In the Detroit inner-city neighbourhood in which Bettis grew up in the 1970s and ’80s, there was one Black man who played golf. He cut Bettis’ hair, and he managed one day to cajole the hulking kid who would become a Hall of Fame football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers to accompany him to the driving range. The barber so loved the game that he opened his shop at dawn so that he could flip the “Closed” sign early and squeeze in a round, or even a few holes, before dark.

Bettis went mostly out of courtesy. He’d never been to a golf course. No one but the barber ever said a word about the sport. Even bowling was more familiar because his mother taught it to her boys and the other kids in the neighbourhood. Safe and indoors, it kept them out of trouble.

That first driving range experience for Bettis did not go well. Golf was hard. In football, he exploded through people as a running back. In golf, that ball just sat there, staring at him, daring him. It could not be pummeled into submission.

Bettis brushed off the silly sport and didn’t dare tell his football buddies he’d even tried it. “They’d have laughed at me, like, ‘You’re crazy! What are you talking about?!” the 48-year-old said in a recent phone conversation. “The next question would have been, ‘Where are you going to play at?’ And the one after that would be, ‘Where are you going to get the money to play?’”

In one anecdote, Bettis summed up what it has been like for so many people of colour when it comes to golf.

The emergence of Tiger Woods and the subsequent formation of youth programs such as The First Tee have changed that landscape to some degree, but there is work still to be done in the estimation of some Black athletes who have come to love the game as adults, but never considered it an option as young people.

In interviews with Golf Digest during the American Century Championship on Lake Tahoe in Nevada, with the images of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis and social-justice protests fresh in the public psyche, a handful of Black sports stars—from 56-year-old former NBA player Dell Curry to 33-year-old female long-driving champion Troy Mullins—shared stories of how they came to enjoy, and yes, obsess, about golf.

Each is unique, but there were running themes throughout.

None of them showed much interest or awareness of the game as kids because they didn’t have the access, the money or the mentors to cultivate even the faintest curiosity. Neither was the game considered socially acceptable in their neighbourhoods because even if they caught a glimpse of golf on television, no one who looked like them was playing.

The athletes only took up golf after they became accomplished in their chosen sport, and even with their better access as celebrities, most have stories to tell about occasionally feeling either unwelcome or discriminated against in golf.

“Growing up, I had never been around golf. I hadn’t seen a golf course,” said Terrell Davis, the Hall of Fame running back and two-time Super Bowl champion with the Denver Broncos. “There was this image about the game of golf—it was an old white man’s game. It was expensive, and you had to be in a different economic bracket or social status to play. It was nothing that anybody in my neighbourhood talked about.”

Hall of Fame running back Terrell Davis, shown at the Marshall Faulk Celebrity Championship, started playing golf once he was in the NFL. (Photo by Jesse Grant)

Jimmy Rollins, the former major league Gold Glove shortstop who spent the bulk of his career with the Philadelphia Phillies, grew up in Alameda, Calif., outside Oakland. He was not introduced to golf as a child, though, he said, as a stick-and-ball kid, he was fascinated at a young age by the skill set it required when he watched on TV.

“That made me think that I wanted to learn, to see if I could apply what I’d seen,” Rollins, 41, said. “But there was really nothing that made me want to play. I never had a true desire to buy some clubs and say, ‘Let’s play golf!’ “

Raised in Virginia, Curry saw his white friends take up golf, but he was left out. “I never got invited,” he recalled. “I don’t want to call it racism, but I wasn’t introduced to that part of their lives.”

Curry—now most recognized as the father of NBA star Stephen Curry, an accomplished golfer himself—didn’t take up golf until a couple of years into his professional career while playing in Charlotte. This time, his teammates openly welcomed him to play.

“I went to the range and must have hit a couple of good shots, because I got the bug pretty quickly,” Curry said. “I read every golf magazine I could, learned some techniques, and I was off and running.”

Dell Curry took up golf while playing in the NBA and passed on his love for the game to his sons. (Photo by Christian Petersen)

Mullins, who won the World Long Drive tour’s 2017 Mile High Showdown with a 402-yard drive, didn’t take up golf seriously until her early 20s, after she had finished her track-and-field career at Cornell. Raised in Los Angeles, her first exposure to the game came when her mother signed her up for a summer camp in Palm Springs—and she was the only girl and African American in the group. When she won the camp’s award for “most improved,” she said she thought less about her colour than her gender.

