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Cart gives disabled golfers the greens
Alan Sloan - Thu, Aug, 4, 2011
Lightweight, a low center of gravity and a pivoting, elevating seat that helps disabled golfers stand upright over the ball and enjoy the links from tee to green.
That describes the SoloRider 3400 Adaptive golf cart, obtained in May by Knox County Parks and Recreation (at no charge to the county) that’s found a home at Concord Park Par 3 course off Northshore Drive.
As for choosing the nine-hole Concord course, “A lot of times if you do have a disability or you’re older, you can’t play a big course. So this is a very affordable and very much easier location to play with a cart like that,” said Doug Bataille, senior director of Knox County Parks and Recreation.
Also, “The biggest population is west, and it’s an easy course to use the cart on,” Bataille added, “So we thought we’d start it there and see how it works.”
Concord’s course also is well-suited because the greens show no wear from the cart’s use, Bataille said. “Those are Bermuda greens, so they’re really not going to affect those greens.”
However, running over bentgrass greens, “Some people can make an argument” on possible harm using the cart, Bataille said. “But they do distribute the weight really well. They’re small carts.”
Al Kaye, program coordinator with Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center’s Innovation Recreation Cooperative, said the cart “has a little different type of tire” similar to a greens mower, “roughly the same as a person weighing about 160 pounds walking across the green.”
Kaye added that greenskeepers he’s talked to about the cart said “it should be fine” over most greens.
But if greens are wet due to rain, “You are going to tear it up,” Kaye said. “There are some restrictions with weather conditions.”
Though Concord is regarded as a hilly course, Bataille said each person using the cart “gets training before they use it. … Golf carts are designed pretty well to go up hills, but this one especially has a real low center of gravity.
“We’ve had it driven all over the course and not had any problems with it,” he added.
Kaye added, “There’s a couple of places where you have to be careful.”
With all cart controls by hand, users activate the pivoting, raised seat with a button after strapping in with chest and waste belts.
Cost to use the cart for nine holes is $12 for adults (18 and over) and $10 for children under 18.
As for demand, “When you look at the aging population, folks with disabilities are increasing,” Bataille said. “As well as one of the things that’s been in the media a lot, which are returning vets that have disabilities.”
The cart is available “just at Concord right now,” Bataille said, though Kaye has borrowed the cart for use during adaptive golf clinics he holds at Dead Horse Lake Golf Course in Cedar Bluff.
Costing $9,790, the cart was paid in part by Patricia Neal-Fort Sanders Foundation and through a matching grant from National Alliance On Accessible Golf, Kaye said.
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