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Golf advocates try to teach the meaning of respect

by Joe Tarr

Tyrone Fine remembers the first time he walked across a golf course. It was during the Christenberry Heights Boys & Girls Club’s annual golf tournament. The kids who belonged to the club were allowed to be caddies for the celebrity golfers.

Fine wasn’t so much excited about the game, but he did like the fact that all the caddies got paid. It was easy money. Carrying clubs and watching the rich white guys whack balls all over the course, Fine thought, “I could really hit that ball.”

It would be years before Fine would tee off and smack a ball himself. Now in his 30s, he’s been golfing for about three years and works at the Wee Course at Williams Creek, a non-profit course in East Knoxville that was established with the mission of introducing minorities and inner-city kids to the game. Fine is one of many people convinced that golf—traditionally a leisure pursuit of the rich, white elite—can teach poor minorities something about life, that it can teach them values they can’t get from other places.

Fine puts it this way: “Golf is for the rest of your life. If they don’t want to be rappers or football players, kids think, ‘I guess I have to try the streets. If the streets don’t work, I guess I’ll try jail.’ That’s the mentality of some of these kids.”

So what’s so special about the game of golf, and what can minorities learn from it? We headed to the Wee Course to find out.

On a June morning, Darius Rooks, Darren McClellan, Shanequa Fountain, and Eric Drummond—all African American kids who go to the Laura Cansler Boys & Girls Club—sit around a table in the conference room of the Wee Course clubhouse. They squirm and tease each other, typical hyperactive kids on a summer morning. They’ll be out on the course in a few minutes, but the instructors first want to try to teach them a little about the game through First Tee, a program supported by Tiger Woods to teach golf to minorities.

Doug Amor, the course’s director and club pro, starts out with a review of a previous lesson: the three things you’re supposed to respect in golf.

“What do we respect in golf?” he asks. “The course,” one of the children offers. “That’s right. What else do we respect?”

Slowly, Amor and golf instructor Joe Cox prod the other two answers out of them: other players and themselves.

“Respecting yourself is going to make you perform better. Be positive. If you hit a bad shot, remember, you get another one. Or try to see what was good about the shot,” Amor says.

“Would respecting yourself mean eating a good breakfast? The night before a tournament, are you going to get a good night’s sleep? Are you going to be respectful and patient and positive when playing?” he adds.

The two try to extend the golf creed to life. “The last word in golf is ‘integrity.’ Integrity is what life is all about,” Amor says. “It’s doing the right thing, even if it makes it harder on you, even if it takes longer, even if it makes you lose.

“We’re not trying to turn you into a perfect person. But it’ll help you as school if you let it; it’ll help you at home if you let it. Integrity is going to help you in life.”

After about 15 minutes of classroom talk, it’s time to hit the course.

The Wee Course opened on July 1, 2003. It’s an 18-hole par 3 course, but it’s difficult because it was designed for adults to play on. “Commonly par 3 courses are easy. This one is very challenging,” Amor says. Part of the reason is it’s so hilly.

The original vision for the course came from the late Capt. Jim Rowan, a former police officer. “He had a vision of having a place where kids could play golf in East Knoxville,” Amor says. Knoxville city administrators located the 98 acres for the course; the state gave it to the city. The course is on land that was once a school for deaf black children.

The course is open to the public; for $20 you can play 18 holes with cart. Amor says the course is trying to get more attention from adults because they help fund it by playing there. The course is not quite breaking evening. Kids ages 8 to 18 play for free. As part of the national “First Tee” program—there are three First Tee courses in Knoxville—several youth groups get free golf and “life skills” classes here.

The intentions behind the course are certainly admirable, but you might wonder whether golf has anything special to teach kids. How is it different from any other—cheaper—sport? Why not fund better schools or arts programs instead? What kind of salvation can it offer a poor kid?

A devotee, Amor says the answer is simple: respect. He repeats the mantra he tries to impress on the kids who play here. “In golf, as opposed to any other sport, you have to respect a lot of things: other people, the golf course, and they’ve got to respect themselves. We compare it to school.” Drugs, crime, low self-esteem, frustration—like hazards, sand traps, the rough, water on a golf course—are the things you have to avoid to get through life.

Amor says he learned many of these lessons from his father, who was a teacher and avid golfer. His dad took him on the course when he was young, and slowly he started playing. “I learned a lot of lessons from my father on a golf course—being polite, manners, respecting other people,” he says.

And he was hooked on the thrill of hitting great shots and improving his skill.

“Being an individual sport lends itself to these lessons. You don’t have a teammate to pick you up,” he says. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of ways to cheat in golf. There’s a lot of rules in golf. There’s an order of play. Not just because of the game, but for safety reasons.”

Like any sport, the game is fiercely competitive. But Amor says a player is mostly competing against himself. “It’s the same thing with life. You can’t compare yourself to anyone but yourself.

“It can make you tougher, make you mentally stronger,” he adds.

Out on the course, Cox leads the four kids to a nearby green where they’ll practice chipping. Each kid carries a bag of kid-sized clubs—three sets are provided by the Wee Course; one kid totes his own.

As we walk past the parking lot, Cox asks, “Does everyone know why the flag is at half mast?” No one says anything. “Former President Reagan died, and when a president dies all the flags stay at half mast for one month,” he tells them.

I lag behind with Darius Rooks. He’s carting a basket of golf balls, struggling slightly. “Will you take these for me? Man, that was killing me.”

He says he’s been playing for two years. “I like to hit the ball,” he says. “I’m good.”

“Will you put me in the paper?”

At the green, Cox gives them a quick lesson on how to chip onto the green from a rough patch of grass. He knocks a few balls to a close hole, then one farther away. Then it’s the kids’ turn, and all four start knocking balls onto the green, each aiming at different holes. Soon the green is littered with white balls, which start to block and deflect their shots. Cox walks around giving pointers.

William Blake, who drove the kids here from the Boys & Girls Club, watches them off to the side. He’s played golf his whole life and remembers a time when African Americans couldn’t play golf in Knoxville. He played in the military, and when he came back some of the courses had been segregated. He hopes to take the kids to a tournament next month in Greenville, Tenn.

Almost every sport has a history of racism, but golf has probably been more tainted with it than others. The PGA tour was all white until 1961. The country clubs where the sport was predominately played have an ugly history of exclusion, both of minorities and the poor. Just two years ago, Cherokee Country Club admitted its first black member, Barbara Hatton, president of Knoxville College. Most Knoxvillians do not have the means to play at the invitation-only clubs like Cherokee and Holston Hills.

That historical exclusion is perhaps what attracts some minorities to the game. Driving me around the course, Fine points out that many black entertainers and athletes from other sports flock to the courses for recreation, demanding and enjoying the privileges that were denied their ancestors.

Fortunately for working-class golfers, there are several public courses. But the expense of the game continues to make it somewhat exclusionary. “You can spend $900 on a set of golf clubs, $180 on a set of shoes, $90 on a shirt,” he says. “Golf is a rich man’s game, but the way I see it, it’s just a game.”

“The advantage golf has on other sports is patience. With golf, you’ve got to take your time,” he says.

“It’s another road, another avenue.... When you feel like you’re running out of chances, golf gives you another chance,” he says.

July 1, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 27 © 2004 Metro Pulse