“I had to walk up to get my trophy past all these boys!” she remembered with a laugh.

Bettis has the best story about getting started. On the Steelers, quarterback Kordell Stewart was an avid golfer, as was massive centre Dermontti Dawson. They goaded Bettis into playing with them, and when he got trounced, he was motivated to get better. At a training camp in the early 2000s in Latrobe, Pa., Arnold Palmer’s hometown, Bettis said the proprietor of a driving range kindly left him an overflowing bucket of balls every day, and he swatted them between two-a-day practices.

“A couple hundred balls—every single day,” Bettis recalled with a laugh. “I wasn’t going to stop until I could hit them consistently.”

Jerome Bettis, shown at Michael Jordan’s celebrity tournament, got better at golf by hitting hundreds of balls while in training camp with the Pittsburgh Steelers. (Photo by Marcel Thomas)

He still was more of a weekend hack until Michael Jordan shamed him at NHL star Mario Lemieux’s celebrity tournament. The NBA legend asked Bettis what he shot. Bettis: “103.” Jordan: “Man, you’re not good enough to play with me.”

“I was like, ‘What?!’ “ Bettis said. “That inspired me.” He would work to become a low single-digit handicap, and a few years later played in Lake Tahoe with Jordan. He said Jordan still beat him by a couple of strokes, but they both shot in the 70s and he’d reached his goal: “I was in the same ballpark as MJ.”

That was an issue for African-American athletes of past generations. Tiger Woods, golf’s MJ, hadn’t arrived when they were young. But when he did, even as accomplished, highly paid professionals, they were enthralled and inspired by him.

“For me, it started with Tiger,” said Rollins, who began playing golf well into a major-league career that began in 2000, perhaps Woods’ greatest season. “We saw a person of colour who was dominant in the game. He had that big smile, and the fist pumps were closer, culturally, to how we celebrate when we accomplish things. There was nothing wrong with letting your emotions run a little wild. Tiger made it OK to be a black man who wanted to play golf.”

Former major league shortstop Jimmy Rollins watched golf on TV as a kid, but didn’t feel the desire to play until he was a professional athlete. (Photo by Jonathan Devich)

Bettis reminisced about growing up wearing Air Jordan sneakers, and then he was just as happy to put on Tiger’s Sunday red shirt or his Nike shoes. “It was Tiger on the scene that changed the perception for African Americans,” Bettis said. “Golf was cool. To see that he had broken through, that he was the best in the game, it gave you a sense of pride. That spurred a lot of people on to play.”

There are some concerning obstacles, that remain, the most harrowing of which is overt racism.

Bettis retired to Atlanta after his career, and when he began shopping for a golf club to join, he said one assistant pro told him, “You may not want to join here. We have an older, white population. I will tell you they’re probably a little bit racist.”

“He was being honest with me, and I appreciated that,” Bettis said. “It was a dose of reality. I realized I was in the deep South and golf had always been a white, elitist sport. I wasn’t shocked by it at all. I knew it existed. I wasn’t naïve.”

Bettis eventually joined the highly acclaimed Golf Club of Georgia, where he said the membership is a “melting pot.” He also has played once at Augusta National with Lou Holtz, a club member and his head coach at Notre Dame. “The best experience ever,” he said of playing at the home of the Masters. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. The staff there was great.”

Mullins said even at the recent American Century Championship, where the field is as diverse in race and gender as any tournament staged on national TV, she felt as if she was singled out for her race. She said after the first round, an official chided and warned her individually for slow play, though she was grouped with golfers she believed were more deliberate—Charles Barkley and sports broadcaster Kathryn Tappen. (Mullins beat both of them handily in the tournament.) Mullins, playing in the event for the first time, said that if any warning was issued, it should have been to the group.

“I find this incredibly inappropriate,” she said she told the official.

“I felt every bit my colour,” Mullins said of the circumstance. “And I think in looking at me as a woman, he felt that he held the right and the power to be aggressive with me.”

Troy Millins, a World Long Drive competitor who played her first American Century Championship this year, was a track-and-field athlete at Cornell before taking up golf. (Photo by Christian Petersen)

Racial undertones can be what golfers feel, not just hear. Many accomplished athletes, no matter their colour, are invited to exclusive clubs to play because of their celebrity status. Once there, however, it can be a different experience for a Black person. Rollins said he has sometimes been asked to make the rounds to meet members when simple introductions on the course would suffice.

