Mark Clougherty is one of the many veterans of the Iraq war who continue to carry the mental and physical scars of their service.
A former officer in the Royal Military Police, Clougherty suffered with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for several years following a near-death experience when he was almost struck by a Challenger tank in the Kuwait desert, where he had been deployed to save three engineers who had been taken hostage there in 2003.
In between, he has overcome testicular cancer and a double right leg fracture playing football which left him with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, affecting his nervous system.
Through all that, he has displayed immense resolve to use sport as a vehicle to provide purpose alongside the support of his wife, Jennifer, and three children, Cieran, Rhys and Niamh.
In 2022, after a couple of false alarms due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Clougherty represented Team UK at the Invictus Games across both wheelchair athletics and cycling, winning three gold medals and one bronze.
Since then, he has turned his focus to golf and is now set to make his G4D Tour debut at the Betfred British Masters as one of the best golfers in the net world rankings.
Here, in a candid Player Blog, the Scottish-born 52-year-old, who now lives in Northern Ireland, talks about his remarkable story of resilience amid a series of mental health struggles and his excitement at teeing it up at The Belfry Hotel & Resort.
At first, in the immediate aftermath [of his near-death experience], I didn’t think anything of it. I noticed things in my behaviour a couple of days later when I really exploded and was really angry, but it never clicked what made me do that.
In 2005, I was getting ready to deploy for my second tour to Iraq and about four weeks before I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Based in Germany, I was already off work at the time with glandular fever. By coincidence, my daughter, Niamh, who was two at the time had a doctor’s appointment and within 24 hours I was being told I had a tumour. I burst into tears walking down the staircase. I was in hospital later that afternoon in Hannover. Everything was unravelling around me. I had a really bad time the first two days undergoing radiotherapy, eventually spending two weeks in hospital.
By 2009, I had moved to Northern Ireland and was playing semi-professional football. I had a really bad leg break, fracturing both my tibia and fibula, and damaged my knee. The ambulance came to the pitch, and I was in tears. I just knew that was the last time I’d ever play football. After returning home after almost a week in hospital, everything just spiralled downwards severely to the point where I considered whether I would take my own life. One morning, while on the phone to a family liaison, I burst into tears. I was taken to see a doctor and placed under the care of a community psychiatric team in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.
During that period, I was diagnosed with PTSD, related to Iraq and my cancer. I suffer from a lot of anxiety, my mood can become very low, and I can have really bad anger issues. Something can just set me off and I explode. There was one occasion several years later, in 2019, when I had a panic attack in the kitchen and was struggling with my breathing.
With the football injury I suffered, I developed a condition called CRPS which affects the nervous system and the muscles and joints of my right leg. It primarily affects my foot really badly, with my toes being turned over and my knee points out to the right. It has led to depression as well. Still to this day, my mood fluctuates.
Sport is massive to me. When my football injury happened, I thought that was me. I got into coaching, however, and that got off in a big way. It turned out that it was something I was really good at. I enjoyed how it helped me develop players. It was great to see young boys develop into players who had trials with professional clubs or who represented Northern Ireland at schoolboy level. But in the back of my head, I was thinking I was doing that for other people rather than myself. Yes, it helped me with my confidence, got me out of the house and helped with my PTSD because I could focus on something but there was this feeling that I’d never done anything for myself.
In November 2017, I got an email from Help for Heroes that they were putting forward a small British team to go to the US Air Forces trials for the DoD Warrior Games, from which Prince Harry got the idea for the Invictus Games. Essentially, the six departments of the American defence compete against each other in adaptive sports. I told my wife about it, and she said to go for it. I filled out the application form, but for almost a month I tried to find ways of talking her out of talking me in! I was anxious about going and leaving the family. Due to the PTSD, there was a resistance to leaving my family. I was selected, trained and trained for cycling and indoor rowing. In my last training session before going, I noticed a pain in my groin area when I was sitting. No matter what position I put the saddle in, I couldn’t get the pain away. But I thought nothing of it. I went out and gave it a go. But within 40 minutes of my race, the pain resurfaced, and it intensified, but I wasn’t about to quit. I didn’t want to show I was weak, but the tears were there. When I crossed the finish line, I had tremors down my leg which I had never experienced before. The pain was horrendous. After being taken to hospital, I tried to move my leg, and it was as if I was looking at someone else’s foot. I just couldn’t move it. I lost the movement of my foot for four days and then it started to come back gradually. I was on a drip at the time. This was my first experience of how bad my CRPS could be, nine years after I was first diagnosed with it. I was subsequently told I’d never be able to ride a road bike again because the stress on my body was causing the tremors.
But I soon, later in 2018, got asked whether I wanted to try wheelchair athletics. I came through trials, finishing in the top three in track and road disciplines, and was later told that I’d been confirmed to represent Team UK at the Invictus Games at The Hague in 2020. But it was cancelled due to Covid-19, and then the same in 2021. From there, my mood went downhill again until mid-2021. But when I was told the Games were likely going to go ahead in 2022, it gave me a purpose again and I returned to training. My wife, friends all came out to the Netherlands to watch me. I was so emotional before my first race, couldn’t event look at my wife or friends when I got on the track for the 1500m. I finished third which was way better than I thought I’d do. I then had the 200m, went for it, and won gold. Two hours later, I won the 100m, and then later that day won the 400m. I was then on BBC TV that evening. It was all a whirlwind, quite surreal. I had to pull out of my rowing disciplines due to a chest infection. I managed to do the hand bike time trial but then started to have tremors again in my right leg. So, I withdrew from one of the other events. I went to the 2023 Invictus Games in Dusseldorf as a reserve and was then asked to help too as the wheelchair athletics coach. To do that and see the athletes medal was fantastic. Of course you are disappointed that you couldn’t compete yourself, but it was an enjoyable experience.
After playing golf with my son most of the winter in 2023, I came across EDGA while searching online about disability golf. It wasn’t long before I started playing in events, and it quickly became my new focus to keep me looking forward. I played four events in 2024, and it gave made the confidence that I could compete, having only really started playing the sport again a year earlier. I won an event in Portugal in Gramacho in January by 11 shots at the start of this year. Everything I do, I have an imposter syndrome, I never believe I should be where I am. It’s as if I don’t belong. After winning again in Ireland in April, for the first time I allowed myself to congratulate myself.
To know that I will be in the same environment as DP World Tour professionals is something that I am really looking forward to. But I am still questioning why I am there. But I tell myself, I have been selected, I belong there so I need to just go and enjoy the experience. It will be brilliant to have my eldest son, Cieran, caddie for me. He likes his golf as well, and we’re aware there are players who are going to try and be making it into the European Ryder Cup team. It will be an amazing experience for both of us.
