To give someone a chance. In some instances, a second chance. To see the similarities, not the differences. To understand we are all connected in some way through our humanity and to foster that connection. This is inclusion in action. And in golf, it lives in Empower Golf.
The story of Empower Golf is the story of two remarkable men who suffered catastrophic injuries and then set about helping others. It is the story of the inspiring people they serve. And it’s a story of love, fate and the game underpinning it all. It is a powerful story, all of it, and it’s not finished yet.
As a youngster, James Gribble was exposed to a range of sports by his parents, but wasn’t really into golf until his university days, when his godfather, on a visit from the UK, insisted they play together. A couple of good shots later and he was hooked.
Such was his passion for golf that one summer he played 36 holes for 20 days straight, bringing his handicap from 15 down to four, thereafter hovering between two and six. Not surprisingly, thoughts of a career in the game germinated.
Alongside this, he completed an economics degree at the University of Sydney before moving to the UK, where he applied for both corporate positions and jobs in golf. On the 12th of November 2001, his parallel journeys collided.
“I had this sliding doors moment. I got two phone calls within 10 minutes of each other; one was Roehampton Golf Club, saying there was a position in the golf shop, and the other was from Halifax Bank of Scotland with an offer to join its graduate program,” Gribble told Golf Australia magazine.
For practical reasons, he chose the latter.
With his corporate career seemingly set, rising to senior level at several banking institutions, he had an enviable lifestyle which indulged his passions of golf, adventure and travel.
But redundancy during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08 had him considering other options in search of a more impactful career. Microfinance goes where more commercial banks generally don’t, making loans available to people and communities of low means in an effort to improve lives and challenge poverty.
“That was one of the reasons I went to Africa; I wanted to explore opportunities, explore more of Africa and try to catch a tigerfish,” Gribble said.
In search of this elusive predatory game fish, he headed to a remote island along the Zambezi River in Zambia.
The night before the intended expedition, Gribble was dehydrated after a long run in 40-degree heat. He blacked out while sitting on a stool and fell backwards onto sand, severely bruising his spinal cord and breaking the C4 and C5 vertebrae in his neck. When he came to, he was staring at the thatched ceiling, unable to move, and knew instantly he had sustained a spinal injury. In fact, he was now quadriplegic with voluntary movement from the shoulders up only.
It would be 12 hours before a Medevac helicopter could reach him and, crucially, 30 hours before he reached a sophisticated neurological hospital in Johannesburg, where he spent 10 days in intensive care following surgery to fuse the fractured vertebrae.
After five weeks, Gribble returned to Sydney, initially a patient at Royal North Shore Hospital, before extensive rehabilitation in The Royal Rehab Centre in Ryde and even longer at home to allow him to try to gain further movement.
You might think golf was furthest from his mind through all of this – especially as he was told in the early days he would never play again – but not so.
“It was one of the first things on my mind,” he said. “In the first couple of nights in ICU, I would play rounds of golf in my mind – shots, holes, courses. My journey back to golf started straight away in my mind, but the physical side wasn’t until later.
“In recovery I pushed back on playing golf as a disabled person. I genuinely believed, even three years, that with time and work I’d be able to play normally.”
The realisation, when it came, that this wasn’t going to happen hit hard.
“It was very confronting. Not just golf-wise but life in general. Transitioning from a mentality of it’s only a matter of time and work to, hey, maybe this isn’t going to work, that’s when the real grieving happened, I think.
“But I’m lucky; I didn’t grieve as much as others because when the reality became concrete, I’d been in a wheelchair for three and a half years, so my life was being lived anyway.”
One day, by now – incredibly – able to walk a short distance on crutches, Gribble and his father Roger went to the local park with a golf club. Roger strapped it under James’ arm and removed the right crutch so he could swing. It was a powerful moment.
“Standing up and hitting a ball for the first time after so many years and so much effort, that was pretty emotional. Even now it makes me well up a little bit. It was only a second of movement, but thousands of hours of work and people went into that one golf swing.
“That was my first taste of golf as a person with disability.”
His interest was piqued further by having attended a tournament for disabled golfers and becoming aware of the Paragolfer wheelchair. He was also keen to help others like himself in some way.
The concept of what was to become Empower was the distillation of these ideas and experiences, cemented by the thought: “I can’t be the only one who wants to get back into golf after losing ability.” And so, Empower Golf was born.
It started at Moore Park in Sydney, initially with demonstration days, then clinics and lessons and with growing interest.
Four months in, Gribble received a call from Ben Tullipan.
Tullipan shouldn’t, by rights, even be alive. On a business trip to Indonesia, he wandered into the Sari Club in Bali on October 12, 2002. The world was on high edge after the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, but Tullipan just needed some water.
He was standing a mere five metres from one of three bombs detonated that night, killing 202 people – 88 of them Australian – and injuring hundreds more. Every person within a 15-metre radius of the bomb died, bar him.
Tullipan’s injuries were so severe, he was deemed to be dead and a cloth was put over him. Only when someone detected small movement was he triaged and sent to hospital, where he was given just a five percent chance of survival. In summary: he lost both legs, most of his stomach muscles, broke nearly every bone in his body and skull, suffered 63 percent full thickness burns to his body, was electrocuted by power lines hitting him and lost much of his hearing.
“I remember everything. I was conscious through the whole lot,” he told GA.
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