Mark Clougherty: Earning his place

Recent winner of the G4D Tour @ FedEx Open de France and qualifying to play in the G4D Tour’s finale in Mallorca at the end of October, Mark Clougherty explains why ‘G4D’ (golf for the disabled) means so much to him after difficult life challenges. 

While the pressure of tournament golf can offer such highs and lows to its players, many of us find other aspects of the sport highly therapeutic, including the ongoing process of learning, improvement and reflection. Whether we are honing our putting stroke, repairing our tattered ego after a bad round, or creatively thinking ahead to the next objective; in some ways golf serves as a practice ground for life. These processes can also be a significant buttress against stress and anxiety. 

For Northern Ireland-based Mark Clougherty, he loves the competition but also all the rest of it, the fun matches with family and mates and the practice on his own as he seeks to work through the issues created by living with PTSD, after battling illness and injury. 

Only returning to golf in late 2023, the game has already provided a haven from the hurly burly and the white noise away from the course. He is not the first golfer to have PTSD and to find a growing calm amid all the constituent layers of the game. One crucial aspect he returns to when we speak is his feeling of ‘belonging’ in the sport, as PTSD can easily create that feeling of being an outsider. Mark says he has been that outsider too often, and has suffered from depression. The low times. The golf helps a lot, it’s that simple. He still experiences the anxiety and it can also occur during tournaments today, but increasingly he can rely on the process of playing the game to find those calmer waters.

Smiling as he talks, the rusty-haired 52-year-old who lives in Lisburn near Belfast, says: “Golf means everything to me now, not just getting me out of the house, keeping me active amongst like-minded people, but also to play well and have a great focus on the time ahead. Looking ahead is important. Playing EDGA and other events, I feel I can relax and just go for it, which is a great place to be.”

At one point when he is chatting you realise he has already been helped by others in golf, and he has helped others in return.

As an ex-serviceman and someone who has had more than enough tension in life already, Mark nevertheless likes to fuel his competitive edge, working hard at his game in what has been a short space of time. This has paid off. In 2025, as the list of his tournament wins grew so did the hope. Victory in Portugal early on and then three times in Ireland led him to qualify for his first G4D Tour championship, at The Belfry in August. G4D Tour events are at the pinnacle of golf for the disabled; there were seven of these in the DP World Tour schedule for 2025. At The Belfry, Mark was one of just 10 players from nine countries to qualify for this Nett tournament. 

With his son Cieran caddying for him, and remembering watching as a boy on TV the Ryder Cup heroics at The Belfry, including Seve Ballesteros’s fade into the 10th, and Sam Torrance’s putt to win it for Europe, Mark tells us he so badly wanted to do well. 

However, when he started to play, instead of patting himself on the back for qualifying, he was soon questioning whether he belonged there at all, and endured a frustrating result. 

Having PTSD, Mark says when anxiety takes hold, negative feelings prevail and at its worst, everything can get “worse and worse and worse” to a breaking point. But this practice ground for life is proving to have a solid foundation. Mark woke up the next morning with one thought on his mind: the next games ahead, the future. He didn’t realise it then, but this feeling would be one of his best ‘wins’ of all. 

Born in Clydebank, just outside Glasgow, Mark served 12-and-a-half years in the British Army as a Royal Military Policeman, and in 2005 was preparing for his second tour of Iraq. Just four weeks before deployment, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, underwent emergency surgery, and began a long road of medical and psychological challenges. 

In 2009, while playing semi-professional football, Mark suffered a serious leg break, fracturing both his tibia and fibula and damaging his knee. Soon after, he was diagnosed with PTSD – linked both to his military service and the trauma of cancer – and later developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) in his right leg, along with femoral impingement in his left hip. The injuries have left him with ongoing pain and limited mobility.

When his career in football came to a halt, he lost his way in sport and his travails led to feelings of depression. A chance conversation in 2019 opened a new door into wheelchair athletics, and he earned a place in the 2022 Invictus Games in the Netherlands.

In front of his wife, daughter, and mother, he won bronze in the 1500m, then went on to win gold in the 100m, 200m, and 400m. But what next after all that excitement? “The next morning, I broke down in the hotel room. You go from this incredible high to wondering, ‘What do I do now?’ That’s when the depression came back.”

Late one night, Mark sat down and searched online for disabled golf. It was a sport he’d grown up with but hadn’t played properly since 2015. What he discovered fascinated him. In the winter of 2023, Mark returned to golf seriously, encouraged by his sons Cieran and Rhys, and daughter Niamh. He entered his first G4D competitions. In January 2025, he finished fifth in the Nett category (at Pinta) and then won the trophy at Gramacho, both in the EDGA Tour Algarve Swing, before going on to win the G4D @ the West, in the West of Ireland Amateur Championship in April, the Irish Open in June, and the G4D @ Ardee in August.

Thus he qualified through the Nett World Rankings to play in the G4D Tour at Betfred British Masters at The Belfry. Was there too much expectation? 

“Perhaps there was,” he agrees. “I just couldn’t settle. Everything was massive, including all the spectator stands, compared with what you’re used to at an event and though it was amazing to be invited I had that sense that I didn’t quite belong, I was the outsider, going to the practice ground where the Tour Pro’s were warming up. Me! So I had that anxiety, especially on the first day as I really struggled. And then with anxiety I was getting angry with myself and I just didn’t feel that I played as well as I could.”

However, those earlier wins in 2025 would help secure his qualification for one more G4D Tour event held in September, the FedEx Open de France, offering Mark another opportunity to find his best golf under pressure. 

