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The following article appeared in The West Magazine August 20, 2005. Under the heading Perspectives: Ron Conway, World-beating blind golfer.

I lost my sight when I was 38 years old. I’d never played golf before that. I was wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life and it was presented to me that I could do tenpin bowling, lawn bowls, and then they mentioned golf.
I said “You must be joking”. But they said they had a bunch of guys playing every week and I said, “I’ve got to see that”, which was pretty funny. So I met all these marvelous people and I thought, “If they can do it I can bloody do it”. I developed a visualization technique. I had been a research chemist for 20 years and I applied my analytical background to golf. I realized I could learn to visualize the swing, to visualize the movements, visualize my target, visualize some sort of golf course and create a map in my head. And with my putting, I walk to the pin and my feet give me all the signals, all the moving from right to left, left to right, all the subtleties.
Caddies are very important because they are your eyes. But I tend to be able to give them enough instruction in about 20 minutes so that they can give me all the information I need. I say “Forget that I am blind, I am a golfer now. Tell me this, this and that and you will make me a happy man and let me worry about the mechanics”.
Playing golf is the one time I walk out without a white cane. It’s just marvelous to walk beside somebody at your normal, natural pace in the fresh air and in all that open space.
Sometimes people say, “You can’t have any enjoyment, Ron, when you can’t see where the ball has gone”, but I feel how sweetly I have hit the ball.
I get the caddie to place the head of the club behind the ball and they tell me to move forward or to come back until they feel that I am on target. Within two years I was club champion and the following year I was State champion and within four years I was Australian champion and then three-time world champion.
Now I do corporate stuff and travel the world taking on the likes of Ernie Els, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, Sergio Garcia and all these guys.
Sometimes I succumb and make them wear blindfolds, but my preference is to take them on as they are on a one-shot on one-shot basis taking on a target.
The most important thing, the most nurturing thing, about golf for me has been that it has given me my life back. It has allowed me to believe that I can be part of society. I am a member of a golf club and when I play guys who are sighted my bets are as good as theirs. They see me as a golfer. I have a handicap (15) that is recognized by any golf association in the world.

As told to Griffin Longley