To say that Jim Ingram is a golf enthusiast is putting it mildly.
The East Cobb resident is a longtime avid golfer, and has served as a volunteer and executive board member of the Georgia State Golf Association for 30 years.
The president of Evans and James, an executive search firm serving the plastics and packaging industry, Ingram remains involved in GSGA events and activities, including a relatively new charity fundraiser.
He’s played a lot of golf at a lot of local courses, including Indian Hills Country Club and Brookstone Country Club in Cobb County.
He makes fun of his “lousy golf swing” (see below) but has a 9 handicap, and often is accompanied by his dog Rover.
Ingram also has played plenty of times at the nine-hole Bobby Jones Golf Course in Buckhead, where the formerly East Cobb-based GSGA now has its headquarters.
But on Oct. 21, Ingram will play Bobby Jones like he never has before—as in over and over and over again, set to make the turn many times.
That’s because he’s taking part in the GSGA’s charity marathon fundraiser to benefit the organization’s adaptive and junior golf programs.
(You can pledge per round or make a one-time donation to Ingram’s marathon by clicking here.)
In last year’s event, he played 81 holes in one day at the Druid Hills Country Club. In a couple of weeks, he’ll likely play just as many, if not more, on the storied public course named for a Georgia golf legend.
“You just golf until you drop,” Ingram said of the marathon, which raised more than $50,000 overall. The GSGA is aiming to surpass that figure this year with around 20-30 participants having signed up.
The proceeds enable youths 16 and under from economically challenged backgrounds to play for $5 a round, and for the GSGA to purchase special equipment and provide instruction for the physically handicapped.
Among them is Chance, a former amateur golfer and a police officer who was paralyzed from the chest down in a 2018 traffic accident.
As he rehabilitated at the Shepherd Spinal Center in Atlanta, his visitors included some who introduced him to adaptive golf.
He plays golf once again, thanks to a solorider cart provided by the GSGA with funds from last year’s marathon.
It’s a story the GSGA is encouraging its marathon participants to share as they collect pledges. The GSGA has raised nearly $100,000 in subsidies for the youth program (the GSGA makes up the greens fees to the golf courses) and is close to having enough money to purchase another adaptive cart.
“We’re trying to set good examples,” Ingram said of the GSGA’s initiatives to expand golf access.
More than 2,000 people have gotten involved in the adaptive program, and it’s something that “changes people’s lives,” Ingram said.
Like Chance and others at the Shepherd Center, “we’re trying to get them involved.”
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