Ranks of black pro golfers remains low
While black athletes dominate such sports as basketball and football, the ranks of black professional golfers has remained minuscule, with Charlie Sifford, Calvin Peete, Lee Elder and Tiger Woods being notable exceptions.
While some observers attribute the paltry professional representation to lack of interest, the deeper reasons may be tied to financial and racial factors.
Although African-Americans have long been involved in golf, the professional tour excluded black players for decades.
George F. Grant, a black dentist in Boston, invented the modern golf tee in 1899, but the PGA Tour enforced a
clause” that prevented blacks from playing professionally until 1961.
Robert Hawkins, a black man, founded the United Golf Association in 1928 as an alternative for black golfers who were barred from the PGA Tour. The UGA operated a series of tournaments and was the only professional option available for blacks.
Many observers hoped that Woods’ emergence in the late ‘90s would create more buzz for golf in black communities, but participation rates remain largely the same. At least one professional golfer said Woods’ immense success, while admired, did not not translate into more golfers in the black community.
“That’s a once in a lifetime athlete,” said Harold Varner III, a fellow PGA Tour golfer. “There’s not enough black golfers that come through the ranks, grind it out and figure it out. He just won everything, you know? Just an absolute stud who happened to be black. I think it’s hard to compare to Tiger. Anyone, any race.”
For some young blacks in Memphis, reaching the level of golfers like Woods and Varner just got even harder because options to learn the game are now more limited.
The Memphis location of First Tee closed this summer, according to Austin Williams, the communications coordinator of First Tee, a youth development program focused on introducing golf to young people.
The rise and fall of The First Tee of Memphis
Charles Hudson, 73, was hired as the facility manager at The Links at Pine Hill golf course in 1989. He held a junior golf tournament in the first two summers in an attempt to get more black kids in Memphis involved in the sport.
“None of the kids could even keep up,” he said. “I’ll put it in terms of basketball, (the other) kids could make 3what pointers and our kids couldn’t even make a layup. So, it wasn’t even a game, it wasn’t even a contest.”
The results inspired Hudson to create the Mid-South Junior Golf Association in 1991, a program aimed at preparing kids to play for their high school teams and make it to college.
“I felt like it was something that God wanted me to do, especially with the fact that I was the only minority head golf professional in the state of Tennessee,” Hudson said. “For me to get the job, I just felt like the least I could do was to give back to the community and make golf a little bit more available for them.”
It was an immense success, sending dozens of kids to play for college teams across the nation and leading others to jobs as golf professionals. “We used to average 200-250 kids out here a day, three or four days a week,” Hudson said. “We did that for a number of years. It really got to be extremely big.”
For Hudson, part of fostering the program was traveling and making connections. One of his destinations was the East West Golf Cup, where he met Earl Woods. Sometimes Earl would bring his son, Tiger, who was attending college at Stanford.
Hudson and others made donations to help Tiger play in tournaments like the British and U.S. Open. “That’s how bad the money situation is,” Hudson said, “Tiger has been there too.”
Later, Hudson and Tiger Woods teamed up to hold junior golf clinics in cities like Orlando, Houston, New Orleans and St. Louis. They held a clinic in Memphis at the Links at Pine Hill in 1997, the same year as Woods’ iconic Masters Tournament victory.
“Tiger came to Memphis to give back, especially to the inner cities, to try and help promote golf,” Hudson said. “When he came here and the United States Golf Association saw our program, they started talking about The First Tee program.”
The First Tee came to Memphis in 1997 along with a $250,000 grant from the USGA. It combined with Hudson’s program, becoming the Mid-South Junior Golf Association/The First Tee of Memphis.
About a decade later, Hudson was re“Caucasian-only moved from the group’s board of directors for absences at meetings. He keeps his dismissal letter framed at Pine Hill. “It was all my idea,” he said. “I put a lot of my money in it. I put my philosophy together. They kept everything except for me.”
Now The First Tee is gone, and for the first time since its inception, the MSJGA will be inactive.
Digging for the root of the issue
While attending Booker T. Washington High School in the 1960s, Fred Jones Jr. often caught the bus from South Memphis to the Memphis Country Club in East Memphis. The Southern Heritage Classic founder wasn’t going there to play, though; He was a caddie.
“I didn’t know anything about golf,” Jones said. “For a lot of the guys who got into golf then, it was because they were caddies. There weren’t any black members of the Memphis Country Club. Most of the caddies, probably 99 percent of them, were black.”
In his 20s Jones worked and traveled with late soul legend Isaac Hayes. It was then that he got the chance to immerse himself in the game as he played at various courses in different cities.
Once back in Memphis he became the first black member at what was then known as Farmington Country Club (now the Germantown Country Club) and has played in the FedEx St. Jude Classic Pro-Am for more than 30 years. There were several years where he was the only black participant.
Jones, now 70, credited the access he had as a caddie for his sustained interest in the sport. “Would I have been in golf if I hadn’t been a caddie? I doubt it,” he said. “It was having that access to even be aware of the game.”
Harold Varner III had a more conventional start growing up in Gastonia, North Carolina. He started playing at a community golf course as a preteen and his parents paid $100 for him to have unlimited access on weekdays at a course during the summer. The Carolinas Golf Association helped pay for tournament entry fees.
“I had a great experience,” said Varner. “I had a lot of people help me like that, which I don’t think a lot of people do. I just think that if you don’t have a lot of kids around you doing it, it’s hard to do it on your own to say the least.”
While playing in the FESJC in June, Varner, 27, was the only black golfer out of 156 competitors. “Anytime Tiger is not playing I’m usually the only one,” he said. “It’s just kind of been normal. It is it is.”
One of the strongest barriers keeping more blacks from starting to play is its cost. Purchasing golf clubs, bags and balls can easily cost someone thousands of dollars.
“Back when I started, man you could get a whole set of clubs (for) a couple hundred dollars,” Jones said. “Pretty decent clubs, probably even get the bag, too. It’s just different today and I don’t think that’s gonna change so it’s gonna affect people.”
While there are public courses like The Links at Pine Hill, it is costly to join a private course.
“There’s a big difference between a public course and a private course,” Jones said. “Even if you’re a pretty decent player on a public course, a private course is totally different. You got water, sand, the greens are bigger, there’s rough and all that stuff.”
Another leading factor for why more blacks don’t play golf is how time consuming it is. Being able to spend four to five hours playing a game is a luxury that many people can’t afford. .
When factoring in the time needed to practice and polish one’s skill, becoming great at golf becomes less realistic.
“If you’re going to develop as a player to get to the PGA level, first you’ve got to have the skills, you’ve got to have the lessons, you’ve got to have the commitment to it, all of those things have to be in place,” Jones said. “Only a very few people are going to be able to have that in order to give themselves a reasonable chance.”
Jones maintains that the number of local caddy jobs he had as a teenager or even summer programs like the one Varner attended have greatly declined, further restricting the number of young blacks who have the chance to experience golf.
Looking forward
The absence of entry-level golf options in Memphis has further clouded the outlook for future golfers in the black community.
Well-funded programs are a start, but The First Tee proved that sometimes even that isn’t enough. Results won’t follow without genuine and sustained efforts from the people in charge, Hudson said.
“Someone has to take the leadership role and make it happen,” Hudson said. “There has to be strong junior golf programs and people who really want to work toward making things happen for the kids.”