There’s a senior golfer in Prince George who has taken top spots in Canadian and U.S. championships, has traveled close to 65,000 kilometres in less than three years and entered a total of 13 events.
Randy Mackus, 61, is a quarter-amputee, having his left arm and shoulder taken by a rare form of cancer on June 6, 1996. He competes in golf tournaments as a one-armed unassisted player, which means there is only one hand on the club when he takes a swing.
It all started one day when the Prince George resident was trying to do something he had done a million times before.
“In 1995 I was making lunch for my children as I was home from work one day and I went to put a pot of water on the stove and all of a sudden my wrist dropped and I couldn’t hold the pot of water in my left hand and my kids were saying ‘Dad, quit messing around,’” Mackus recalled of that fateful day.
When he first got it checked out it was determined he had something called ‘wrist drop syndrome’ caused by radial nerve palsy.
An MRI indicated it was much more serious than that.
“They found a dime-sized tumour on my radial nerve,” Mackus said, indicating his bicep area.
“At that time nobody thought it would be anything malignant so it wasn’t going to be a problem taking it out and repairing the damage and moving on with maybe 75 per cent use of my left arm.”
Something very different happened.
“It ultimately ended up being cancer,” Mackus said.
His arm was amputated, including his shoulder right up to his collar bone, to make sure there were safe margins around the cancer to ensure Mackus would be cancer free after amputation, he explained.
Mackus celebrated his 28th ampuversary on June 6, 2024.
“I always looked at it as a kind of rebirth as I emerged as something other than I was,” Mackus said.
After he healed from the amputation, Mackus continued to play OTL (over-the-line snow ball), which is this winter city’s year-round baseball.
He also got back on the ice to play hockey with his friends because he needed to be there for a time.
“And 15-20 years ago I might’ve played a little golf but I was just messin’ around with the boys and then about 10-12 years ago a trip to Charlottetown, North Carolina kinda got me inspired because we played golf on some world-class courses.”
Soon he was playing regularly in Prince George with a group of friends.
“And it seemed to be therapeutic in a sense for me because with years not being on a team and just taking care of my kids and being volunteery, I wasn’t really getting any fulfillment on my own,” Mackus explained.
“And so this was a challenge and it still is – golf is hard,” Mackus laughed.
Mackus has had to figure out how to best swing the club for success and uses a backswing for accuracy and distance.
Mackus keeps busy in the off-season by playing pickleball and he also curls using a stick to push the rock along the ice as a way to adapt the game to make it possible to play.
He was always athletic in his youth and so keeping active is important to him.
“As a youngster I played hockey here in town, baseball, and school sports like basketball, I was fortunate enough to play Midget hockey and Bantam rep hockey, even had a little stint with the Spruce Kings one playoff season and on the baseball teams representing Prince George in little league, Babe Ruth, even the senior men’s in tournaments. I went away to Nipawin, Saskatchewan to play some junior hockey there and that’s the extent of my youth sports.”
“As an adult with my children I became a coach volunteer in football, roller hockey and baseball,” Mackus added.
His most recent accomplishments look a bit different.
In his United States events he won the 2022 and 2023 Michigan State senior one-armed unassisted (G4) and in October 2023 he won the Texas State Adaptive Championship senior one-armed unassisted. Mackus is ranked 17th in the US Adaptive Golf Alliance and is ranked third in Canada for all ages and abilities and is ranked 148th in the world.
“But it is what it is, right?” Mackus shrugged off his accomplishments.
“It’s all about looking at what you can do instead of looking at what you can’t do. Success can be a drug but I really don’t want that to be the focus on what I started. It was more or less to help bring an awareness to people with differences - disabilities, if that’s what we’re going to call them - that we can still belong, and do things and still be treated as though we belong because in my circumstance, I have such good friends and the community here has been so fantastic to me everywhere I go, but it is a two-handed world.”
Mackus said he struggles with things he once considered simple, like opening a garbage bag or keeping the head of the screw on the drill bit, and when he fails, he’s got the right attitude.
“No sense getting mad at it, you just gotta smile,” Mackus said with a grin.
There’s a tattoo on his forearm that sums it all up: “Never quit.”
For more information and to see Randy Mackus in action visit Masters in Motion BC at www.youtube.com/MastersinMotion/RandyMackus.
