Misidentification provides mulligan for another story | From the archives

Editor's note: A version of this article first appeared in The Stockton Record on Sept. 13, 2014.

Sometimes, the most interesting things can come out of the most innocuous of mistakes. In this case, it was a Sept. 1 story we published on Stockton Golf and Country Club. The club is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

The story, written by Record correspondent Peter Ottesen, provides an interesting tale of the founding of the golf club. We were fortunate that Dick Belcher provided us with historical photos as well.

One of the photos showed Russ Shepherd among a crowd watching golf legend Ben Hogan hit balls on the driving range.

Oh, imagine being there live to watch Hogan’s sweet swing. Was the secret really in the dirt? Were there actually five lessons? Was his grip really strong? And how flat was that swing?

Imagine actually playing a few holes with Hogan, as a few area golfers did. Shepherd was one of them. Those memories would last a lifetime.

Shepherd, 84, said the day he got to play with Hogan was the highlight of his golf career.

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Several older players got to play the front nine with Hogan. Several younger ones played the back nine, Shepherd said.

He described Hogan as “very much a gentleman” during that 1947 afternoon.

The only problem with our story package was the person in the photo we identified as Russ Shepherd was not Russ Shepherd.

At least that’s what Shepherd and his wife told me.

They said it was another local golfer named Burgess Windsor.

And oh, Shepherd said, Burgess played with one arm.

What?

This tidbit was too good to let pass by.

Windsor was a standout golfer who won a number of local and national tournaments during his playing days.

His accomplishments are even more impressive when taking into account that he played with only one arm. Windsor was 13 when he injured his right arm falling from a playground slide. He had a compound fracture. The arm became infected and gangrene set in. Unfortunately, without antibiotics in the late 1940s, the arm was amputated at the elbow.

Initially, that seemed to have put an end to his golf game.

“I never thought of ever playing again when I got out of the hospital,” Windsor said in a 1966 Stockton Record story.

But after a few months he started caddying and practicing. And improving.

When he equaled a score he shot as a fully-abled golfer, he began competing again.

Although left-handed, Windsor played from the right side, closing his stance a bit more to compensate for a tendency to hook the ball, according to yellowed and fading news clips.

Those little “adjustments” did little to slow him down. He was robbed of distance on his drives and could not get backspin on the ball, so his shots had difficulty holding the greens, Windsor said.

But everything else was there.

Need proof?

Windsor won the National Arm Amputee Championship four times. He was Stockton’s Athlete of the Year in 1954. He was the 1964 champion of Van Burskirk's Men's Golf Club. He was inducted into the Stockton Athletic Hall of Fame in 1977.

The Wichita Falls, Texas, native was the golf coach at Edison High and a longtime educator, who passed away in 2005 at age 70.

And if the lad in the photo is not Windsor but someone else? Well, then at least I had the opportunity to learn about and share some information on an interesting man.

Contact managing editor Donald W. Blount at (209) 546-8251 or dblount@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/editorblog and on Twitter @donblount.

This article originally appeared on The Record: Misidentification provides mulligan for another story