PRIDEFUL AND CARING CONSCIENCE
Golf was now definitely his life, and has been
virtually ever since. He’s played on the PGA
Tour, competed in U.S. Opens, worked for
and with some of the greatest names in golf,
been a head PGA professional at several
big-time clubs, and even worked in national
radio and television as a broadcaster.
Still, one of his most gratifying
accomplishments occurred after one of the
lowest periods in his life. In 1979, his 14-yearold son Mike was diagnosed with cancer,
ultimately resulting in the amputation of his
left arm just below the elbow.
Mike had been a talented young skier
and a promising golfer before the surgery,
working at the practice range and as a
caddie at Congressional Country Club in
Bethesda, Md., where his father was the
w w w. v s g a . o r g
head PGA professional at the time. One
day, Mike noticed what seemed to be a cyst
on his left palm. His doctor said he’d keep an
eye on the little lump, and a few months later
it had grown to the size of a pat of butter.
A hand specialist then took one look and
immediately sent Mike over to the National
Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
“They said it was epithelial sarcoma and
a very dangerous cancer,” Bob Benning
remembers. “The bottom line was that
radiation would make his left arm a totally
useless limb. Amputation was the only
possibility, and even that was not a guarantee
he would survive.”
But Mike Benning did. And he thrived as
well. After he recovered from the surgery, he
went to Colorado and began skiing again,
eventually earning a place on the U.S. team
for a major competition for disabled skiers in
Innsbruck, Austria.
“He also stayed with his golf,” Bob
Benning adds. “He started with a prosthesis,
but he said it got in his way. The first time
he went out on the range after the surgery,
neither one of us knew what to expect. He’d
been swinging a club a little bit, hitting a few
balls on his own. We were out there, and he
took out a 7-iron. It went about 120 yards
and he almost knocked the flag down. I said
to him ‘I think you’re gonna’ do just fine.’
“I would work with him on the range,
but he did a lot of it on his own. I’d show
him what to do, but he pretty much figured
things out for himself.”
So much, in fact, that Mike went on to win
an international one-armed title in Torquay,
England, then three years later traveled to
Carnoustie and won a similar match play
event. On that trip he also went down the
coast and visited St. Andrews, posting a sweet
79 on the famed Old Course.
“It was one of the great thrills of his life,”
Bob Benning says. “I wasn’t even there and it
was one of the great thrills in my life.”
Mike, now married and with two
children, eventually became a 10-12
handicapper, worked in the golf apparel
business and now has a job in the Boston
area with Hangar Inc., a leading provider
of prosthetics and orthotics.
“I’m just so proud of what he’s done,” Bob
Benning says. “He just went on with his life.”
LOTS OF KNOWLEDGE,
MEMORIES TO LEAN ON
Bob Benning has done much of the same in
the game of golf. He started as a caddie in
his hometown earning $1.15 per loop, $1.25
if you were really good, and always carried
double. Benning still recalls that he played
his first round at age 12 in 133 strokes. At 13
it was 108, the next year 98, and by 15 he was
shooting in the mid-70s. In college he was
a scratch player, and after Purdue he spent
three years in the Marines, winning an allMarine golf championship along the way.
After the military, he took an assistant
professional job back home in Dayton, Ohio,
at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and
then played what was then known as the
PGA’s winter tour without much success.
Over the next few years he was an assistant
at several courses, including Thunderbird
Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif.,
working for legendary PGA professional
Claude Harmon and with Harmon’s sons,
Butch, Craig, Billy and Dickie.
“Working with Claude, I learned so
Bob Benning admittedly derives great satisfaction
from teaching junior players. One of his students
is Virginia-Tech bound golfer Ian Hildebrand of
Purcellville.
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 4 | V I R G I N I A G O L F E R
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