“I was introduced in the clubhouse and to the members as ‘This is my new Black friend I’m going to play with,’ ” Rollins said. “This is where the Black experience comes in. You try to ask yourself, ‘Is that just me feeling that way?’ But I don’t know, because we’ve seen it before. It goes back to when Blacks were enslaved in this country and put on stage to be shown for purchase. It feels like that again—I’m on display for everyone to see. It’s not a natural way of introducing people—‘let’s go around and introduce you.’ I don’t want to do that, but I don’t want to be a bad guest.”

The key for the future, Rollins and others said, is to further develop the programs that introduce younger African-Americans to the game, and thus create a larger group that may influence who are the country club members of the future.

Steph Curry is something of renaissance man in that cause. The 32-year-old Golden State Warriors star has contributed to and promoted The First Tee of Oakland, will reportedly host a Bay Area PGA Tour event beginning in 2021 and is the executive producer and resident golf “pro” on a silly, but golf-themed primetime program, “Holey Moley.” Not to be underestimated, he can be seen playing golf by a national TV audience in the American Century Championship.

Tiger Woods is America’s favourite black golfer, but Curry might be gaining on him, and that can’t be bad for the game, his father contends.

“Steph is one of those people,” Dell Curry said, “that African-American kids can look up to, who can get people to spread the word about how important golf is.”

Unlike the many Black athletes who came before him, Steph did grow up with a golf club in his hand. Dell Curry cut down putters for his two sons at a young age and they frequently followed him around the course. Dell instilled in them early what he believed to be golf’s greatest values: personal connections, hard work, overcoming failure, and having fun.

In examining the issue of how golf can be more inclusive to people of colour, Steph Curry said in a statement to Golf Digest that a “long approach” is required.

A joyful Stephen Curry celebrates chipping in on the 16th hole during the 2020 American Century Championship. (Photo by Christian Petersen)

“There is a lot of talent in the black community to play golf,” Curry said. “There’s just not the access to golf courses and the resources for getting equipment. It’s obviously a very expensive sport.

“It’s continuing to reach into the grassroots level, to get kids connected with a golf club in their hand through the elementary and middle-school age. A lot of kids get lost in the fray. They don’t have anywhere to go. I know there are a lot of amazing organizations that are trying to step in and create those opportunities, but it’s going to take a long time to do it.”

Decades after Bettis’ first range visit, it will still take a barber—or coach or teacher or parent or Tiger Woods or Steph Curry—to encourage a Black child to try and possibly stick with golf.

“It’s everybody pitching in,” Steph Curry said. “It’s getting rid of the old stereotypes about golf. It’s seeing people like me from a crossover sport, and how much fun I have playing the game. We need to get more representation on the PGA Tour, and that starts at the grassroots level, to get kids on the right path to play golf.”

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Then it was off to college, to the heartland, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Here I definitely stick out like a sore thumb.”

First impressions are what they are, visceral reactions often untethered to reality. Ahmed, an American Muslim, has experienced the gamut of them, from indifference and curiosity to hostility and racism.

Whatever connotations one assigns to a hijab, a traditional head covering for Muslim women, they would do well to avail themselves of a second impression of Ahmed.

“I honestly can’t say enough positive and wonderful things about Noor,” Kelli Corlett said. Corlett was one of Ahmed’s life skills coaches at The First Tee of Greater Sacramento and was her chaperone when Ahmed was invited to speak at the First Tee Congressional Breakfast in Washington, D.C., two years ago.

#NGD17: Noor Ahmed was 1 of 2 @TheFirstTee Scholars recognized yesterday. She is a program particpant at @TFTGreaterSac. #GrowGolf pic.twitter.com/lkH0M5bpc6

— American Golf Industry Coalition (@golfcoalition) April 28, 2017

“She’s poised. She’s certainly an incredible golfer. She’s extremely intelligent. She understands what it means to be a good person. She puts others first. She’s an absolute joy to be around.”

This is not an outlier opinion of Ahmed, a sophomore on the women’s golf team at Nebraska and believed to be the first Muslim to play college golf observing the hijab.

“She is an impressive young woman,” Nebraska coach Robin Krapfl said via email. “I know she feels a responsibility to be a good role model for younger Muslim girls, but there is no doubt she is. I’m proud of her for embracing that responsibility and for the maturity she displays facing challenges she has to deal with on a daily basis.”

