When Corbin Cherry had his left leg blown off in Vietnam, the first thing he thought about was his golf game. How was he going to play on one leg?
Well, the former Army chaplain couldn't choke back tears Friday as he walked up to the 18th hole during the U.S. Senior Open at Pinehurst's No. 2 course.Many in the gallery surrounding the green whispered as Cherry's score was posted. Some laughed. Others who knew his story gave him a round of applause after he had hacked his way out of some high rough en route to his fourth 7 of his round of 95 - that's 24-over-par.
It didn't matter that he had shot a whopping 43-over-par for two rounds and missed the cut. He was here. He had defied the odds.
"We had people getting a little uptight out there today, and I guess I should have been one of them, but it's too great a privilege to get mad and to throw clubs," Cherry said about playing in the major tournament.
Cherry's left leg was rubbed raw by two days of walking in 90-degree heat and humidity, but it was the moment that made the amateur qualifier from Mill Valley, Calif., sob like a baby, not pain or his rounds of 90 and 95.
"My wife tells me I shouldn't worry about being emotional but I am," Cherry said, while rubbing his eyes with a towel. "This is such a sense of fulfillment to be here with all these great athletes."
Cherry, who was a late entry as an alternate, hardly ever walks when he plays in San Francisco, where he is a minister in a veteran's hospital. He also changes a sock every three holes to absorb some of the shock and friction from his artificial leg.
But the pace of play prevented Cherry, 55, from changing his stump socks, and his leg became inflamed and eventually raw. But he trudged on.
"The man has the best attitude of anyone out here," said Jim Helton, who carried Cherry's bag for two days. "I've caddied on the Senior Tour before and I have had some of the guys you (reporters) paint as heroes and they are jerks. This guy is a saint.
"He was a gentleman at all times. He never complained. He never took it out on anybody else."
Cherry, who gave a signed ball to a boy with an artificial leg on the course, thought back to 1969, the year he lost his leg.
"I remember the day I got wounded," he said. "I was alone and my leg had been blown off and I was tying a tourniquet on my leg. One of the sergeants from my unit got to me and he said, `Are you OK?' I said the only thing I was concerned about was how was I going to be able to play golf with one leg. And he said, `What!'
"I didn't think about my family or my job or dying. I worried about how I was going to be able to play golf with one leg."
Despite the highest score in the tourney, Cherry was talking of qualifying for the event next year.
"I told one of the people in the gallery this was like a dream turned into a nightmare," he said. "But I was just joking. It is wonderful to be here."