A hole-in-one worth seeing: amateur golfer Clifford hits shot weeks after losing eye
ROANOKE, Va. (BVM) — Amateur golfer Kyle Clifford has seen a lot of things happen on a golf course. Clifford, who plays a team fall season at Brookside Par 3 Golf Course in Roanoke, has been playing golf for the past few years, but recently achieved something he never had before.
On Sept. 29, Clifford, 25, was able to hit a hole-in-one with a gap wedge on Brookside’s No. 7 hole, the shortest but toughest hole on the course. With an elevated green, it was hard for Clifford and the rest of his golf partners to see exactly what happened to the shot, so the golfer jokingly said it went in.
“In the tee box, you can’t really get a clear shot of the green because it’s uphill,” Clifford said. “We all saw it kick up and it looked pretty close to the pin so I told them, ‘I think I just holed that.’”
When the group made their way up the hill, they discovered that sure enough Clifford had hit a hole-in-one, the first of his career.
“It was kind of surreal,” Clifford said. “It didn’t set in until a couple of days later.”
What makes the hole-in-one extra special for the amateur golfer is the preceding situation leading up to the shot.
On Aug. 21, Clifford was playing golf with his friend Jason Ford at Blue Hills Golf Club in Roanoke. A spur of the moment golf outing prior to a family vacation, Clifford didn’t think too much of it as he had played the course a number of times before.
“We went to Blue Hills because it was going to be on my way to the lake,” Clifford said. “It’s a course I’m very familiar with. In the spring before COVID-19 happened, I was playing once or twice a week with a group of guys there.”
On the course’s No. 7, Clifford had driven slightly to the right on the par-4 and faced a roughly 90-yard shot from a slightly downhill lie. Clifford has always adopted this same strategy on the hole to set up an easier shot, but he went a bit farther right than normal and ended up in the rough.
On the right side of the course, there is also a concrete bridge and when Clifford took his next shot, the ball ricocheted off the bridge back towards him. Before he could even track where the ball was going, it had come back towards his face and struck him in the eye.
“While I was in my follow through the ball hit me,” Clifford said. “It was such a split-second thing. There was no way to (avoid it). I had no time to react at all.”
When Clifford went to touch his eye, he instead was surprised.
“I knew something was wrong immediately,” Clifford said. “I’ve had multiple sports injuries over the years. I played baseball, football and wrestling. … As soon as it happened I knew it was bad. It was a different kind of thing, not pain, but shock almost. There was a lot of blood. I remember putting my hand over my eye and it was slipping in.”
Clifford was rushed to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he actually works, in an effort to save his eye.
“That whole night was just weird,” Clifford said. “All from such a spur of the moment round of golf and from a shot I had felt extremely comfortable taking too. Just such a wild, wild shot.”
When all was said and done, Clifford had ruptured the eye and had two large lacerations below and above the eye socket. However, after a couple of surgeries, Clifford still lost vision in his one eye and the risks of keeping the eye in were too great and so he decided to have the eye removed and now wears a prosthetic.
“They tried to salvage what they could with the eye,” Clifford said. “The two choices I had were one to keep the eye, but there’s a whole long list of complications that could come down the road. … To me it was kind of a no-brainer. I just wanted to get the eye cut out and go from there and move on with the healing process.”
Golfing was still very much on Clifford’s mind following the removal of his eye. Four days after the surgery, he went to the range for the first time and two days after that played on a full course. While the prosthetic took time to adjust to, specifically where he was standing with the ball, Clifford has been able to adjust his game to fit his new vision and has nearly returned to his old form.
“Before the accident, I was shooting mid to high 80s consistently,” Clifford said. “I was hoping by the end of the fall I’d be hitting 80s or even 70s. … I feel good now. I can go back out now. I think the best round I’ve had since the surgery is an 88. I’m getting back in. I’m not where I was before, but I’m getting close.”
Even though he got to experience his hole-in-one shot through one eye, Clifford was ecstatic to see his ball at the bottom of the pin. Though he was excited when it first happened, the reality of what he had just accomplished didn’t register with Clifford until much later.
“It really didn’t set in until a couple of days later when I had people texting me and calling me saying, ‘Man, I can’t believe you did this,’ Clifford said. “I kind of thought about how two weeks ago I was sitting here, getting my eye out of my head. To go from one of the lowest points I’ve ever been in to doing something not many people can say they’ve done was a pretty good feeling. I think if anything it helped boost my spirits about getting back where I was at before.”
Though having one eye has been an adjustment for Clifford, he has remained quite upbeat and positive throughout, especially through the game of golf. His fall team at Brookside is fittingly named 4-Guys, 7-Eyes as an homage to Clifford.
“My support system has been awesome through all this,” Clifford said. “Between my family, my friends, the people I work with, especially the community. My wife and I have been very blessed. … It’s been really good. That helped lift the spirits. … I think it says a lot about the Roanoke community as a whole.”
Clifford has heard from a number of people around the Roanoke-area and beyond who have heard his story and drawn inspiration from it. One instance even saw Clifford help a woman who went through the same experience he did but with a softball and the two have remained close. While others see him as inspiring, Clifford just sees it as something he needed to do to return to normalcy and if people draw from that, he supposes that is a good thing.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me what I’ve done has been somewhat inspirational and to me I don’t look at it like that,” Clifford said. “I just think of me doing what I’m doing. I’m not going to let the injury hold me back. I’m going out and doing what I’ve done before like nothing happened. If people see it as inspirational or how they see it, I hope it helps them.”
With a new outlook on life and golf, Clifford is happy to be back on the course doing what he loves. Although his 2020 golf season may not have gone the way he had anticipated, it will at least be a memorable one for Clifford. With luck, Clifford’s hole-in-one this year will not be his last, but no matter what, it will always be the one with the best story.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to top that one though of course I’d like to get another one,” Clifford said. “It’s just wild how it all happened.”