The clipped tense silence on the course is broken by the crack of Zohar Sharon’s five-iron as the golf ball flies into the distance. Sharon can’t see it but he can tell by the whack and the air current that it was a good shot just inches away from the 130-meter flag he was targeting on the practice green.

“Totally straight” he says flashing the huge smile that rarely leaves his face. “A peles [level].”

Sharon a former IDF officer and Mossad and Shin Bet operative who lost his sight 30 years ago in a field mission is the world’s best blind golfer defending a string of world championships since 2000 when he entered his first professional tournament.

But the story of Zohar Sharon 57 is more than the sum total of the dozens of trophies that line his living room in Moshav Aviel near Hadera. It is the story of a military hero’s rise and fall – and rise again with a spirit revealed through deep faith hard work intense concentration and an internal overhaul.

Since 2003 when he won the World Invitational blind golf tournament in Scotland he’s taken international championships in Australia the US Canada and England. This summer he returned as a world champ in the British Open’s World Blind Golf Championships at Whittlebury Park. Before that he made headlines with a statistically improbably hole-in-one on his home turf the Caeserea Golf Club where he practices 10 hours a day except Shabbos.

“I thought I’d overshot it. Then when Shimshon my caddy started screaming and jumping up and down I thought he’d been bitten by a snake.” 

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