Adaptive Golf Equipment for Children with Disabilities

Full Swing Golf is a community organization in New England that helps children (ages 3-21) with disabilities participate in and obtain therapeutic benefit from golf. Our goal is to make golf accessible and free of charge to any child regardless of their background or situation. At Full Swing events, participants are paired with a volunteer who works with them at the driving range and on the putting green, providing support in a variety of ways.

We are a group of medical students and biomedical engineering PhD students at Brown University working together to design and build adaptive sports equipment to make the game of golf even more accessible for kids with disabilities. We are launching this GoFundMe to raise funds to bring our designs to life.

Our events are fully volunteer run, and we supply the children with donated golf clubs that we borrow from a local course. We have an extremely diverse group of participants and have been fortunate to support children with an array of conditions including spina bifida, spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, DiGeorge syndrome, hemiplegia, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, hereditary spastic paraplegia, amputations, developmental delays, Down syndrome, and infant stroke. This list is not exhaustive and is constantly expanding as we continue to encourage more families to join our group.

Many of our participants have spasticity in their hands, making it difficult for them to hold onto the club through an entire swing. We will design a device that straps onto the participant’s forearm and attaches directly to the club, bypassing the need for grip strength. One of our participants with spina bifida ambulates using a posterior walker but is unable to balance without the support of a volunteer, thus limiting his ability to swing at a golf ball. We will design a stationary ‘steady stander’ the participant can strap into that would allow him to safely hit golf balls. We will design a ‘swing guide’ golf clubs lock into to be guided along a path that ensures contact with the ball, leaving the fun part of swinging under control of the participant!

These are just three of the many design ideas we have. We are also raising funds to purchase kids' golf clubs, and would gladly accept donations of used clubs as well! We currently borrow individual golf clubs that have been donated to a local Rhode Island course. With 25 participants, it is rare to find a club in that batch that fits the children well.