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CHOCOLAY TOWNSHIP -- Golf may not be the most exerting sport there is, but for a Bay Cliff camper like Bryant Jagnon, it takes just the right amount of skill.

"It's kind of fun, and I like to watch.  I like to learn how to golf so that way I can teach my little brother," he says.

The U.P. AIR, or Achieving Independent Recreation, Association, recently hosted its 10th annual Adaptive Golf Clinic at Gentz's Golf Course in Chocolay Township.
   
Between the driving range, and the putting green, medical professionals were on hand to adapt the game of golf for each person's particular handicap.

"Their strokes and their swings are going to be the same as an able-bodied person.  So the idea is that, with some of the therapists that are here, we kind of work in repositioning the body," co-organizer Stephanie Jones says.

The Adaptive Golf Clinic helps those with physical and mental disabilities, not just with their coordination, but it also keeps them active.

"I'm very happy to be out of the wheelchair and just walking with this cane, coming out here and just doing what I like to do," says Caitlin Fowler, a Bay Cliff camper, and participant.

For these participants who ranged in age from four to 80, it was a chance to try something new that they wouldn't normally be able to do.

"Sometimes it's their own limitations, being shy about going out there and doing it.  The other is just gaining the confidence to do it.  In a setting like this they're with their peers, and somebody's there to help them.  For a lot of these people it turns into their being able to go out and golf on their own," Jones says.

Something to which Bryant is already looking forward.