Welcome to this month's E-zine!

We hope you have all had an incredible summer and some down time.

Summer for a lot of people means golf. Golf to me is the ultimate humbling human experience – and a sport that tests your mental skills and focus as much as any.

Some of you may have seen an incredible video on You Tube about a man named Butch Lumpkin. It was such an impressive story on video that we decided to dig a little deeper into his story to find out about the man.

This month we present it proudly in our E-zine. Butch is remarkable to me: a man who has managed to achieve his dream of becoming both a golf pro and tennis tutor despite incredible physical challenges.

Getting good at golf requires incredible dedication and hard work. It takes long hours of practice on the driving range working on mechanics, endless patience and the focus to make slight alterations in the hope of shaving a few strokes off the next round.

It is hard for anyone to get great at golf. But imagine doing it with no arms.

Welcome to Butch Lumpkin’s world.

I hope you enjoy his story.

Yours in Leadership,

Doug Keeley

Please visit our website at www.themarkofaleader.com

BUTCH LUMPKIN – GOLFER WITH NO HANDICAP

“You really have to be careful of what you call impossible to me.”

- Butch Lumpkin

Butch Lumpkin is no stranger to challenge.

He’s a golf pro and long-drive champion; he has also been a tennis pro, and continues to tutor other players.

From that brief description, you might presume that he’s a superb athlete, with long hours of practice and dedication behind him. And you’d be right. He is very definitely all those things.

But here’s something you might not guess: Butch has achieved that level of mastery, in sports that require both power and precise control…despite having been born with essentially no arms.

How’s that for a challenge?

His mother was one of the unfortunate thousands of pregnant women in the late 50’s and early 60’s who were prescribed the drug Thalidomide to combat nausea.

As a result, her son Butch was born with what he calls “short arms”… but which most of us would consider no arms at all. Three fingers extend from his left shoulder; his right arm ends before the elbow, with three fingers pointing backward.

As you can imagine, nothing was easy for Butch. The world is not designed for people like him; he had to find his own ways to achieve simple everyday tasks. But his parents were always extremely supportive, and taught the boy that he should never sell himself short because of his physical limitations.

As he grew it became clear that Butch had both a natural athletic ability and a love of sports. At 13 he took up tennis, dreaming of someday becoming a pro once he had finished college.

He refused to let his life be limited in any way… by what other people saw as a terrible disability. He simply did not see it that way. He saw it as an opportunity.

“I don’t have a perfect body. I don’t have massive amounts of money or any of this kind of stuff that everybody is born with. I’ve just got one ability… and that is just to get up and go.”

- Butch Lumpkin

Against all odds and to the amazement of many (except those who knew him best), by the time he was in his twenties Butch had achieved his dream. He had earned his professional certification and was working as a full-time tennis pro at the local country club.

As a tennis tutor, he loved the constant opportunities to help others better their own skills. And he recognized the fact that his own situation put him in a unique position to bring out the best in those he taught.

“When I play tennis you're not thinking about whether I've got arms or not – you're just thinking on how you can hold your own. The cool part is I’m getting your best, because I know that if me and you go play today, you don’t want to get beat by a man with no arms…so I get the very best out of you most of the time. That’s the cool part about being me.”

- Butch Lumpkin

Then, as if he didn’t already have enough on his plate… when Butch was thirty he was in a car accident which injured his back and laid him up for a year.

Looking for a way to stay active, he decided to take up a new challenge when someone made an offhand comment that a game like golf would be impossible for him.

Despite having no way to hold a standard club in his hands, Butch decided that he was going to learn to play golf at a professional level.

He had a special set of clubs made, with extra-long shanks that he could grip more easily. He started taking lessons with a local golf pro. He practiced. He played. He competed. And his scores began dropping steadily.

You can probably guess the outcome.

Today he is a golf pro at that same country club. He regularly enters long-drive competitions, and even has a hole-in-one on his record. He shoots between 78 and 82… a score most of us only wish we could achieve!

He’s also an accomplished motivational speaker, and regularly conducts golf demonstrations for schools, businesses, church groups and tournaments.

“I look at people when I talk or I’m playing golf, and I say I’m blessed…and they look at me like I’ve got a hole in my head.”

- Butch Lumpkin

Butch’s positive attitude and genuine desire to help others are immediately clear to everyone who meets him.

You can get a peek into his world at http://butchlumpkin.org.
The Golfing Channel also produced a short video profile on him, which can be viewed at http://bit.ly/15Kwim.

His personal motto says it all: “The man with no arms honestly believes that nothing is beyond reach.”

So what is it that drives Butch Lumpkin?

What has allowed him to overcome what others would see as insurmountable obstacles, to become a master at activities that should by all rights have been impossible for him?

I think that what makes the difference for him, what makes him a Leader… is his ability to focus.

And remember, focus is not only what you pay attention to; it’s also what you screen out.

Butch knows that everyone else will focus on his handicap, on what they presume he cannot do.

But all through his life, he has made the choice to ignore his physical situation, and the presumptions of others about his limitations.

So he ignores all that, and stays completely focused on what he’s doing… whether that’s delivering a perfect serve, or a hole-in-one. He refuses to let any distractions get in his way.

The world has been changed by people who refused to accept the limitations placed on them by the world around them.

And in that, Butch Lumpkin is definitely a leader.