Canadian’s love of the game and its supreme test 

“There is nothing on a golf course that I will ever see that will match what that surgeon did to my hand.”

The surgeon’s hands moved with the care of a man working on something both delicate and essential. Chris Willis was five, small enough that the hospital bed seemed to take him in entirely. He was born with deformed thumbs. His left thumb, underdeveloped, was removed. From his index finger, the surgeon fashioned another, a thumb made of finger, stitched into place with the idea that the boy would one day hold things more easily. The surgeon could not have known that one of those things would be a golf club.

Chris started this life with a rare condition called VACTERL syndrome, an association of birth defects. One of these disabilities muddled his concentration, disrupted his presence in a room, and forced him to think ahead about things most people never considered, like where the next bathroom might be.

Golf came later. It was not love, not even ambition, at first sight. It was quiet. The way a practice range is quiet when the only sound is the click of ball meeting clubface, and your eyes are still on the spot where the ball had been. Golf became a place he could step into and leave at will.

He played against his older brother, who was faster, stronger, bigger. Golf cared little for any of that. In golf, the ball waits. The hole waits. Patience, touch, and shape could undo strength. In golf, Chris would become level with his brother.

His hands, one of them partly imagined by a surgeon, learned their own peculiar grip. This was the start, and golf’s unique properties would gently help Chris to find a safe haven in the game.

One of his disabilities is so all consuming that it frequently causes him to lose focus, sometimes even having to abandon play, competition, or practice in order to manage it. At times, completing golf rounds was a feat in and of its own. (More on Chris’s powerful story in this short film.)

“It’s very hard to get good at anything when you’re constantly interrupted by having to manage your disability,” he says. “But golf gave me a place to try.”

At the Ontario Adaptive Championship, in the week after his father died, Chris nearly didn’t play. His brother told him, “Dad would want this.” In the first round, Chris finished birdie-eagle on the final two holes for a 66, his best ever score.

At the G4D World Champions Cup, he met Ernie Els. Chris showed him how he held the club. “Oh, you’re the guy with the hands,” Els said, shaking his head afterwards. “Us disability golfers have to do so many unique things,” Chris said. “It fills us up to have somebody be interested in what we do.”

Then came the EDGA Player Development Camp in Portugal, January 2024, and his idea of competition expanded. He thought about The G4D Open, the US Adaptive Open, the G4D Tour. During that development week he worked with specialist coaches, began to see the big picture and made several new friends amongst the 12 players who had been invited to participate. 

At the time of writing, Chris stands just outside the top 10 in the world ranking for golfers with disability. “I feel ready,” he says. “I feel like I have the game—right now, like tomorrow. And I’d like to be World Number One.”

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