In the list of golfers who this week are moving to Sancti Petri, between the sun and the harsh wind of the area, to participate in the Challenge of Spain, scoring for the second continental division, a hero goes unnoticed.
It is Allen John, a 34-year-old German, a regular on the circuit, who adds to the difficulties of a sport that can end up being maddening that he is profoundly deaf. He doesn’t hear a noise. A hearing aid, a device he implanted in his ear when he was two years old, is his hearing cord with the world.
Allen John, statements
“When I was first diagnosed with this loss, I only had about five percent of my hearing left, but over the years hearing aids have improved a lot and now I have up to 80 percent. There is still quite a bit I can’t hear and If I don’t want to hear something, I can always turn it off too!” he jokes on his blog.
Sport is full of stories of overcoming athletes with hearing disorders. Damir Desnica, a deaf-mute footballer from Rijeka who was sent off against Real Madrid in a UEFA Cup for protesting, was one of the first to make himself known in the mid-1980s.
Before that, Cliff Bastin, a good footballer from Arsenal’s 1930s. In the case of golf, John has the handicap of not being able to hear the impact. “I just rely on feel, which is unusual. If you have a new driver or a new club, some players say they can tell the difference, by how the club moves in the wind and stuff.
I’m used to that.” . Second on the European Tour
It wasn’t much of an obstacle for John. He was a college player at Georgia State until 2011 and turned pro the following year. Beyond his physical deficiency, an episode is remembered in the career of a golfer who was reclassified as an amateur in 2013 after various injuries.
It was his second place at the German Porsche Open. The German had left golf for a couple of seasons and had dedicated himself to studying and exercising as a physical trainer. But, after two years, after coming into contact with the deaf community -he has been twice world champion in the category-, he resumed the game.
For that runner-up, a tournament to which he arrived as a guest of one of the sponsors, he had to give up a check for 170,000 euros for not becoming a professional. He had to settle for the applause he received on the 18th hole and the confirmation that he was worth this.
