Multiple Sclerosis Doesn't Slow Down WAPL Qualifier Weder

By Rhonda Glenn, USGA

Devens, Mass. – Until a few years ago, Maggie Weder’s golf experience was limited to U.S. Marine “keggers,” where she drove the beer cart and whacked out a few balls.

In 1997, Weder’s persistent ailments were diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis and, oddly, golf then became a key part of her life.

Weder failed to qualify for match play this week at the 2009 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship at Red Tail Golf Club, but that hasn’t deterred her spirit for the event. Relegated to the sidelines, she now watches friends and fellow competitors from the seat of a single-rider electric cart.

The USGA provides the carts as a service to disabled spectators. That’s what Weder has, a disability, but it’s not keeping her from playing golf. MS hampered Weder’s coordination and cognitive thinking, yet she has managed to qualify for four USGA national championships and has twice represented North Carolina in the USGA Women’s State Team Championship.

Maggie Weder discovered golf 12 years after doctors told her the game would be therapeutic for her Multiple Sclerosis. (USGA Museum)

Her bond with golf began 12 years ago when a neurologist said he believed that Weder’s condition and coordination would improve if she played the game. The retired U.S. Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer began to devote herself to golf.

She was intrigued. “It’s a perfectionist thing,” Weder says. “You wonder why you can’t master it. Why you can’t always make the ball go where you want it to. And it’s a nice, quiet sport. You don’t need anyone else to play with. Then, it’s a fair playing field. You get out of golf what you put into it.”

 She’s never had a lesson. She’s an avid reader of instruction books and her hero is Moe Norman, the late, great Canadian ball-striker. In her wallet she carries a photo of herself with Norman. When he was alive she would seek him out and watch his clinics.

“Did you ever meet your hero and not be disappointed?” she asked. “That was how I felt about Moe. I just wanted to hold his hand and thank him, because the way he did it – the 10-fingered grip, hit it hard – I could play that way.”

Instead of thinking about being a patient, Weder began to think of herself as a golfer. And while MS causes her to speak in a slightly halting way, Weder isn’t shy. She pointed for the top. She would play in the national championships.

First she managed to qualify for the 2004 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, but missed the cut. Then came a great honor – Weder was selected to play for the 2005 North Carolina team in the USGA Women’s State Team Championship. The team of Weder, Debbie Adams and Patty Moore tied for 12th.

Weder loved the whole thing – the great course, the other players. Her final-round 79 made her proud.

She was selected again in 2007, qualified for the 2007 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur and the 2008 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur. She knows she’ll probably never win a championship, but that’s not the point.

“Golf has afforded me a new life,” she said. “It’s something to get up for that day. I love the way it’s played. Nobody gets an advantage. You just grind it out and it takes a lot of heart. If you give up on the golf course, it’s going to really show.”

Weder has given up twice. In 2004, she gave her clubs away. She was finished. It was too hard. But friends told her she could raise money for the fight against MS by playing golf. Five friends pledged to donate money for every birdie she. One friend very wisely said, “But you have to finish the round.”

Today more than 50 people have signed up to pay Weder’s charity “Golfin 4 MS,” for every birdie she makes. She has raised more than $50,000.

Last year, Weder quit again. Right in the middle of the golf course. It was one of those “Tin Cup” moments, a story you couldn’t make up.

Weder was playing in a sectional qualifier for the 2008 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur. Her disease was advancing. Golf was harder to play.

She desperately wanted to qualify. But it was a bad day. Weder felt lousy and she was scraping it around. She topped shots, she chunked them, and she temporarily forgot everything she believes about good sportsmanship.

“I thrust my club up in the air, pointing at the sky, and I yelled, I literally yelled, ‘I quit!’ ” she said. “I yelled at God, ‘This is NOT fair!’

“My fellow competitors urged me to keep playing and I finally settled down and hit my tee shot on the par-3 13th hole. It was an island green, and you had to hit over the water. I swung, and hit this really terrible-looking shot. I just knew it was headed for the water and I had failed again. Then my ball hit the wood of a piling and bounced up on the green. Then it started to roll. It just trickled, like in slow motion. And then the ball goes into the hole for a hole-in-one! I shot 84 and got the last qualifying spot by one stroke.

“I apologized to the other players and I apologized to God.”

In her golf bag, Weder carries a copy of The Amateur Creed, written by Richard Tufts, a former USGA president who owned the Pinehurst resort and golf courses. She saw the creed engraved on a plaque at Pinehurst when she played in the North & South Senior Women’s Amateur.

“Amateurism, after all, must be the backbone of all sport, golf or otherwise,” wrote Tufts. “An amateur is one who competes in a sport for the joy of playing, for the companionship it affords, for health-giving exercise and for relaxation from more serious matters…he accepts cheerfully all adverse breaks, is considerate of his opponent, plays the course fairly and squarely in accordance with the rules, maintains self control and strives to do his best, not in order to win, but rather as a test of his own skill and ability…The returns which amateur sport will bring to those who play it in this spirit are greater than any money can possibly buy.”

Golf has taken Weder to places she may never have visited. She’s been to Pinehurst, St. Andrews, and gorgeous courses like Red Tail Golf Club where she played this week as part of the 156-player WAPL field.

She qualified for the Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship at her home course in Greenville, N.C. She shot a 74.

“I woke up that day and I was healthier than I’ve ever been,” said Weder. “I want it, and I want it bad, because I know my time is limited. I’d never shot 74 from the middle and back tees there. I’d never driven the ball that far.

“Golf gave me my life back, and a quality of life that everyone said I shouldn’t have.”

Rhonda Glenn is a manager of communications for the USGA. E-mail her with questions or comments at rglenn@usga.org.