Teeing off - golfing for African Americans

Black Enterprise, August, 1992 by Lloyd Gite

Now that the gates are opening to the country club, black golfers are taking to the green.

Houston entrepreneur and former pro football player Earl Thomas has fond memories of the days when he worked as a caddy at the Greenville Country Club in Greenville, Texas. Back then, caddying meant a little spending money for young Thomas, but he never dreamed that as a businessman, golfing would earn money for him. Today, Thomas, founder and president of Gold Line Refining Ltd., a Houston-based BE 100s petroleum products company, swears by the golf course as a way of doing business.

"You get a chance to spend three to four hours with a guy on the golf course and you really get to know him. a major share of my business came from my golf buddies, guys I've met and built a relationship with on the greens," explains the 43-year-old Thomas, a member of the Quail Valley Country Club outside Houston.

Thomas is not alone in using the golf course to drum up business. African-Americans from all walks of life - entrepreneurs, vice presidents and salespeople - are picking up the sport as a way of making, building and maintaining business relationships, while relaxing in the company of others.

The Dealmaker's Sport

According to the National Golf Foundation (NGF), there were 649,000 African-Americans actively playing golf in 1990 (or 2.3% of the total 27.7 million U.S. players), up from 360,000 in 1986.

"Golf is not just a game. It's a business strategy," says Peter Braun, president of Chicago-based Powergolf Services Inc., of the $27 billion-a-year industry. "The golf course has become the place to meet the powerful executive, corporate manager, entrepreneur and up-and-coming sales executives," says Braun, whose firm teaches corporate executives and salespeople how to use the course effectively for business.

Golf can be a powerful network builder. Thomas met another former pro football player, Butch Woolfolk - co-owner and executive vice president of Coordinated Benefits Services - on the golf course and now Woolfolk handles the health coverage and life insurance of Thomas' employees.

"We developed a relationship strictly from golf," says Thomas, who played with Woolfolk for a year before they began to work together. "Butch now does a big, big portion of my business. Had it not been for golf, we might not have met."

"I never play golf with the express purpose of doing business," says Woolfolk, 32. "But, I never leave home to play golf without my business cards either." Adds Woolfolk: "I'm on the golf course about twice a week and about 25 percent of the time I make a contact on the course that will eventually mean business for my company."

Golf's Black History

For decades golf was off-limits to most African-Americans. Golf originated in Scotland and was introduced in this country in the 1880s. At that time, blacks were able to play the game competitively with whites. One of the earliest professionals was black golfer John Shippen, who tied for fifth place in the 1896 U.S. Open Golf Tournament now known as one of four major annual tournaments called the "Big 4." When the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) adopted a "whites only" clause in 1916, blacks were denied an opportunity to play professional golf. That exclusion prompted another black golfer, Robert H. Hawkins, to establish the United Golf Association (UGA) in 1926 for black golfers as an alternative to the Professional Golf Association (PGA). Within a few years the UGA established a series of tournaments for amateur and professional golfers. It gave rise to such champions as Howard Wheeler and Eural Clark and women pioneers such as Ethel Funches, Anne Gregory and Thelma Cowan. Other early black golf stars included Calvin Searles, Ted Rhodes, William Spiller and Althea Gibson, the first black woman to break the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) color line in 1963.

As the racial barriers began to fall, more black golfers came into prominence, including Calvin Peete, Lee Elder and Charlie Sifford. Today. 16-year-old Eldrick "Tiger" Woods, a sophomore at Western High School in Anaheim, Calif., is the most celebrated young golfer in the United States. In 1991, he became the first African-American and the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Junior Amateur Golfing Championship. Recently "Tiger" became the second-youngest person to ever play in a PGA Tour event. "I want to be the Michael Jordan of golf," says Woods who maintains a 3.5 grade-point average in school.

Gaining Access to

Private Clubs

While African-American players like Woods continue to fight to be included in the game via merit, golf is still considered a "white man's sport." The biggest bomb to hit the golf world came in June 1990 when Hall Thompson, founder of Shoal Creek, a private golf club in Birmingham, Ala., told a newspaper reporter when questioned about the club's "all white" roster: "We have the right to associate or not associate with whomever we choose. The country club is our home, and we pick and choose who we want....I think we've said that we don't discriminate in every other area [religion and gender] except the blacks." The Shoal Creek club was to be the tournament site of that year's PGA of American championship.