John’s Course

by Bill Bryant

A special golf course built by friends and love in Eureka, Montana.

After his older brother Mike died in a car accident in 1993, John Espinoza decided he wanted to learn to play golf—the game Mike had enjoyed so much. Knowing their son’s determination and how he idolized his brother, Steve and Juana Espinoza didn’t doubt that John could become an accomplished player despite the effects of Cornelia deLange Syndrome, a congenital disorder that affects mental and physical development. But when they saw John come out of Mike’s room one day dragging his brother’s old golf clubs, they couldn’t have dreamed the journey the family was about to take.

“He said, ‘Dad, will you teach me how to golf?’” Steve Espinoza remembers. “I said, ‘You really want to learn?’ and he said ‘yeah.’ It was as simple as that.” Which wasn’t simple at all, considering the obstacles they faced.

The primary question was where John, then 16, would play, because the closest golf course was in Whitefish, Mont., 60 miles from their home. There also was the question of how John would be received by other players at a public course. Cornelia deLange Syndrome had left John practically blind in one eye, with poor depth perception and with very limited mobility in his wrists.

“I was worried about how fast he could get around the course and how the other golfers would treat him,” Steve said.

Finally, Steve decided the best thing to do was build his son his own golf course.

The product of Steve’s inspiration is now known simply as John’s Golf Course. It’s a course characterized by a simple design that features intersecting fairways reminiscent of Scotland’s original layouts. Most of the course is cut native grasses, with turf grasses being encouraged each growing season. It’s not a course that’s going to host a major championship, unless you consider John’s Golf Tournament a big deal, which most of Eureka (pop: 1,100) certainly does. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There’s a story to tell before the tournament.

John’s Golf Course started as a single green in the family’s front yard, built with help from friends and on the advice of a local superintendent, Bob LeBanc of Crystal Lakes Resort. After the green was built, Steve thought it would be nice if John had a fairway to hit from. So some friends of John’s—three cousins in the logging business—volunteered to bring over their chain saws and a backhoe.

“They told John to go about 150 yards from the green and start hitting balls,” Steve remembers. “Every time one of John’s balls hit a tree, they cut it down. They cut down 22 trees that day, and when they were finished we had our first fairway.”

Soon an 11-hole course was taking shape on 10 acres surrounding the Espinoza’s log house, one hole at a time.

Meanwhile, Steve was on the phone calling golf courses to see if they had used equipment they would donate. With a maintenance staff of only himself and John, Steve needed all the help he could get. He was amazed to find a few courses willing to part with equipment from what he calls their “bone piles.”

One day Steve was on one of his bone pile scavenger trips in Southern California when his truck broke down. He didn’t know it at the time, but it was his lucky day. His truck limped up next to a Club Car facility in Indio, Calif.

“Man, there must be 1,000 golf carts out there,” he said to himself as he looked at the storage yard.

Soon the enterprising Espinoza, a Vietnam vet who returned from his tour with some back and leg problems that limit his mobility, had struck up a conversation with Scott Stevens, Club Car’s used car territory manager in Indio. Stevens listened to John’s story and wrote a note to Club Car president and CEO Phil Tralies, who approved the request for five used golf cars and a 1-PASS single passenger car for John and other players with a disability. He also included a conversion kit that enabled Steve to turn one of the cars into a replica of the “General Lee” from the old “Dukes of Hazard” TV series.

Tralies, who serves on the executive committee of Golf 20/20, the initiative to increase interest and participation in golf, said, “John’s Course is a great example of golf in its purest form. It’s all about a love for the game.”

Stevens agreed. “What he’s done (built a golf course from scratch on practically no budget) and why he’s done it (to support his son)—it’s absolutely incredible.”

As their story started making the rounds, others pitched in too. Randy Allen of Burroughs and Chapin, a golf course management company based in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was so moved that he paid for Steve, Juana and John to fly across the country and play golf before loading them up with seed and equipment for the trip home.

“We’re a two-man team with a staff of thousands,” Steve says. “Without everyone’s help, we wouldn’t be here.”

John’s Course hosts one event a year, John’s Golf Tournament, to raise money for John to take a golf trip. The field is made up of locals and friends who come out to have fun on the 11-hole course and pay the only green fee the course charges all year, a whopping $25. The rest of the year everyone, including several of John’s friends who also have disabilities, plays for free. Among the local rules enforced during the tournament—which on other days would get a wink from the owners and staff—is no hitting over the Espinoza’s house.

Various businesses donate prizes and promotional items, but many of the items never leave the property. You see, John is a solid golfer who loves to compete.

“This guy has guts,” Steve says of his son, now 26.

This year, proceeds from John’s Golf Tournament helped John go to Ireland to play as the only U.S. golfing representative from Montana in the World Special Olympics. He was leading the tournament until he fell back on the last three holes.

“He did his own imitation of Roy McAvoy in Tin Cup,” Steve says. “He got third, the Bronze medal, though, and he couldn’t have been prouder. He said: ‘Dad, I did it, I did it.’ I couldn’t have been prouder, either.”

Bill Bryant is a freelance writer based in Duluth, Georgia.