Despite First-Round Defeat, Maggie Weder Still Persevering

By Andrew Blair

Hot Springs,  Va. – Maggie Weder dropped her opening-round match at the USGA Senior Women’s Amateur Monday to Cindy Morris of Portsmouth, Va., in 19 holes, but by now she knows that she’ll never really be defeated.

Weder, a Greenville, N.C., resident, has Multiple Sclerosis and in some ways, its overtaken parts of her life, but it will never beat her, not in even in the final outcome, she’s decided.

That’s because she’s determined. Really determined. Determined to live her life as someone who refuses to allow MS to disable her despite it impacting her coordination and cognitive thinking.

A retired U.S. Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer, she is used to taking on her share of battles but MS is a tough enemy, one that she slowly tries to defeat with her spirit by living an active life and competing in national championships like the USGA Senior Women’s Amateur. For Weder, golf has provided her something of a safe haven.

“Golf has saved my life. I’m 50 and they said I wouldn’t make it to 40.

“Now,” she laughs, “that’s good.”

Disarming Feeling

Weder, a drill instructor at Parris Island during the 1970s, knew there was likely trouble nearly 20 years ago. Preparing to be deployed for the first Gulf War, she returned from a run and was at her desk processing some paperwork before suddenly losing feeling in her feet. Two days later she lost sensation in her knees. And then her hip. By the third day, the numbness had risen to her chest.

Maggie Weder won't let multiple sclerosis get in the way of her competing. (USGA Museum)

“I couldn’t get out of my chair,” she remembers.

This for someone who competed in triathlons and was super-fit, often outclassing her male counterparts. What a time for this to happen, Weder thought.

“I was ready. I was ready and then that hit me,” she recalls. “I had no vision. I couldn’t speak. All my cognitive skills were completely gone. It was devastating, because you’re going from being a Marine, ready to go into combat, and then, everything is done. You’re whole life is done.”

Following many painful moments, years later, a doctor friend suggested that she take up golf to help with her muscle coordination.

“He said, ‘Did you ever think about golf?’ and I thought, ‘Now that’s pretty crazy,’ she remembers. “Swinging a steel stick 100 miles per hour – if I let go, I’m going to kill somebody.

“It’s a quiet sport. There’s not a lot of interaction and you’re by yourself.”

Friends took her to a driving range knowing that her sheer willpower would give her a chance to excel at any sport. But in addition to battling MS, Weder knew that her body had already been bruised and beaten from years of active duty. Her right shoulder has been reattached twice and her left leg has been operated and/or reworked almost a half-dozen times.

“The Marine Corps has really messed with everything,” she jokingly quips.

Weder calls her swing an invention of necessity. When she was introduced to the game, she was initially struck by the very ridiculousness of trying to hit a round ball with crooked-shaped implements. She went out to practice and hit a bag of balls with some ancient Walter Hagen blades, employing a baseball grip. She gained inspiration from Moe Norman, the late great Canadian shotmaker, who also used a 10-finger grip.

Weder’s objective was very clear: hit it hard. Real hard. She points at a sleeve of golf balls in her cart, before delving into the finer points of her grip-it-and-rip-it, give-it-hell philosophy of ball-striking.

“I thought when you took those, you were supposed to hit that thing as hard as you can,” Weder explains. ”Is that not the concept? Everybody tells me, ‘Maggie, you just can’t do that all the time,’ and I think, ‘Well, why not?’ Isn’t the object of the game to hit it down there as far as possible and go find it?”

She waves her hand in the distance, watching a few players go by. “They think too much. I don’t think. I just look at it and try to hit it.”

As hard as she can.

“As hard as I can,” she quickly confirms.

This cruel disease has revealed an enviable sense of humor, especially about her game.

“If you don’t move fast enough, I’m going to buzz your tower. I go after it like nobody’s business.”

Weder finally admits to sometimes envying four-time Senior Women’s Amateur winner Carol Semple Thompson’s smooth motion.

Thompson says she watches and gains inspiration from Weder, too.

“She’s a walking miracle. She’s a terrific player, as well as being a gutsy player,” Thompson says.

Recovery Shot

By 2004, MS was winning the battle with Weder. Actually, it was dominating. Used to an active life, when she stumbled a second time, her tenure in the active duty military concluded, Weder felt as though her life was over as well. She had stopped playing golf and weighed less than 100 pounds. Weder’s speech was completely gone and she couldn’t raise her right arm above her shoulders.