Stephanie Carpenter/NU Communications

Ahmed is the daughter of Egyptian parents, who emigrated to the United States. Her father, Tamer, arrived with her grandfather, who was fleeing political persecution. Noor was born in Austin, Texas, but the family settled in the Sacramento area, where Tamer is a civil engineer with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and Noor’s mother, Hoda, is an elementary school teacher.

Noor’s parents encouraged her and her younger brother Yusuf to pursue sports—“athletics in general is a big part of Egyptian culture,” she said—and their home on the seventh hole of Empire Ranch Golf Club in the Sacramento suburb of Folsom, was enticingly convenient.

She took the game up, though she was not living under par so much as under the illusion that golf was supposed to be fun. Or easy.

“I was 8. I hated it,” she said. “It was so hard. It was aggravating for me. Golf is the most humbling sport. It took me awhile to learn that golf is a sport in which you get out of it what you put into it.”

She wanted to quit, but Dad said no. “If you want to be good at something you have to keep trying,” he told her. She began setting small goals, easier to achieve, and “fell in love with the process of investing and getting a return.”

It helped, too, that her father provided incentives, like letting her get a cell phone were she finally to beat him. “Being a fourth grader, that was the best thing ever. I worked really hard for five or six months, and I beat him.” Next, he promised her a smart phone once she broke par. She earned that, too.

Ahmed’s interest in the game expanded to include the LPGA, where she joined the legions who were fans of Lorena Ochoa. She attended the CVS Pharmacy LPGA Challenge one year and when play backed up on a tee box, Ochoa came over, said hello to her and offered her a sandwich. She declined. “I was too shy,” she said.

That was an understatement. The bullying started in kindergarten and carried on through elementary school and into middle school. “Growing up, I’ve been told pretty straight up that people who look like me don’t belong in this country,” she said. “I’ve heard every racial slur in the book.”

Classmates who befriended her only for the help she could provide them with their school work abandoned her when they no longer needed her. Depression and anxiety followed and she “felt worthless,” she said.

Then came the hijab. “I think it is an obligation for women to dress modestly. That is how some women choose to do that. I started wearing it the middle of the seventh grade. It felt like the right time. I didn’t talk to anybody about it. I didn’t talk to any of my family about it. I didn’t want any influence. I wanted to do it at the right time, and it felt right.”

The reaction likely was predictable. She lost friends over it, though over time some realized that she was the same person dressed differently. Meanwhile, she began to question “whether being an American and Muslim were antithetical,” she said in a speech she gave at the First Tee Congressional Breakfast.

The First Tee of Greater Sacramento became her lifeline. The golfers on its junior tour went through life-skill sessions before each tournament, though Ahmed did not attend any of them for the the first year and a half, too shy to make the first move.

Angie Dixon, its executive director, noticing she was not participating in the lessons and made the first move. “Angie took me by the hand and told me we would do the sessions together,” Ahmed said in her speech in Washington, where she addressed 30 members of Congress and others in attendance, including PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. “She may never know or understand how she, in that very moment, changed my life.

“I learned while standing on the first tee box how to shake hands with my playing partners, look them in the eye, say my name loudly and clearly, and to tell them it was nice to meet them. I know that it sounds so silly, but that was a huge accomplishment for me. Coach Angie noticed me, the shy, introverted girl in the corner that no one saw before, and through her small action she told me that I was a part of a group and that I was wanted.”

Ahmed soon began to make friends in The First Tee chapter, none of whom even noticed the hijab she said, “or if they did, they didn’t seem to care.”

Krapfl cared, though not about the hijab. Ahmed was playing in an American Junior Golf Association tournament in Las Vegas and made an impression on Krapfl, who was there to recruit and saw a talented young high school player. Ahmed sent the coach, who has overseen the Nebraksa program for more than three decades, an email, and she was invited to Lincoln to visit the campus.

She accepted athletic and academic scholarships and enrolled at Nebraska in the fall of 2017. She made an immediate impact in golf—she had Nebraska’s fourth lowest stroke average, 76.45—while attempting to acclimate herself to college life on a campus where “I’m very recognizable,” she said.

