Having tested himself in some big golf tournaments this year, England’s Thomas Blizzard has absorbed a lot. Being 18 years-old he is also busy learning about life. He still misses his share of putts, and he’ll continue to do that. He can still get social situations wrong, but he will always return to pressure-filled championships and try his best. Such mistakes that he may make owing to his condition of Autism are part of his learning curve. What makes him tick as a golfer.
It seems, like examining a golf swing in detail, that he is studying himself in order to better find his way. If so, it is working, as his name is now starting to feature on honours’ boards from a number of key amateur golf championships.
“I’m in the sport class Intellectual 2. Difficulties you can face include general anxiety on a whole and struggling to gauge situations. It’s mainly the physical, social aspect of it you can struggle with but there are other things that it entails.
“When just playing, golf helps me to relax, and it gives me time to spend with family and friends,” says the tall young man from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, who was introduced to the game by his Grandfather at Droitwich Golf Club when he was aged 11, and where he is a member today.
“But I love the pressure that golf puts on you. You are the only person that can control the outcome and ultimately if you go out there, do the best you can, and someone’s better than you on the day, then they’re just better than you. In golf there is no hiding place.”
We had the pleasure of talking with Thomas both at The 2024 G4D Open at Woburn and later in the season, and he told us more about his condition.
“When I was younger, I was very closed off. I didn’t have many friends, I didn’t really talk to many people. I wouldn’t play normal games. I’d be fixated on certain things and I have a lack of social understanding. I know that a lot of people around my age try to talk to everybody and be friends with everyone but that’s just not going to work for me. I can’t do that. So I have two, three really close friends and I like it that way.
“Part of my condition of Autism makes social and high pressure scenarios extremely difficult to function in. With golf being a heavily mental game it often leads to my detriment as I can easily get frustrated over things when they don’t go as planned, and this will then lead to a knock-on effect for the holes to come.”
Golf, as an individual game offering focused play, would immediately appeal to Thomas as a youngster. He tells us that while there are aspects of golf as an activity that suit his condition, the challenges are never far away behind the next corner of any golf course.
“Obviously the focus aspect of being able to go and hit hundreds of balls and look at videos, that’s fantastic. However, that’s also what got me injured. And you struggle to gauge your own emotions. You can sometimes be on the golf course and be completely fine. You may have just made a ‘double’ [double-bogey score] out of nowhere and you’re fine.”
But, says Thomas, he could later three-putt for bogey from far away on a green and then have a “complete head-off” (as he calls it), descending into a mental fog that is difficult to escape from. “Basically, your grip pressure increases, you start physically getting uptight, shaking, all of that. And obviously in golf you want to keep it simple, you don’t want to start increasing grip pressure and start shaking.”
Thomas is insightful when speaking about his condition, he is clearly a very bright person; his analysis in conversation of the swings, strategies, strengths and weaknesses of the likes of Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler would impress any professional analyst.
“My Year Two teacher said to my Mum that he’s a little bit different academically, everything is very logical, he’s very good at maths and all of that. And those are traits of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) normally. But my Mum made me feel that I was ‘normal’ all the time. She didn’t alienate me and say, look, you’re different in this way. So I was quite sheltered from it when I was younger. Then when I started to get a little bit older, and became more aware, I looked into it myself and pushed for the diagnosis.
“I can come across as quite monotone, sometimes abrupt with people, even aggressive, which is never my intention. It can just happen through the way I speak and my tone. So if I then can explain this to people, that I’m not actually doing this on purpose, that it naturally is this way, then it can help other people to understand.”
Interestingly, Thomas will also tell you that he doesn’t want to merely adopt saccharin phrases to trot out in social situations to seem ‘nicer’. He does value the frankness of his communications both positive and sometimes negative; he wants to present the real Thomas, a viewpoint that might give pause for thought to all those who feel they are sophisticated social animals, but then shrug off their insincerity when they look themselves in the mirror.
Playing in EDGA tournaments in ‘G4D’ (golf for the disabled) has already helped Thomas, who says: “With the EDGA events, I can let my guard down and I can relax and be who I actually am instead of having to think what am I going to do next and go through it all. I can be fairly off the cuff, which is great.
“It’s quite a safe environment to be in, especially for potentially more vulnerable people who may be a bit more closed off. It’s a great place to be. You can be yourself and not have to worry.”
Just as Thomas was welcomed into this community of players he wants to encourage others, and he says he feels pride that he has already inspired another young player with Autism to join in with G4D events.
