The afterglow of the Ryder Cup was still warm when another two teams of British and American golfers teed off under a peerless blue sky on Monday, readying themselves for a competition which will be waged this week with just the same desire to hold aloft the trophy.
There was no partisan heckling here and a bond between the teams transcending anything witnessed on the fairways and greens of Bethpage Black, because of the shared experience the players took out past the distinctive sycamore tree in front of the clubhouse and onto this beautiful and most challenging old course.
All have been injured during military action in life-changing ways, and all have turned to golf for purpose; shrugging off the loss of limbs, and a struggle for purpose, to excel again.
The evidence was there to see in the brilliant morning sunshine on Monday — Briton Kushal Limbu’s three successive early birdies; American Nick Kimmel’s immaculate shot off the seventh tee, where Rory McIlroy flunked things at the Open four years ago. But the chance to compete from Tuesday in the 13th edition of the annual Ryder Cup-style tournament called the Simpson Cup carried a more profound value.
‘It’s being part of a team,’ says Limbu, former member of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles and a member of the British team. ‘Every part of the military is a team and when we lose the military that’s what we lose. Every bit of this brings that back.’
Limbu lost both his legs below the knee when the British Army Warrior tank in which he was returning to base in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province was blown up by an improvised explosive device (IED) in 2008, and aspects of that day live with him vividly.
The Simpson Cup is a tournament played directly after the Ryder Cup involving war veterans
Participants, like British golfer Kushal Limbu, are all veterans who have been injured in action
The shared experiences of the golfers leads to a respectful event and charming atmosphere
The blast killed a friend of his who had taken up a seat which, by sheer chance, Limbu hadn’t occupied. The guilt of the survivor still haunts him every time he sees that old comrade’s family, he says. The golf course has been a place where he finds sanctuary and refuge, forgets he has prosthetic legs, and has helped him rediscover confidence.
Golf’s handicap system, making it a sport that can be played on a level playing field, gives it a greater propensity than any other sport to bring together players of all skills, abilities and disabilities.
Limbu, driving off the third into a stiff northerly breeze, demonstrates in the distinctive way he brings back his club head that these players have had to make myriad adjustments.
American Jake Keeslar, ex-US 14th Cavalry Regiment and double leg amputee, grinds the heel of his left shoe into the turf and has his right shoe at an awkward angle to tee off.
American Kimmel, who lost both legs above the knee and his left arm above the elbow after jumping onto an IED in Helmand, cannot place his feet flat on any of Sandwich’s many undulations to address a ball below his feet. ‘I don’t have the flex that an ankle gives,’ he says.
Yet they fly around the old course in a practice day against the competition’s sponsors — revealing the kind of quality that lies ahead in a contest with a Ryder Cup structure: a doubles competition on Tuesday at the neighbouring Prince’s Golf Club and singles back at Royal St George’s the following day.
The US and Britain have each won the Simpson Cup five times and the last two, at Royal Lytham in 2023 and Shinnecock Hills, New York, last year, have been tied.
On the flight of wooden steps up to the ninth tee, Kimmel reveals the challenge simply getting around the course can be. It’s a struggle. He falls to the ground at the top, manoeuvres himself up and proceeds to fire another tee shot mid fairway.
The Simpson Cup is an annual tournament played between Great Britain and the United States
It contrasts hugely to the Ryder Cup, which was marred by awful scenes of abuse from fans
Rory McIlroy’s wife Erica Stoll had a drink launched at her from the crowd, while the rest of Team Europe were subjected to abusive jeers and chants while trying to play on the course
He brushes himself off, just as he brushes off the devastation of that day in Helmand. He’d been a scratch golfer before the accident and when he tried out a putting range during his recuperation, he decided the game was lost to him.
His rediscovery of it came via the On Course Foundation, organisers of the Simpson Cup — a charity supported by the Rothermere Foundation among other benefactors — which has introduced thousands of injured servicemen from the UK and US to golf as a way of rediscovering life and purpose.
Kimmel is back up to playing off a handicap of 12. ‘Where would I be without all this?’ he says. ‘I don’t know that I would be here.’
On Course’s founder and president, John Simpson, has heard so many such testimonies. He lost one of his legs to polio as a child and spent a career in golf as an executive with the IMG agency, managing such players as Sir Nick Faldo, Vijay Singh and Bernhard Langer.
It was in 2010, after addressing a group of injured and damaged young servicepeople at the Headley Court military rehabilitation facility in Surrey, that he established the charity, later introducing it to the US.
His contribution to the lives of US veterans last year saw him awarded the Army Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian honour bestowed by the US Army. He is the first and only Briton to receive this medal.
‘Our organisation’s founding goals were to get those servicepeople back out among their comrades and realise some were worse off than themselves — teaching the rules, etiquette and history of the sport in a way that might also help them find employment,’ Simpson says.
The isolation of those ex-servicepeople is not fully appreciated. An estimated 20 of the US’s four million injured American servicemen take their own lives every day.
Daily Mail Sport captured Limbu in action as he chalked up three successive early birdies
American golfer Nick Kimmel lost both legs above the knee and his left arm above the elbow after jumping onto an IED in Helmand – and is now back up to playing off a handicap of 12
Lives are being lost in Britain, too, with none of the infrastructure the US has for its venerated veterans. Some of the British contingent here describe having attended the funerals of three or four comrades who have taken their own lives in the past few years.
Another member of the British team, Mike Browne, relates how golf brought him back from a dark place when his leg was amputated after he broke it on an army training exercise in 2011. ‘Golf put me back,’ he says.
Browne approached the sport like a job, as he always had in the military, heading to the gym each morning and then to the driving range, putting earphones in and ‘bashing balls all day’. His first handicap came in 2014. Within a year he was playing off scratch. Within a decade, he was playing and winning the DP World Tour’s parallel competition for nine of the world’s best disabled golfers. He is the one professional player in the British team’s ranks this week.
By early Monday afternoon, Limbu had chalked up six birdies, and Kimmel had revealed why he will be competing hard for a place in the US team if, as many anticipate, golf becomes selected among the sports for the 2032 Paralympic Games in Brisbane. Both were among the day’s top-performing teams.
It’s not a straight, flat road ahead for those who take up golf in this way. One of the players who had qualified for the American team has not travelled because he is struggling with pain in his hand. One of the British players has been suffering with back pain, ruling him out.
But the scene is set for a tournament which, amid times which have sorely tested the Transatlantic relationship, remind us of how much the two nations share.
‘A lot of us have served alongside each other in Afghanistan,’ British captain Andy Stevens told the Americans at Sunday afternoon’s opening ceremony, which included a Spitfire flypast. ‘Now when we battle alongside each other on the course, we know we are among friends.’
The Ryder Cup might have taken the spotlight but it is here, on the rolling fairways of Royal St George’s, against the backdrop of Ramsgate’s White Cliffs, that a far more extraordinary and life-affirming battle will ensue today.
