At the Hillsborough Golf Club just outside of Moncton, golfers are proving you don’t always need to be able to see the ball to hit a beautiful shot. Twenty golfers from across the country, as well as one athlete from Mexico and one from Northern Ireland, are teeing it up over the next two days for the 2026 ISPS Handa Canadian Open Blind Golf. It’s the first time Canada Blind Golf has held a tournament in New Brunswick. The athletes taking part have varying ranges of visibility. Some have vision as great as ten per cent, while others are completely blind. Glenn Babcock, who is a blind golfer with just 7 per cent visibility, says they recently renamed their East Coast branch from the Nova Scotia Blind Golf Association to Atlantic Canada Blind Golf in hopes of growing the game in Atlantic Canada. “Our goal was to try to reach out to other provinces,” says Babcock, noting they do not have official blind golf members in New Brunswick. “The best way to do that seemed to be to hold our national championship in a province where we didn’t have any representation.” The sport itself is played the same as regular golf, with athletes trying to get the ball in the hole in the least number of strokes possible. The difference is blind golf athletes have a guide to help line up their shots, as well as give them distances of how far they may need to hit the ball in a given situation. “The most important thing, of course, after they hit the shot is to find the ball again,” Babcock says with a smile. “Because I would lose a lot of balls if I played my own way around.” Darren Douma is one of the 20 golfers teeing it up this week, and he made the trip all the way from British Colombia to do so. “It’s great to see us all together, sharing the experiences,” Douma says. “Despite our disabilities we all get together and get to showcase ourselves and blind golf.” He advises anyone who wants to try the sport to simply get out and hit balls and find someone reliable to help guide you around the course. For Douma, he has his friend Kevin Lemmon lining up his shots. Lemmon has been a blind golf guide since 2007. He says the sport has taken him around the world, and the relationships he has made through it all is what stands out. “The friendships and the companionship that comes out of it has been fantastic,” Lemmon says. “It’s nice to be able to experience the friendships and lifelong times together.” Babcock says there is a great deal of value in the sport. As someone who was born legally blind, he says there was never any question that he would get into the sport. “For a lot of our members they may have lost their vision later in life due to some type of illness or injury, and in many cases, they felt like they had to give up something that they had always enjoyed,” Babcock says. “Then they find out that there was blind golf, and they realized that with a couple of modifications they can go back to playing something that meant a lot to them.” He says the blind golf community is very supportive and are always welcoming more members. For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
