Sports

Trio of Injured Veterans Will Represent American Lake on Golf Voyage to Scotland

The vets - two from JBLM's Warrior Transition Battalion - will attend The Open Championship, as well as play against injured British soldiers.

As a soldier, Army Staff Sgt. AJ Domme has experienced things most civilians see only in movies.

He has served seven years now, a military career that has included deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. On one of those tours, an explosion sent shrapnel into his upper body, leaving him with injuries that will last the rest of his life.

Those injuries, however, didn’t prevent him from playing the sport he loves: golf. Domme - assigned to the Warrior Transition Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord – has been a regular at American Lake Veterans Golf Course since the beginning of the year. His schedule is regular as rain: Every Monday, hit the course.

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Today, Domme and two other local veterans will embark on a weeklong journey that few civilians will ever experience, let alone veterans recovering from injuries sustained in combat.

The trio will travel to Scotland to watch The Open Championship at Murfield. They will also play five of that country’s famed links courses, including the Old Course at St. Andrews, one of the most storied in the world and generally considered the home of golf.

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For Domme, a veteran of both the military and the sport of golf, simply describing what he’ll experience over the next week seemed a tad overwhelming. He told Patch that the enormity of the situation didn’t hit earlier this year, when he learned that, out of all the soldiers in the Army, he was chosen to be their representative.

“Now that it’s happening, we’re leaving tomorrow, I feel very blessed, very honored,” he told Patch on Tuesday.

“I’m not Tiger Woods, I probably never will be,” he added. “But I enjoy the game.”

The effort to bring Domme and Staff Sgt. Michael Slaybaugh of the Madigan Army Medical Center-based Warrior Transition Battalion, as well as Sgt. Steve Reynolds, a Vietnam veteran and leader of the volunteer grounds crew at American Lake, originated on the other side of the pond.

The trip was organized and financed by a group from Scotland led by Graham Proctor, an innkeeper at St. Andrews.  The Scottish group raised the money for airfare, lodging and meals for the three U.S. veterans.

The trio will join a group of disabled British soldiers. Organizers hope this year’s trip will be the start of an ongoing program – dubbed the North American Wounded Veterans Scottish Links Trophy - around education, rehabilitation and development for wounded warriors.

The plan calls for a reciprocal trip in 2014, with the British soldiers playing at American Lake.

Domme said playing Scotland’s links courses will be unique, as he’s never played a true links course: “That will be an experience. It’s a different style of play.”

He added that he’s excited at the prospect of other wounded soldiers experiencing what he’s going to do over the next week.

And of course – given how this experience is truly once-in-a-lifetime - he plans to snap plenty of pictures.


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