The most improbable country club is housed in a homeless shelter

“This is being homeless, Tom. You never really close your eyes.”\n\nThat is how 70-year-old Tom, a resident of the Niagara Gospel Mission shelter in Western New York, described the night when a fight outside woke GOLF.com reporter Nick Piastowski. Piastowski spent a week at the shelter, lining up for breakfast, lunch and dinner, attending classes and sleeping in a stifling third-floor room. He wanted to understand the lives of the people there and found an unexpected source of support: golf.\n\n“At the Niagara Gospel Mission, you can go from the crack house to the country club,” says mission executive director John Cooper. That idea led to the Niagara Gospel Country Club, a program that began in the shelter’s gym a little more than a year ago.\n\nAt first, many residents viewed golf as “a rich people’s sport” and had never held a club. Cooper, a former Army sniper, became seriously interested in golf through the PGA HOPE program for veterans. He then wondered whether the game could become part of the shelter’s rehabilitation work.\n\nThe sessions are led by teaching professional Frank Garcia, who coaches on his own dime because he believes in the program. He works with residents on coordinating their shoulders, hips and body movements, and organizes practice sessions and nine-hole rounds at Hyde Park and Audubon. The clubs and balls are donated.\n\nFor the participants, golf has become a way to control their thoughts and keep moving forward. Paul, who lived in a rental car before coming to the shelter and once slept in a Mercedes in a multistory parking garage, now leads Niagara Gospel’s longer-term rehabilitation group. During a round, on the par-5 eighth hole, he hit his tee shot about 250 yards down the middle of the fairway, then sent his second shot nearly as far and placed the ball near the green.\n\n“I’ll pray that my next shot is my best shot,” Paul says. His principle is simple: do not stay stuck on the previous hole or in the past. “I wish I’d applied that in my life years ago. But I can do it today,” he said, connecting the thought to the fight outside the shelter.\n\nAnother resident, Doug, works as the head cook. He had played golf before coming to the mission: his father taught him the game and made his clubs. After losing his job and contact with his family, Doug arrived at Niagara Gospel. Now he says the course is a place “to get your mind right” and “keep moving forward.”\n\nTom became the club’s first president and won the inaugural Mission Masters, the shelter’s first “major.” Held in March at the Paddock golf dome, the event included pitching, chipping, target shots and putting on a mini-golf course. Tom won by one stroke. In May, he was named the first president of the Niagara Gospel Country Club. Members wear blue sport coats and are inducted in a ceremony held in a room reserved for them.\n\nTom has spent decades living on the streets. He described waking up in a field, sleeping in abandoned cars and houses, and sometimes collapsing on benches. Six years ago, he walked to Niagara Gospel with a shopping cart carrying clothes, a flashlight, batteries, a computer and several CDs. He now works at the shelter’s reception desk and donation room.\n\nThe day after the fight, Tom played in a best-shot scramble with shelter donor Yogi Schiller, a retired business owner and a member of Rochester’s prestigious Oak Hill Country Club. They used some of Tom’s shots and some of Yogi’s, and Schiller’s final-hole putt produced a birdie for their group. “They’re being together,” Schiller said.\n\nAnother resident, Renard, survived street gangs, a gunshot wound, a serious car accident and the death of his son. Last year, he took a Greyhound bus to Niagara Falls after searching his phone for homeless rehabilitation shelters. He now manages the shelter floor and says golf changed him. “I told Frank that I’m a football player, and he groomed me into a golfer. But he changed a lot in me. Peace, the whole atmosphere of golfing, is wonderful,” Renard said.\n\nAmanda Aykanian, a homeless-services researcher at the University at Buffalo, says the longer someone remains homeless, the more difficult it becomes to exit homelessness. Cooper does not see golf as a universal solution, but he believes the game gives residents community, new chances and a way to feel part of a group.\n\nEventually, Renard persuaded the reporter to hit balls on the driving range. After Piastowski’s first drive, Renard immediately identified the problem: his hips were not rotating properly. At Niagara Gospel Country Club, golf is only a small part of the members’ lives, but for some it has become a place to take the next shot, the next step and leave behind what brought them to the shelter.