For Disabled, Fairway Is No Longer Out of Bounds

Glen Gerson knew what to do when a physical handicap got in the way of his father-in-law’s golf handicap.

He invented a golf club that enables those with disabilities to play an 18-hole round from a wheelchair or golf cart.

It’s the Chucker -- a flexible, spoon-like club that plucks a golf ball from the ground and grips it tightly until a golfer takes aim and flings it down the fairway.

Gerson, 50, is a Malibu recreation ranch operator. He created the Chucker when his father-in-law, P.W. Liang, was left disabled and unable to take part in his favorite recreational activity.

“He’d been injured in a fall and was having difficulty with his legs, so he was forced to give up golf,” Gerson said. “It was hard on him. He really loved golf.”

As Liang, 80, sat at home longing for the links, Gerson and other family members halfheartedly proposed sending him out in a golf cart to throw the ball along the course.

“It was frustrating. He still could use his upper body. We joked we should get him a slingshot. Somebody said we should get him a golf gun that would shoot. Then we thought, why not make a sling club that could catapult the ball around the course for him?”

Gerson and brother-in-law Buck Liang toyed with the concept of spring-loaded clamps to grasp and then release the ball. His father, Grant Gerson, suggested using a screw-on gripper. Eventually, they settled on a one-piece, ice cream-scoop design.

They sketched their idea on paper before sculpting a full-size clay mock-up of what turned out to be a slender, 40-inch club. A real golf ball was inserted in the claw-like scoop before the clay model was carefully placed outside to dry in the sun at the family-run Calamigos Ranch, on a mountaintop between Malibu and Agoura.

Buck Liang had friends with a manufacturing company in Taiwan create a mold from the clay model and then cast copies from high-density polyethylene. The prototypes were shipped back to the ranch. Gerson remembers they were a disaster.

“The first ones were too stiff. The ball wouldn’t release. We reshaped it and changed the flex on the tip and sent it back to Taiwan to be done over.”

In the next version, the ball would not stay gripped in the scoop. Back at the ranch, they tried again.

“The ends kept breaking off. We found out that we needed more flex. We kept experimenting, going back and forth,” Gerson said. “They were getting frustrated with us over in Taiwan.

“By the time we finally got it right and everything worked, it was anticlimactic.”

Soon, his father-in-law was back on the course with his bag of clubs. But now he was reaching for his plastics -- not his irons and woods.

Gerson and other family members quickly realized that the Chucker had the potential to benefit others.

In 2003, family members and friends pitched in to pay for a mass production run at the Taiwanese plant. Soon, 10,000 Chuckers were pouring into the ranch.

“It was like going to a smorgasbord to eat. Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs,” Gerson said of the factory order.

Up to their necks in Chuckers, Gerson tapped his 84-year-old father to help market the club. Although he doesn’t play golf, Grant Gerson decided to stage a “Chucker Tourney” to introduce it to golfers and the disabled community.

He persuaded the Tierra Rejada Golf Club in Moorpark to host the tournament. Then he set out to recruit a mix of handicapped and able-bodied golfers to play in it.

The elder Gerson was traveling through Canoga Park when he noticed Rick Rehhaut riding down a street on a hand-pedaled three-wheeled cycle. Gerson pulled over and asked Rehhaut whether he had ever played golf.

“I said no, but that I’d always wanted to,” said Rehhaut, a 43-year-old teacher who was left a paraplegic by a spinal cord injury at birth.

“He pulled a Chucker out of his car and put a ball in it, and I sent it flying down the street. He asked if I wanted to play in a tournament. I said, ‘I’ve never been on a golf course in my life, but I’ll do it.’ ”

The contest in July 2004 drew about 20 golfers. Rehhaut, who said he “very carefully” practiced with the Chucker in his front yard to prepare for the competition, finished low in the pack. But he didn’t care.

“It was great. One of my best friends was my tournament partner. I got to do something that one of my best friends loves -- play golf,” he said. “Whenever the disabled community and the able-bodied community can do the same things, it’s great.”

Golf carts and wheelchairs are not allowed on putting greens because they would leave grooves on the surface. Rehhaut’s last shot to the green determined his score for the hole. If the ball came to rest 10 feet or closer from the flag, it was counted as a one-stroke putt. A 20-foot distance added two strokes.

The Chucker is flung overhand for long fairway shots and swung underhand for short chip shots. Skilled golfers can send the ball 200 yards or more, according to Perry Leslie, the Tierra Rejada course’s director of operations.

“I was surprised by the accuracy you get with the Chucker,” Leslie said. “Its applications to the game of golf are terrific.”

Mark Peifer, Tierra Rejada’s head pro, said the first Chucker tournament was a success and more are planned.

Grant Gerson has visions of Chucker tourneys pairing able-bodied golfers with war-wounded GIs returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. “I’m certain there are military personnel disabled by combat injuries who think they’ll never play golf again,” he said.

So far, though, word of the Chucker has spread slowly around golf courses, where it is sold for $29.95 each. Design and production costs, meanwhile, have totaled $175,000, Glen Gerson said.

“I figured we were going to be millionaires,” he said. “We’ve sold maybe 200. We’re tycoons!”

That leaves 9,800 Chuckers in a barn at the ranch.

Which means he’s not ready to chuck the Chucker yet.