Walking tall on the fairways

D.J. Gregory isn’t letting cerebral palsy stop him from an amazing golf journey.

DORAL, Fla. (AP) — The most meaningful streak in golf did not end at Doral.

D.J. Gregory is going to another PGA Tour event this week in New Orleans. He will watch another player and tell another story. He will walk every hole of every round at the Zurich Classic, just as he has done the previous 12 tournaments, and will do the next 24 tournaments until his amazing journey ends at the Tour Championship.

Gregory carries a handicap of 36, the highest possible.

He also carries a cane.

Gregory, 30, has cerebral palsy, which he refers to more as an inconvenience than an ailment. He was given little hope of ever walking across the living room, much less up the 18th fairway at Riviera.

“I can do everything anyone else can do,” he said. “Just a little slower.”

To prove his point, and to inspire others with a physical handicap, Gregory wants to walk every hole on the PGA Tour this year. He picks one player to follow at every tournament and writes a blog for the PGA Tour that is more about players than his own struggles. Gregory already has walked more that 250 miles, from the mountainous terrain of Kapalua to the high desert of Arizona.

“It’s pretty incredible,” said Heath Slocum, whom Gregory followed for 72 holes over five days at Doral.

Gregory was born 10 weeks premature. When oxygen was pumped into his collapsed lungs, the pressure caused blood vessels to burst in his legs, and they grew so curved that his feet pointed out at a 90-degree angle.

Anyone could see this child was different because of his legs.

His father knew he was different because of his heart.

“He had to drag himself around the house on his arms,” Don Gregory said from their home in Savannah, Ga. “Anywhere he wanted to get to, he would go. He wouldn’t stop and cry, and he wouldn’t ask for help.”

Doctors wanted to put him in a wheelchair, but his father thought that would crush the boy’s spirit. What followed was a series of operations in which his legs were cut and twisted so his feet would point in the right direction.

Gregory did nothing in a hurry. He started out on a walker with four wheels, then two wheels. He graduated to two canes, and now uses a single cane to steady himself. Each step brings a mixture of labor and joy. It’s almost as if he wills himself forward, his legs stiff, upper body rocking from side to side.

“I don’t really walk,” he said. “I like to call it a wobble. As you’ve probably noticed, I don’t walk in straight lines. I just can’t do it.”

But he hasn’t missed a shot.

Gregory was 12 when his father took him to the 1990 Greater Greensboro Open. Gregory was trying to fill his hat with autographs when CBS Sports analyst Ken Venturi came by in a cart, signed his cap and invited him to join Jim Nantz in the tower