First on the leader board in my book was my 43-year-old brother-in-law Dan Kozak, who has Down syndrome. He was visiting from his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we went out for a round last week at an executive course called Bathurst Glen just north of Toronto. The course is 4,551 yards long and was in great condition. So was Dan's game, and, as always, he showed pure joy at the simple act of walking a golf course and hitting shots, wherever they went and however many he took.

My second inspirational round occurred on August 23rd at my pastoral home course, the Maple Downs Golf and Country Club a few miles north of where I live in Toronto.

I played a few holes there with Zohar Sharon, a 53-year-old blind Israeli. Zohar was brought to Toronto by Beit Halochem Canada, Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel. The organization's mandate is to help 50,000 Israeli disabled war and terror victims.

Sharon, like Dan, wore a smile on his face as he played up and down and across Maple Downs' rolling hills.

I also wore a smile, just by playing with Dan and Zohar and being in their company.

I wrote about Dan last week in my Globe and Mail column. The e-mails keep coming in, from people with family members who have Down syndrome, and many from people who agree with my main point, as the headline writer at the paper put it.

The headline said, "There's more to golf than pro tours."

One gentleman wrote, "At a time when 12-year-olds are burnt out from playing competitive hockey and sports stars are holding out for mega dollar contracts, it's refreshing to be reminded of the true value of sport-fun and fellowship."

Another fellow wrote, "Tell your brother-in-law he's a great inspiration for what golf and life should really be all about."

Marlene Streit, Canada's only member of the World Golf Hall of Fame-she won the U.S. Women's Senior Amateur a couple of years ago when she was 69, wrote, "It's so interesting how golf touches lives in so many ways. So many people forget about the joy the game brings."

I watched as Dan got down on his haunches to line up a 30' putt on the fifth green, and as he chipped a long five-iron right at the hole from well short of the ninth green. His tee shot on the 120-yard 17th hole soared over a pond in front of the green and finished 15' behind the hole. Dan leaped in pleasure.

It hadn't taken much time at all for me to almost forget that Dan was afflicted with Down syndrome.

The genetic condition causes speech, intellectual and physical limitations, and it's sometimes difficult to understand Dan. But it wasn't difficult to understand his sweet nature, and how much he liked golf.

His father Frank, who had a football scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis, had taught him well. He's the lone golfer of the four siblings in his family. My wife Nell and her sisters Pat and Sarah are proud of him.

He lives fairly independently, holds down a job, and-with just a bit of help-can negotiate the airlines to get himself to Florida, L.A., or Canada to visit family. They're happy he likes sports, and that golf makes him happy.

It also didn't take much time to stop seeing Zohar Sharon as a blind golfer, and to think of him as just a golfer.

Zohar lost his sight during combat after a chemical was sprayed in his face. He eventually took up golf, and also paints-yes, he paints, by etching lines onto a piece of plywood with a needle and then applying the oils. (Much of this biographical information comes from a moving article that David Califa wrote in the Israeli publication Haaretz).

Zohar's daughter Yasmina, a 23-year-old student in special education in Israel, was with him at Maple Downs, and said, "For my father, golf is the ultimate therapy. It's a reason for him to wake up in the morning."

Zohar practices golf up to 10 hours a day. He's played in championships for blind golfers-he's the only blind golfer in Israel, a country with one course and another being built-and competed in such an event last year in Scotland.

He's athletic, having played soccer and run track, becoming a national champion, before he lost his sight. But he'd never played golf.

And how he can play it. I mean "play" in all the best senses of the world.

He plays with his mind, having learned to conjure a mental picture of how the ball should fly, of what he wants to do with his body.

Dr. Ricardo Cordova was the sports psychologist for the Bolivian national soccer team before immigrating to Israel, and has worked closely with Zohar on using imagery.

Califa writes, "For many weeks, the two worked on what Sharon calls 'golf dances and mental games.' Cordova used straps and cords to restrict Sharon's use of the muscles not involved in a golf swing...Without picking up a golf club or a golf ball, they practiced the swinging motion, while picturing an imaginary ball taking flight, landing and rolling."

Zohar, like Dan, epitomizes what the great teacher Percy Boomer wrote in his landmark book On Learning Golf. "Rhythm is the soul of golf," he said. Boomer also included a chapter called "Interlude for Instruction-As a Dancer Sees It." She told Boomer that golf "is a gathering up of power," and that "each feel in the whole movement is joined in unison to the forthcoming one-anticipating it, one might say."

Not to get technical, but that's what I saw in Dan and Zohar. They gathered power as they swung. In some way, the club actually appeared to swing them. They were able to let go. They felt the swing and let it take them through the ball. Now for a "truth is stranger than fiction" moment. I followed Zohar for the first couple of holes in the company of my friend Norm Mogil, the 1962 Canadian Junior champion who still plays to a three or four handicap.

We were taken with Zohar-the power he accumulated through impact, the solidity of his contact.

Zohar's long-time friend and assistant Shimshon Levy, who accompanies him everywhere, lined him up on each shot and putt and offered instructions in Hebrew. They were as one, a team of two remarkable individuals.

Norm and I wandered over to a practice area after the first two holes. Alan Baker, Maple Downs' president, came over the hill behind the nearby third green 15 minutes later, yelling at us to come over to the green. He was standing around the flagstick. Zohar had holed out from 140 yards for an eagle two-his first eagle ever.

Norm and I joined Zohar for the rest of the front nine. We watched him play the fourth hole and played with him through the ninth.

Shimshon lined him up on a one-foot putt on the seventh green-no gimmes for Zohar, who doesn't want them-and he holed the putt. "Like music," he said as the ball rattled around in the cup.

I'd noticed that Dan also likes to hole out every time. He and Zohar enjoy the sound of the ball falling into the hole. It's an elemental pleasure that the game gives them, and they prefer not to be deprived of it.

The par-five 483-yard ninth hole at Maple Downs traverses a tree-lined fairway with as many humps and bumps as one of Royal Dornoch's or Royal St. George's fairways.

Zohar's drive of some 200 yards finished on the right side. Shimshon lined him up to the right side of the fairway, and his ball went directly there. It took the fairway contour and rolled into the middle, 95 yards from the hole. He hit his third shot within three feet of the hole, and made the birdie putt.

Zohar had made an eagle and birdie in the first nine holes, and shot 47. He followed with a 45 on the back nine to shoot 92. I left after nine holes but got the full report later from Alan Baker, who couldn't believe what he had witnessed. I've had a memorable week with two splendid people, and all because of golf. As it happens, we have a book on Kabbalah (not the Madonna version) at home. It's called Zohar, The Book of Splendor. It's the essential work of Jewish mysticism, and I admit that I've never so much as read a word. But my eyes came across the book as I sat at home after playing with Zohar. It jumped out at me from the bookshelves. I'd asked Zohar what his name meant.

"The light of the sun," he said, beaming.

Dan Kozak and Zohar Sharon are to me works of splendor. I know how sentimental this can sound, and how far away from the world of professional golf this takes us. But I'm glad they took me far from that world this last week.

I hope to travel there with them again, into their golfing worlds of splendor, where they shine a light on ways of seeing the game. They opened up my eyes, and for that I thank them.

This story is courtesy of golfoberver.com.