Things had grown so bad, her outlook so dark that close friends later told her, despite everyone’s best efforts, they privately thought some day they’d find Weder lying dead in her home.

But her story of recovery had started to spread and one day a hospital administrator from the Gimbel Center for MS in New Jersey called her North Carolina residence to inquire if Weder would attend a charity golf event to help raise awareness for MS.

Sickness had so incapacitated her that Weder was non-plussed by it all.

“I didn’t answer the first two times. The third time, I hung up on him,” Weder remembers.

Friends finally coaxed her into attending and Weder is glad that they did; it was like an on-your-feet-soldier message. Barely able to stand during the function, her inspiring story helped to raise more than $2,500, with proceeds going to benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center at Holy Name Hospital in Teneck, N.J.

Weder recovered out of the rough and qualified for the 2004 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship. More importantly, she started Golfin4MS which helps uninsured people with MS offset their medical bills.

More than 50 people have signed up to pay Weder’s charity “Golfin4MS,” contributing for every birdie she makes. Having already raised more than $50,000, Weder’s goal is to be around the $65,000 level in donations by the end of 2009.

“That’s all by nickel-and-diming it,” Weder says.

Fellow-competitors, friends and complete strangers at tournaments oftentimes give her anywhere from 50 cents to 20 dollars to help the cause.

“I don’t keep a penny.”

Great Inspiration

Weder has grown accustomed to dealing with her share of adversity.

She grew up in a rough area in Detroit, Mich., and though she says little about her family life, Weder considers her grandmother a guardian angel.

“She jerked me out of a bad situation,” Weder says.

Prior to the second day of stroke-play qualifying at this week’s Senior Women’s Amateur at The Homestead, Weder swears she saw a woman who looked exactly like her grandmother at the practice range. Though her grandmother died more than 10 years ago, the resemblance, says Weder, was so close that she openly wept at the very sight of the woman.

After shooting an 80 in the first round, Weder says she felt her grandmother’s spirit with her during the Sunday’s concluding stroke-play qualifying round. Following a slow start in the second round of stroke-play qualifying, she pictured the woman’s face again and immediately began pulling off one miracle shot after another, especially around the greens, and eventually shot 77 to earn the last spot in the match-play field.

“I’ve never been so at peace,” Weder says. “I could smell her perfume and see her face.”

No Quit

Weder tried to quit the game on two occasions, once in 2004 when she sold her clubs and again last year, when the disease rallied and had so strapped Weder’s natural instincts and robbed her of her ball-striking abilities that she yelled, “I quit!” near the conclusion of a USGA Senior Women’s Amateur sectional qualifying round.

Her unbreakable spirit easily won that battle. At the qualifier, her second-nine rally was stoked by making a hole-in-one at the par-3 13th hole; as if the shot was destined for the cup, the ball hit the wood of a piling near a water hazard, bounced on the green, started to roll like a putt and miraculously trickled into the hole. In her words, Weder shot “the ugliest 84 you’ve ever seen” and earned the last spot in qualifying.

When you have a debilitating disease, giving up is the real meaning of failure.

“I thought, ‘You can’t quit. You never quit on anything in your life.’ If you quit the first time, the second time it’s easier and the third time it’s even easier.’ ”

Through her personal battle, the one constant for Weder has been her deep faith. The words, “Golf is easy. Life is hard” is a constant reminder stitched on the left sleeve of her golf shirts.

“I know what’s going to happen,” she allows, “but MS doesn’t win on the golf course. If God gives me 16 good holes, I figure that’s great. I ask Him for 12. When I got through sectional qualifying, He gave me 18.”

For those who have a dissatisfying round or get eliminated in match play at The Homestead’s magnificent Cascades Course, Weder imparts a clear message: “Put a smile on your face. It ain’t that bad. I mean, look at where you’re at.”

By playing in USGA championships, Weder hopes she’s providing inspiration to others.

“I have this disease that doesn’t have a cure and it’s awful,” she says. “I’m starting to feel it more and more, but I think He’s given it to me so I can do something good with it by playing golf and touching all these people. Maybe people will look and say, ‘She’s still going and isn’t upset about anything.’

“I’ll never win a championship, but I am going to give it a good try – and I’ll have a lot of people around me who like me.”

Andrew Blair is communications director for the Virginia State Golf Association. E-mail him with questions or comments at ablair@vsga.org.