“I learned from everything that had happened at The Belfry and when we went to France I knew what to expect,” says Mark.

This time he would happen to leave the practice ground at Golf de Saint-Nom-La-Bretèche near Paris just as twice-Major champion Brooks Koepka arrived there to hit some shots, but rather than dashing away feeling like an intruder, Mark and his caddie and friend Paul chose to stay a while and soak in the atmosphere, and watch a champion go about his business. 

A problematic injury to his neck, so sharp he considered pulling out, ultimately relaxed Mark and tempered expectations. He stopped worrying and just vowed to try his best.  

Leading after the first round with a Nett 76, Mark’s second round would prove to be perhaps his most remarkable of his golfing life to date. He played the last 10 holes in around gross scratch (about five under his handicap), to finish with an excellent Nett 65 – all after recording a clumsy eight on the eighth hole.   

“After that eight I was going into the usual anger mode a bit, I just kept saying to Paul, I should have done this, I should’ve done that, and on and on I went, and Paul suddenly turned around to me and said, to be blunt, ‘Shut the *@&! up’.

“So he then had to walk across and get the buggy, but I think he must have parked too close to the green so the buggy wouldn’t start. So this gave me another set of 45 seconds. I looked at him, and then actually just laughed, I just started laughing thinking how crazy was it to get an eight there? And we walked to the next tee and I took my three wood out and I absolutely ripped it, like I’d never done before. From that moment on, it was just shot after shot after shot. And I knew I was getting into this role and it just seemed to snowball, hole after hole, just stick to the process, just hit the ball. If you hit a bad one, forget it. Recover. And we did that. And I refused to look at the scorecard. I felt just this freedom of following a process. Paul gave me a pat on the shoulder when we walked to 18, and said, ‘just one more hole Mark’.”

Minutes later Mark was holing a four-foot putt to win the Championship. Mark said what made the occasion extra special was being presented with the G4D Tour trophy amongst “such a great group” of fellow G4D players. “They had all done so amazingly well to get there. I felt proud of myself and proud for us as a group. We all faced our own challenges and we were now playing our best golf.”

Later, in the car park, Mark and Paul would bump into Australia’s Min Woo Lee, the much-lauded three-time winner on the DP World Tour. On realising who Mark Clougherty was Lee recalled that he had gone around the course in a low Nett score in his tournament.  The Australian smilingly asked Mark for any good golf tips for when he played later. Mark, the outsider, had just become the insider. 

The thoughtful player also stressed that this feeling of belonging is one of the best factors a player can experience in EDGA-supported or run tournaments (there are 130 of these in the international schedule, designed so players with a disability can usually find an event in their region). 

Mark says: “I liken it to the Invictus Games training camps where you’re surrounded with people that have had their own difficulties over the years, maybe with their mental health as a result of their disability or an injury or whatever. These challenges have led them here. So when you’re in that environment, it’s completely different [from wider society]. I relax, I relax because I’m around like-minded people, I’ve made some really good friends out of it.”

Mark reels off Irish players Dianne, Gary, Kevin and players from further afield, who he has forged close bonds with through G4D tournaments, and finds that their sharing of each other’s stories has helped them all in creating positive feeling and a sense of wellbeing. Irish player Gary Barrett has decided that Mark should be a professional coach (his coach!), so good is his advice and encouragement, and when we relayed this to Mark it made him laugh but also brought an emotional smile after these kind words. 

Days after his win in France, Mark played in an event for DIGA (The Disabled and Inclusive Golf Association, in Ireland), and was encouraged to bring along his Open de France trophy, which he showed off to big cheers and applause in the clubhouse. 

“Again, just to be accepted and respected by your fellow golfers like that is brilliant and I think that’s what’s really helping me in terms of my confidence,” explains Mark. 

“I still have my lulls mentally, but I know that with the golf you can have your short-term goals that lead to your long-term goal. Now your long-term goals might not always come through, but you’ll get somewhere close to it and you’ll still achieve something in the long term. 

“With PTSD when you start to have a bad period, it’s a slippery slope. It just slides and slides and slides and slides and you get worse and worse and worse and worse. And then you get to a breaking point and it can be very tough.”

Tough times with anxiety reached a head in 2018 but increasingly he has been able to find ways to cope.

Mark adds: “So golf is really, really massive for me. If I can do this for the next 10 years and just have this thought process, then I’m going to be in a far, far better place. And if I’m in a better place, then I know I’m keeping my family in a better place. They don’t need to have the same worries about me and my going through low periods.”

The pressure of golf competition can still be a trigger, but for Mark, each time he struggles in a tournament he uses the process of applying himself in practice and on the course to build positive routines for the future. And it certainly helps that he now has a grandson to be giving early coaching to on the driving range.

Mark’s win in France qualifies him to play in the Nett category of the G4D Tour Series Finale at Club de Golf Alcanada, Mallorca, at the end of October, alongside all the year’s past winners on the tour. After his experiences this year he knows what his focus will be. 

“It’s not to win, because someone else can play their best and their best golf might just be better than yours on the day, and that’s what you’ve just got to accept. But if you have played your best, you can come away feeling happy.” 

Golf, clearly, is the practice ground for our life ahead, as summed up by Mark Clougherty, who was speaking with us 20 years to the day after one of his first big wins: his successful cancer surgery in 2005.  

Mark adds: “Golf gives me structure. It gives me hope. And it’s something I can do with my family. That’s the biggest win of all. To be able to have my son Cieran caddying for me for example, and being able to help my grandson to learn golf, is just wonderful. The full circle, reminding me of when I took Cieran to football, he is now looking after me in the golf. I don’t think anything is better than that.” 

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