Meet Manuel de los Santos, A Golfer Who Is Truly Inspirational

 In many ways, golf is a transcendental sport: it is the one that can be picked up at nearly any point in someone's life, and from there, it can change someone's life for the better. That statement is not mystical drivel, instead, it's a simple truth.  

Golf is, of course, like any other worthwhile human pursuit: it is always challenging, no matter a player's skill level, and it is almost always capricious: one moment it can be kindly and giving, and the next it can be miserly and vengeful. It is played in beautiful places and offers the players fresh air -- even on worn-down and tired urban courses.  No two shots are ever the same, not shot to shot during the course of a round, but not even two seemingly identical shots in one's lifetime.  Sure, a player may stand on the same first teebox and on a day just like the before, but even then things are ever so slightly different: the breeze may be a bit fresher, the grass in the rough freshly cut, something. The shot is here, it is now, and once struck, it is gone forever.  There are no re-do's in golf.  It lives in the present, because every time a player stands on that first tee, it has given that player a fresh start: yesterday matters no more and all we will count is today.  At the end of the day, it is a gracious host when it bids a player farewell, for no matter the outcome, golf always seems to offer a player an open invitation to back tomorrow to enjoin the game anew.

Some or all of those things are indeed lifechanging, as many a golfer will tell you.  For many players, the ones who picked up the game as adults, they demark their life into two different eras: Before Golf and After I Started Playing.  Most of them wonder why they waited so long to take up golf, no matter what age they swung a crooked stick for the first time.  Those years, some say, were wasted ones that could have been better spent on the fairways and greens.  To a golfer, very few of them will quit until their bodies simply won't let them play the game.

Indeed, golf is the sport of a lifetime.

Golf has certainly vastly improved the life of Manuel de los Santos, a man that's best described as one of life's inspirational figures.  His transcendental experience with golf was one that began in tragedy: at a young age, the strong, gifted young man who seemed destined to play baseball in the Major Leagues lost his leg in an terrible accident.  Clearly his dream of playing baseball at its highest level was over.  Then came golf, and the magic that the game brings.  De los Santos fell in love with the game, and he began working hard at playing it.  The work paid off, not only on his scorecard, but in his life as well.  Golf does that.

Calling a man "inspirational" may seem like lofty praise, but de los Santos is one who not only lives up to that word, and indeed, he actually makes it seem an inadequate description of what he is.  Once you get to know Manuel, you start to see much, much more than mere inspiration. Filmmaker Peter Montgomery:

Growing up in the Dominican Republic, [de los Santos] played baseball from a young age and by 2003 was planning to turn professional. But a motorcycle accident changed his life forever when he lost his left leg above the knee.

Following this accident, he moved to France and on seeing the film, ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’, he was inspired to take up golf. Now 26 years old, Manuel lives in Paris and plays to a handicap of just three, competing in high profile tournaments all around the world. His extraordinary golf swing has become instantly recognisable.

Montgomery read about Manuel in 2009 and made a short film about him.  Here's that film:

direct link to the video

 After watching the video, I was certainly inspired, and I think you will be too when you see it.