South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Hyde: Johnson’s unusual journey
Dropping out of school after 8th grade, Kamaiu Johnson’s journey into golf definitely rates as one of most atypical
The story begins 10 feet off the fourth green where the kid lived.
Isn’t that how you’d expect a successful golf story to start? In some rich cul-de-sac of society? With a spoiled eighth grader growing up by a green?
Except this golf story has no spoiled kid, no rich cul-de-sac, and the only reason it involves an eighth grader is because Kamaiu Johnson dropped out of school before ninth grade. It was a school day when the story starts too. That spawned his first lie.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” asked Jan Auger, who was playing the hole.
“I’m home-schooled,’’ Johnson said.
With nothing to do, he was swinging a stick like a golfer outside his grandmother’s apartment complex beside the fourth green of Hilaman Golf Course in Tallahassee. Johnson hadn’t swung a real golf club to that point. His mother just moved Johnson from Madison County, where Blacks didn’t feel allowed on the golf course. Not that he had thoughts of playing either.
But Auger saw something in the 14-year-old that day and asked if he’d like to hit a bucket of balls at the range. She even gave him a 9-iron. Thus began a story that restores your faith in the purpose of sports, of the people involved in them — and of larger humanity in general.
Johnson, now 27, plays in the Honda Classic this week on a sponsor exemption after making his PGA Tour debut last month at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in California. But don’t get the wrong idea. He hasn’t made it in the manner of others on the pro tour.
Until recently, he slept for 2 ½ years on the couch of his friend’s apartment in Orlando to save
money. He also just got his first car two weeks ago. Before that, he’d borrow cars to drive to tournaments.
He’d get financial help from friends, businessmen — an uncle even passed around a hat at his cigar bar in Tallahassee to fund his nephew’s dream.
“You know how they say it takes a village?” Johnson said. “Well, I’m fortunate to have a village help me.”
It started that day with Auger, who was the general manager of golf in Tallahassee. That connection helped. She offered to let him play $1 rounds of golf if he helped do chores at the course — paint, clean carts, whatever.
So for the next five years, Johnson was at the golf course from sunup to sundown, either working or playing golf. It wasn’t some Disney film. His family didn’t understand.
They never played golf; the only black playing prominently on the PGA Tour was Tiger Woods, and they’d ask him, “Why don’t you get a real job?”
He also was caught taking food once from the course. Auger talked with him.
“I had no food at home,’’ he said. “Fortunately, Jan gave me some tough love. That’s when our relationship really took off.
“She could’ve wiped her hands of me. She became like a mom to me. She let me stay on the course. And golf honestly saved my life.”
At 21, Johnson moved to New York with a friend and fellow golfer, Vin Hunter, to caddie and play in sanctioned amateur tournaments. He made $400 a day caddying two bags on a round. He also got a taste of tournament golf, qualifying for competitive tournaments and finishing second in the Westchester Amateur.
“That was when I knew I wanted to chase the game of golf,’’ he said.
It’s an expensive game, and this is where Johnson’s village came in.
He starts ticking off names: Ramon Alexander, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, let Johnson live with him for a few years as a teenager; Cedric Shephard, a Tallahassee dentist, gave him a couple of hundred dollars regularly; Marcus Beck, a vice president at Merrill Lynch, gave him up to $1,200 a month; Paul Dean, Hank Satz, Jaworski Vance, the names go on.
“Black people, white people — so many people helped me,’’ Johnson said. “That’s how it’s been.
“It’s why I want to succeed. That’s the only way I can try to repay some of these people for what they did for me.”
When Johnson began to have some success on the PGA mini-tour last summer, finishing third at the St. Louis Open, his story attracted attention. He got sponsors such as
Farmers Insurance, Cisco and Cambridge Mobile Telematics.
“Most of those CEOs came from nothing to run Fortune 500 companies,’’ he said. “They’ve never seen me swing a golf club, but they believed in me. They’ve heard what I’ve done to get here.”