The hijab became a talking point at golf tournaments. “For most people, I know they’ve never seen a Muslim woman in hijab before. There was the stereotype of not being from America. ‘What country are you from? Your English is really good.’ They assumed I was an international student. I feel like every time I step onto a golf course I have to prove that a Muslim woman can compete and compete in a hijab and compete well.

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“On the golf course, the hijab makes me stand out. It’s definitely a reminder every time I step on the golf course that I am different. No one will look like me. No one will dress like me. Also every time you’re stepping onto the course is helping break down stereotypes.”

None of it has been easy, though she said “it freaks my parents out more than me. They’re parents. They have a right to be worried for the safety of their children.” In her freshman year, she had a biology lab with a student who made headlines in Lincoln for reportedly calling himself “the most active white nationalist in the Nebraska area.”

“It’s definitely had its lows, but the highs have been great as well,” she said of college life. “I had my first top-10 finish in Puerto Rico [ninth at the Lady Puerto Rico Classic in February]. The team just won its first event in five years [the Westbrook Invitational].”

The highest of highs, perhaps, was her evolving relationship with her teammates. “For the majority of them, not all of them, I’m the first Muslim person they’ve ever had a relationship with. Seeing them opening their minds a little bit has been really rewarding. Even just meeting kids on other teams and other student athletes from all over the country and world and getting to know them and their stories has been really amazing.”

Ahmed does not intend to pursue professional golf. She recognizes a higher calling, that of continuing to help break down stereotypes and to diversify the sports industry. “I’d like to work in intercollegiate athletics. Sports have been such a huge part of my life and shaping me into the person I am. I’d love to give back to sports by working with student athletes who are going to go through what I’m going through.”

Corlett describes Ahmed as “a combination of an old soul with a little bit of a modern twist.” When Noor was home for the winter break, she and Corlett met for lunch one day. Corlett asked her how she coped with the attention she got from wearing the hijab.

“I just explain where I come from and my beliefs,” Ahmed replied. “That’s really all I can do and I do it in positive way.”

The shy girl with no self esteem? She has been replaced by a strong young woman with “a true sense of self,” Corlett said.

“She will help change the world and make it a better place.”

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By Ryan Herrington
Greg McLaughlin, a golf industry veteran most recently in charge of the PGA Tour Champions, has been tapped to oversee a trio of the game’s key stakeholders. On Wednesday, he was named World Golf Foundation CEO and president of The First Tee in a consolidated position that will also include management of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

“We are thrilled to welcome Greg to this important new role,” said Jay Monahan, World Golf Foundation chairman and PGA Tour commissioner, in a press release. “I’m not sure we could have asked for a more qualified, passionate leader, considering his deep level of experience and executive leadership success within the golf world and beyond.”

McLaughlin had been in charge of the PGA Tour Champions since 2015 after spending 14 years at the helm of the Tiger Woods Foundation. Prior to that, he had been involved in running the PGA Tour’s Genesis Open, Honda Classic and BMW Championship.

Monahan said that McLaughlin’s experiences in sports, business and non-for-profit endeavours will help him further the WGF’s mission and build upon the vision of The First Tee as the restructured organizations work more closely together.

“As a member of the greater golf community for more than 30 years, I have always been proud of what the collective efforts of our sport have done and continue to do to inspire communities and change lives, especially for young people who can learn and grow through the values of golf,” McLaughlin said. “This is an exciting time in the evolution of the World Golf Foundation and, specifically, The First Tee, and I am humbled by and excited for the opportunity to lead our industry’s efforts to increase participation and global awareness of golf as a sport that is welcoming to all.”

McLaughlin inherits the position at The First Tee after Keith Dawkins stepped down as CEO in October only a year after taking over for long-time chief Joe Barrow.

Before retiring in 2019, Steve Mona, WGF CEO for the past 10 years, will help McLaughlin in the transition, serving as executive director of WE ARE GOLF, the industry-wide coalition in place to lobby for the game in Washington, D.C.

Jack Peter, president of the World Golf Hall of Fame, who has been in St. Augustine, Fla., since 2001, is set to retire at the end of this year. Assisting McLaughlin in the day-to-day operations of the Hall of Fame will be Brodie Waters, the WGHOF vice president of business affairs.

Miller Brady, a 19-year veteran of the PGA Tour, will take over McLaughlin’s responsibilities with the PGA Tour Champions. Most recently he worked with McLaughlin as the senior VP and chief of operations for the tour.

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