The world of professional golf can be a particularly brutal one, with Monday qualifiers, big cuts in the field and endless traveling, but Kevin Hall, who has been chasing his dream of being a professional golfer for 16 years now, is no stranger to adversity.
“It can get really lonely,” Hall said. “There’s not much interaction with the deaf community, although I do get to meet new people almost everywhere I go. This is what I chose to do and I love it, though.”
Hall lost his hearing at 2 years old after recovering from meningitis. Seven years later, at 9, Hall picked up a golf club.
“When you put a golf club in his hand, there was just no stopping him,” Jackie Hall, Kevin’s mother, said.
While learning how to play, Kevin Hall said being deaf required him to navigate language barriers with his instructors, who didn’t speak American Sign Language.
Despite the added hurdle to training, Hall said the help of technology and his parents have allowed him to grow his game.
“My parents help with the communication and I can lip read,” Hall said. “There are a lot of videos and it helps when I have my phone, I can type out my responses and there are texts/emails. There’s always a way to communicate.”
Hall, now a 2005 Ohio State graduate and current professional golfer, played in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am off of a sponsor exemption from Feb. 8-14 in Carmel, California.