Johnson was supposed to make his pro debut at the Farmers Insurance Open this year, but he tested positive for COVID-19. That set back his game for a bit.
It also got him sponsors exemptions. He missed the cuts in Pebble Beach and the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
“Now I’m back to hitting it like pre-COVID,’’ Johnson said.
Now comes the Honda tournament. He’s a long way from the fourth green outside his grandmother’s complex, a long way from being an eighth-grade dropout.
The only question now is if his good game can catch up to his powerful story.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — For the second time in less than two weeks, Florida State had squandered a double-digit lead and found itself down in the second half against North Carolina.
This time, the 15th-ranked Seminoles pushed their way back in front to reach the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship game.
Anthony Polite hit the go-ahead
3-pointer with 2 minutes, 6 seconds left before the Seminoles held off the Tar Heels 69-66 in Friday night’s semifinals and earned a matchup with Georgia Tech.
Balsa Koprivica had career highs of 17 points and 11 rebounds for his second career double-double to lead the second-seeded Seminoles (16-5), who blew a
13-point lead, then rallied from five down midway through the second half to grind out a tough win that came down to the final seconds.
It was nearly two weeks earlier that the Tar Heels rallied from 16 down to beat the Seminoles when
FSU faltered with a cold-shooting and mistake-filled performance after halftime. But the Seminoles clamped down defensively late Friday, holding the Tar Heels to one field goal over the final four minutes.
“I would just say we knew we needed to make big key stops, and we’re all just motivated and committed to just making those stops as a team,” said freshman Scottie Barnes, who had 11 points, five rebounds and four assists.
“We knew what happened last time, so we knew we just couldn’t give up this opportunity we have this time.”
The sixth-seeded Tar Heels
(18-10) had a chance for a desperation play to tie it with one second left, but Anthony Harris couldn’t catch Leaky Black’s half-court pass to get up a tying 3-pointer.
That set up Florida State’s matchup with Georgia Tech, which advanced when its semifinal game against No. 16 Virginia was canceled due to a positive
COVID-19 test, quarantining and contact tracing within the Cavaliers program.
Caleb Love scored 13 points to lead the Tar Heels, who shot 34% for the game and made just 1 of 8 shots as this one slipped away. Fellow freshman Kerwin Walton scored all 11 of his points after halftime.
UNC led 64-62 on three free throws by RJ Davis with 3:14 left but didn’t score again until trailing by four in the final five seconds.
“Bottom line is their defense late in the game was much stronger than our offense was,” UNC coach Roy Williams said, adding: “We never got another good shot after [Davis’ free throws] the whole time.”
Big picture
UNC: The Tar Heels opened the tournament with a 42-point win against Notre Dame — the program’s biggest margin ever in an ACC Tournament — and then a strong second-half performance helped them beat No. 22 Virginia Tech in Thursday’s quarterfinals.
They fought back behind Walton’s outside shooting and a surge inside from Armando Bacot to go up 51-46 but couldn’t hold onto that lead and struggled to find a clean look late. Still, they’ve done more than enough to earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“We thought with two minutes left, this was our game,” said Bacot, who scored nine of his 12 points after halftime.
FSU: The Seminoles were making a delayed tournament debut, with their scheduled quarterfinal against Duke called off when the Blue Devils withdrew due to a positive COVID-19 test and quarantines within the program.
Now they’re hoping to claim a third tournament title, joining their 2012 crown as well as last year when they were awarded the trophy as the regular-season champion when the league shut down the tournament due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“You never know what’s going to happen throughout these tough times,” Barnes said. “You’ve just got to be grateful for every game you get to play.”
RARE MATCHUP: Saturday will mark the second time in league history that no North Carolina-based team will appear in the ACC championship game. The only other time came in 1990 when Final Four-bound Georgia Tech beat Virginia in Charlotte.