Handa Cup To Benefit Charity In Honor of Legends Tour Member

Handa Cup To Benefit Charity In Honor of Legends Tour Member
By Lisa D. Mickey

Click here to learn more about Bobbi Salmon.>>

It crossed her mind that she was a hypochondriac. After all, Legends Tour player Bobbi Salmon couldn't understand the rashes, fatigue or the odd muscle pains she was suddenly experiencing. And she wondered about all of the “crazy symptoms” that had suddenly cropped up, affecting her ability to spend hours each day on the teaching tee with students or even to be able to play the game she loves.

Even after a physician finally diagnosed that she had scleroderma in 2003, the 24-year veteran of women's professional golf was still in the dark.

“I had never heard of it,” said Salmon, a longtime LPGA Teaching and Club Professional (T&CP) and PGA of America member who has competed on the Legends Tour. “I thought I could just take a pill and get rid of it.”

Unfortunately, the autoimmune disease affects some 300,000 Americans. In the same family as lupus, the condition causes the body to produce too much collagen, which hardens the skin. Systemically, the disease can affect the human organs. If it reaches the lungs and causes them to harden, breathing may become difficult or impossible. At this time, there is no known cure.

“This disease is really kind of getting to me now and my hands bother me a lot,” said Salmon, who moved back home to Durham, N.C., after having earned honors in 2001 as one of Golf For Women Magazine's Top 50 Teachers while serving as the Director of Instruction at Errol Estates Country Club in Apopka, Fla. “I can't stand out there for three to four hours a day teaching anymore.”

Moving away from teaching has been a difficult transition for the always-active Salmon, who has added competing in Legends Tour events to her extensive playing resume. Salmon has won the LPGA T&CP's Southeast Section Championship twice and the Southeast Team Championship numerous times. She has competed in four Women's British Opens, two U.S. Women's Opens and two McDonald's LPGA Championships.

But these days, she swallows 15 different medications each night and has taken an oral chemo drug for a year that helps slow the symptomatic tightness and hardening of her skin. As the disease has progressed, Salmon also has lost up to 30 percent of her lung function.

Rather than simply surrendering to the ravages of the disease, Salmon has, instead, vowed to help raise funds for scleroderma research. Along with 30-some other LPGA teaching professionals across the nation, she has helped raise $70,000 for the Scleroderma Foundation and scleroderma research through golf clinics, playing lessons and tournaments. They called that effort the Scleroderma Teaching Project.

“I think that's when I realized how many wonderful friends I have,” she said. “Everybody wanted to help in some way.”

Salmon wasn't always a golfer, however. A former collegiate volleyball and softball player at Appalachian State University (N.C.), she even recalls thinking what a “ridiculous game” golf was when she worked at a golf course as a college student. But at age 24, she taught herself to play and a year later, qualified for the 1985 U.S. Women's Open.

“I won the qualifier in a playoff and had no idea what I had done,” she said, laughing. “I was too stupid to know it was hard.”

But Salmon qualified for the Women's Open again in 1992, then went on to compete professionally in Asia, Europe and in the early days on the FUTURES Golf Tour – now named the Duramed FUTURES Tour.

“I was never a great ball striker, but I leaned how to get it around the golf course,” she said.

Her dream was to make it to the LPGA Tour, but that never happened. Salmon settled into teaching golf and joined the LPGA's T&CP division in the early 1990s, honing her game mostly against other teaching professionals and club pros. Once she turned age 45, she competed in a qualifier for the Legends Tour and earned a spot on the Tour, where she has played since 2001.

“I never made it to the big tour, but it was just amazing to be out there on the Legends Tour playing with people like Pat Bradley and Joanne Carner – and then to sometimes beat them was like, Wow!” said Salmon. “But those players have all ‘been there and done that' in golf. They didn't know me, but they accepted me and invited me to spend time with them.”

And when those same Hall of Fame players learned of Salmon's current health challenge, they also wanted to do something to help. They decided to donate all proceeds from ticket sales at this year's Handa Cup to the foundations serving patients and research for scleroderma.

“Scleroderma is a disease that doesn't get enough recognition,” said Legends Tour president Jane Blalock. “It was particularly important that we support her since one of our own Legends suffers from scleroderma and dedicates her time and resources to awareness and research of this disease.”

Salmon says she still hopes to hold a celebrity pro-am with fellow members of the Legends Tour to raise money and awareness for scleroderma. And even though the same number of Americans suffer from scleroderma that suffer from multiple sclerosis, the awareness level doesn't even compare.

Salmon has “good days and bad days” with her current state of health, but she is pleased that her fellow Legends Tour competitors can help the public understand more about the disease that has affected her so dramatically.

“Even with the Scleroderma Teaching Project [fund raiser] that we ran all over the country, so many people have wanted to know about the disease,” she said. “They want to touch my skin and ask me questions. Some days, I get really frustrated by how this disease makes me feel, but the education that comes from talking about it really excites me.”