For Dave Szumowski, R’67, golf is a team sport. And there’s no other team he’d rather play with than his closest Phi Kappa Sigma brothers from Richmond. Every March, they gather in the Florida sunshine for three rounds played in a style that is all Szumowski’s own.
Since losing his sight at age 23, Szumowski has developed a sui generis approach to the game that has served as a source of tremendous joy and accomplishment over the decades and brought him closer to the companions who help him navigate each drive, stroke, and putt along the course.
“I don’t think he realizes how inspirational he is,” says Richard Sinclair, R’67. “It’s truly a miraculous thing to watch.”
First swing
Szumowski caddied as a teen in his hometown of Gloversville, New York. But it was at Richmond, with the same close fraternity brothers — Sinclair, Don Casper, R’68, and Frank Frye, R’68 — that Szumowski took his first true swing at golf. They’d occasionally hit a bucket of balls or play nine holes at a nearby golf course that was open at night. “When it was over we’d always end up going to Phil’s Continental Lounge for 3.2 beer and potato chips,” Szumowski recalls. “It was a lot of fun to just go out with guys you like and not play anything serious.”
As the son of two World War II veterans, Szumowski took his participation in ROTC at Richmond seriously. “I liked the discipline and focus; there was always a mission to be accomplished,” he says. He earned distinguished military graduate honors, which enabled him to select the military branch in which he would serve after graduation.
He entered the Army as a second lieutenant and reported for training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in preparation for his deployment to Vietnam with the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment’s 3rd Battalion. At Fort Knox, his interest in golf intensified as he played rounds with other officers on the base’s course. “I didn’t take any lessons; I just hacked around, watched what others did, and learned the basics,” he says. “I thought, ‘This is a sport I can continue with.’”
An unexpected course
Szumowski’s life changed in a flash, literally, on March 20, 1969. As his platoon, stationed northwest of Saigon, rounded a corner to aid soldiers pinned down by enemy fire, a rocket-propelled grenade shattered the front of his tank and sprayed his face with shrapnel. “I saw an orange flash,” he says. “Then I couldn’t see anything.”
He was evacuated to a field hospital, where doctors extracted what shrapnel they could. He transferred to a military hospital in Japan, then to Walter Reed Army Medical Center before arriving at a V.A. facility near Chicago for blind rehabilitation training. The facility’s golf driving net served as his anger management therapy. “I would go out there and hit it hard, over and over,” he says. “It was a way to take out my frustrations about being blind and how life had suddenly changed for me.”
Szumowski earned a law degree from the University of Denver but then experienced a couple of “lost years” of PTSD and alcohol abuse as he struggled to find his path. “Then one day, I just snapped out of it,” he says. “I told myself, ‘I have a long life ahead of me, which will be cut short if I don’t get a handle on things.’”
He and his wife, Janice, made a fresh start in the San Diego area. He became deeply involved in the Blinded Veterans Association and landed at the San Diego County District Attorney’s office, where he worked as a prosecutor for 12 years. In 1998, California governor Pete Wilson appointed Szumowski to the bench. He presided over felony arraignment proceedings as a judge in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, for 18 years. “I got reelected four times without any opposition, so I guess I did it right,” he says.
Sharpening his fore sight
Szumowski’s flexible schedule as a judge and then in retirement afforded him time to finally continue his pursuit of golf that fate had interrupted. “I played a lot of intramural sports in college — basketball, baseball, soccer — that I simply couldn’t do anymore,” he says. “What I love about golf is the fact I can do it. And I take a lot of personal satisfaction when I do it well.”
He took lessons at the Coronado Golf Course, feeling the breeze come in from San Diego Bay. He listened to golf videos online. He joined a men’s group that played every Wednesday. After moving to Ponte Vedra, Florida, in 2022, he traded up for lighter clubs and started golfing twice a week, when the weather allows.
Over the years, Szumowski has gradually honed an approach that connects him not just with the ball — “Nobody expects that I’m going to hit the ball, but I rarely miss it,” he says — but with his golf companions as well. The key? Teamwork.
For example, when Szumowski reunites with his Phi Kappa Sigma brothers, they’ll take turns serving as his caddy. For each drive, the caddy guides Szumowski to the tee and describes the lay of the land: distance to the pin, if the fairway veers left or right, the location of any sand traps or water hazards, and such. “If there’s a bet going, though, I won’t listen to their advice, because I’m not sure I’m getting the straight scoop,” Szumowski says with a chuckle.
“Caddying for Dave has rekindled a fire in me to play golf, because when he gets a shot, it’s far better than I could have done. I feel pretty good that maybe, in some small way, I helped help him get that shot.”
The caddy sometimes lines him up first to take a practice swing, then places the head of his club behind the ball. They instruct him to adjust his body position left or right so that it’s facing in the proper direction for him to launch his ball along the desired trajectory. A tiny nail head under his club grip rubs against his left index finger to let him know his club is square.
Once both caddy and golfer yell, “Clear,” Szumowski takes his swing.
“He can hit the ball a long way, straight as an arrow. It’s amazing,” says Richard “Dick” Peterson‚ R’65, who joined the annual reunion for the first time this year not to play, but to caddy. “Caddying for Dave has rekindled a fire in me to play golf, because when he gets a shot, it’s far better than I could have done. I feel pretty good that maybe, in some small way, I helped help him get that shot.”
For his putts, Szumowski often walks out the green with his caddy so he can feel the slope beneath his feet and gauge the distance for himself. As his caddy stands behind him to make sure his putter is square to the desired line, he listens as another friend taps the pin to guide him in the right direction. “It’s the most incredible thing to watch him putt,” Sinclair says. “He knows just how hard and far to hit it.”
If his shot is close, within 2 to 3 feet, they’ll call it a gimme. But when he sinks the putt or gets par or a birdie, “we’re all so happy for him. It’s almost as if we did it ourselves,” Sinclair says. “When he does well, we all take enormous joy and pride in it.”
Szumowski doesn’t take his golfing or himself too seriously. He doesn’t keep score and tries not to hold up play on the course, although he’s known to attract admiring spectators.
“I know the limitations I have,” he says. “I take a lot of personal satisfaction out of it when I have a good hit. I take greater satisfaction when I have out-hit people younger than me who can see what they’re doing. And I take maximum satisfaction when I score better on a hole than anybody I’m playing with who should be doing better than me.”