When we last spoke with Thomas, 2024 had already been an exciting summer. Consistent performances in EDGA events propelled Thomas into the ‘gross’ top 20 of the World Ranking for Golfers with Disability and he secured his place to play in one of the two England teams competing in the EGA European Team Championship for Golfers with Disability, and The Nations’ Cup, in Germany in mid-July. Both England teams would finish in second place in their respective events; Thomas labelling all the team managers and players as “a great bunch of people”.
This experience followed Thomas’s debut in the prestigious G4D Open: the flagship global G4D championship staged by The R&A in partnership with the DP World Tour and supported by EDGA. This year saw 80 players competing from 19 countries, in nine ‘sport classes’ which cover all impairment categories: three standing classes, two seated categories, two intellectual classes and two categories for golfers with a visual impairment.
Before he could focus on the tournament proper, Thomas had to make room in his final practice day for something else that was quite important too, namely sitting his A Level in Business Studies, at North Bromsgrove Sixth Form.
“I had an A Level on the Tuesday morning,” explains Thomas. “So we came up on the Monday and after a first practice we had to go back home. The exam was in the morning, so I sat in there for two hours. Then we drove back to Woburn in a couple of hours to try and make the practice round in the afternoon. It was interesting!”
He did feel that coping with his condition played a role in his last round struggles under pressure at Woburn, but he would not only win his sport class, Intellectual 2, but would run the leaders of the overall tournament very close. His rounds of 76, 73, 76 for seventh place overall on the challenging Duchess Course sets him a benchmark for a return next year; Thomas called it a “fantastic event”.
Thomas isn’t just an emerging star in ‘G4D’ events. His victory in August in the Sir Nick Faldo Commemoration Jug has also been noted by many in the game, this prestigious event held at Faldo’s first home club, Welwyn Garden City GC, in which club champions from all over England are able to compete in an illustrious field of players. Earlier, in June, Thomas also won the Under-21 trophy in the Worcestershire County Championships.
Like many strong players – Thomas’s golf handicap is +0.1 at the time of writing – he can be highly analytical about all aspects of his game; and possibly as part of his condition, this thinking can go to extremes.
He says at one point: “With the physical technique aspect of it, my swing will look different from the course to my swing on the range. It’s all about a feel of getting into certain positions on the course, I’ll take it back to parallel with the ground and then I’ll just naturally swing and that’s why if I get the technique good on the range, on course it’ll then be better. But I massively overthink on the golf course. I overcomplicate it leaps and bounds.”
One constant for Thomas has been the support of Dad Andrew and Mum, Kate. Andrew has accompanied his son to hundreds of golf games and is a good player himself. He was helping with the dashing back and forth when Thomas was combining sitting A Levels with playing at Woburn. When asked about fitting the rest of life in with golf this brought simply an enigmatic smile from Thomas’s Dad.
“I appreciate massively the commitment my Mum and Dad have put in over the years,” adds Thomas. “My Mum has always supported me and never pushed me into any of it, and my Dad has sacrificed a lot of time to take me to events since I reached the level where I needed to go all over the UK. A special thanks to my Granddad who’s helped me the whole way and without him I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Thomas cites golf personal trainer Ray Jakeman for helping him back to fitness after the back injury he mentioned after practising so hard; Ray helping him to regain vital yards with the longer shots. On the subject of gaining vital extra yards, and accuracy, Thomas was also delighted to receive support in his club fitting from PING Golf Europe in the UK in 2024.
“I am also very grateful for all the support from my coach of the last five years, Jamie Carney, the Head Professional at Robin Hood Golf Club, Solihull, who has helped my game tremendously and offered me the opportunity of starting work towards my next step.”
The young man has just started his three-year Professional Golf Studies degree at Birmingham University, working out of Robin Hood GC, with Jamie’s support as a mentor. Thomas tells us that when he has completed the coaching side of his degree he would be keen to coach others with ASD/Autism, share his experiences and help promote G4D and EDGA.
“Finally, a massive thank you to Droitwich Golf Club; their continued support has allowed me to push on, and with the improvements to the course, thanks to Billy Hayes and Tom Waldron, it’s allowed me to sharpen my game on a golf course in great condition.”
Meanwhile, he and his family have clearly learned to manage his condition of Autism well. He recognises all the ways it can challenge him socially and on the course and through awareness comes steady progress. He’ll tell you he may still get some social moments wrong, and will continue to get “complete head-offs” on the course, but his intelligence, exemplified by how he thinks about golf and talks about Autism, can surely be an inspiration to other young people experiencing similar issues. He is gradually understanding himself more and more as a person.
And with Thomas’s level of commitment, focus and his love of everything about golf, who knows how far he can go in the game, and who else he can bring with him on his journey.
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