EDGA PROFILE: MANON EGGERMONT – Ladies European Tour

“It is like a new chapter in a book. It’s like you can close one and then start writing your new chapter, only with the thought that you know what you have, so you can start living with the disease. And that’s not a chapter, that’s another life. “

Manon Eggermont – tough love and second chances

Written by EDGA

Manon Eggermont is the Director of Tournaments for EDGA. When overseeing a championship, she meets the competitors as they sign in before the event and is constantly impressed with how these golfers, with a range of disabilities, prepare to take on the course and push themselves to the maximum.

Some of the players first get to know her on competition day when they hand in their scorecards after aiming to break 70, 80 or 90, whatever their goal is on the day.

Manon’s smile, ready laugh, and calm manner in her work is in accord with how many of these players approach their own lives, and their golf. Most embrace the fact that friendship and competition in playing this game can help with everyone’s mental wellbeing and physical health.

Back in 2012, when a doctor told the then 40 year-old Manon to be prepared that she might not live past the age of 60, it was a shock. But this doctor was looking at a clipboard full of statistics on her condition around a faulty gene, ‘HLA-B27’: while the person sitting opposite the earnest white coated medico quickly focused on another target.

For on her own scorecard Manon is highly focused on breaking 70, but going in an upward rather than downward direction. In fact, Manon is determined to break 80, with recent birdies on this scorecard being the blessed arrival of her two young sons, Sébastien, in 2015, and Maxime in 2017.

Meanwhile, she is thriving in her work for EDGA, where she is much-liked and respected in the community of self-termed ‘Golfers First’ (ie, person first, disability second), having been a volunteer for the not-for-profit organisation for more than a decade and now sitting on EDGA’s Board of Directors in her tournament role.

We asked her about her condition.

“Well, I have a defect gene and it’s pretty much this that can lead to infection in my blood. It’s an auto-immune disease, and it takes the force out of my body; every year a little bit more. And the more stress I get, the more my functions suffer. So if I do too much, I get sick, and can get really sick. I have needed chemotherapy to get over it – to get better – or strong medication, and it…