistent.

And while those few of us who do actually practice usually beat drivers on the range until our hands bleed, totally neglecting the vastly more important short game, Cornell also goes to a practice green to chip and putt three times per week.

He likes to play for money. Nothing major, just “little side wagers here and there, you know,” he explains. Asked to choose the stakes for a casual match, he suggests a $5 Nassau. Cornell is not a wealthy man, and this is plenty to make things interesting. He has lived in Middleton for the past 14 years with his wife, Linda. They have two children, 11-year-old Kayley and an 8-year-old son, Taylor. Linda recently finished a masters degree in education – "she graduated with a 4.0,” Steve brags – and works as a reading coordinator at a charter school in Lawrence. Steve has worked at Eastman Gelatine in Peabody for 25 years. His job in “plant services” involves receiving and offloading chemical trucks, working in the security shack, and various other duties.

A $35,000 leg is a lot of $5 Nassaus, and at least one of his amputee friends, Salem's Jim Wegrzyen (double below knee), has stopped betting with him. "It's amazing how well Steve can play when there's money on the line," says Wegrzyen.

And if you do decide to play with him, be forewarned that Cornell neither accepts nor gives any putts – a telling example of the mental toughness that is his primary advantage. "I play everything out," he says.

* * *

Eight weeks after his accident, 12-year-old Steve Cornell left the hospital, with doctors telling him he would never again play sports or ride his bike. His family moved to Peabody. Shortly thereafter, Steve began riding from Peabody to Malden on his ten-speed to visit friends.

In high school, Cornell caddied at Thomson Country Club in North Reading, where he could play for free on Mondays. "I ended up with a lot of blisters on my stump,” he says, “but to get out there and play golf it was worth it."

On July 26-28, Cornell will test his game against amputee golfers across the nation at the 18th Eastern Regional Amputee Golf Championship at Bethpage Red in Farmingdale, New York. According to Eastern Amputee Golf Association founder Bob Buck – himself an amputee, right leg BK – the par 70 course will measure 6,400 yards. Cornell will have his work cut out for him. Three-time consecutive defending Eastern champ Jim Curley (left leg BK) shot 74-74 last year, Cornell says.

Cornell has also participated in the National Amputee Golf Association championship and skied competitively, winning four medals at a national competition in the winter of 2000 at Mt. Snow, Vermont. His highest athletic goal is to compete in the Robinson Cup, amputee golf’s version of the Ryder Cup.

Cornell is a New England Patriots fan. He is proud to show off the Patriots headcover on his driver, the Patriots cover on his putter, and, hiking up his shorts, the large Patriots appliqué on the stump of his artificial leg. He was referred to as “a character” by a surprising percentage of people interviewed for this story, including Jay Pawlyk, who along with his wife Laura, directs Cornell in the choir at Saint Agnes Parish in Middleton. (Cornell is also a karaoke singer. His favorite song, according to friend Wegrzyen, is “Show Me the Way,” by Styx.)

“There’s no way it can ever get too serious with Steve in the room,” says Pawlyk, who says that sometimes Cornell will lampoon the choir’s warm-up stretches by taking off his leg and waving it in the air.

On the golf course, Cornell practices positive self-talk, and practices it out loud: “Be your best friend,” he says after a missed putt. "Take it one hole at a time, don't get down on yourself." He is the type of guy who, even while trailing in a match, stoops to pick up his opponent’s spare clubs on tees and greens. He practices birdcalls on the course, with impressive skill and, even more impressively, manages to do it without being obnoxious.

Cornell’s worst hole during a round at The Meadow at Peabody – a challenging and beautifully maintained municipal bargain – shows Cornell at his absolute best. After one-hopping a short pitch over the green at the difficult par-5 11th, Cornell finds the ball in the deep woods and wisely takes an unplayable lie. He adds a penalty stroke, then walks/hops back to the spot where he hit the pitch. (Cornell follows all the rules, even the inconvenient ones.) He replays his shot, then hops/runs back up to the green. Having already lost the hole, the average golfer would have picked up. Instead, Cornell stares the putt down, then closes his eyes for five seconds, wiggling his fingertips.

“I will be my friend,” he says. “I won’t get aggravated.”

Calmly, he drains the 18-footer for triple bogey, then pars the next hole.

For more information about the Eastern Amputee Golf Association, visit www.eaga.org or call 1-888-868-0992.