Tennis & golf programs at historically Black colleges & universities

Black Enterprise, Sept, 1996 by Bobby Clay

Eddie Payton couldn't understand it then and never will completely understand why so many barbs were hurled his way last season, during which his Jackson State Tigers became the first golf team from a historically black college to qualify for the NCAA tournament. So what if four of his top six players on his team-- which won the predominantly black Southwest Athletic Conference's (SWAC) men's golf title--were white? "A golf ball doesn't care about the color of the person hitting it," he says, "so why should I?"

Well, with all the talk about increasing minority participation in golf and tennis, some people just assumed that black kids would be getting the scholarships at the historically black colleges. That reasoning might have been correct 20 years ago, but let this serve as a wakeup call. Just as historically white colleges have seen the racial makeup of their basketball and football teams change with the acceptance of integration and the heavy focus on winning, a similar transformation is occurring at more and more HBCs. Hampton University golf coach Burl Bowens, like Payton, says he used to recruit only black golfers. "Now I look at the best player I can get." Southern University golf and tennis coach Cliff Johnson is no different. The top ranked player on his tennis team is white.

There are 13 historically black colleges that now field men's golf teams. They are Alabama State, Alcorn, Bethune-Cookman, Florida A&M, Grambling, Hampton, Jackson State, Mississippi Valley, Prairie View A&M, South Carolina State, Southern, Tennessee State, Texas Southern.

The SWAC mandates that each of its schools also field women's golf and tennis teams. The Jackson State women's team won the SWAC women's golf title, while Grambling won the 1996 women's tennis title and Jackson State won the men's tennis title.

Rest assured, Johnson, Bowens and Payton would have jumped at the opportunity to sign Tiger Woods, the 20-year-old phenom at Stanford University, who this year became the first black golfer to win the NCAA Championship. Their primary interest in Woods, however, would have been that he was the best player available, who just happened to be black. Clearly the message is this: The HBCUs are not going to do to other races, what predominantly white institutions did to black student athletes for so long.

That's not to say that Johnson, Bowens and Payton have forgotten their roots. Each speaks passionately about the need to develop golf and tennis in African American communities and their tenure alone speaks volumes about their commitment to the historically black colleges. Payton, who once played in the National Football League, has been coaching golf at Jackson State for 10 years. (Walter Payton, the NFL Hall of Famer and former Chicago Bear running back, is his brother.) Johnson has been at Southern for 30 years, the last 27 at the Baton Rouge campus, and Bowens has been at Hampton for 12 years.

Despite the experience and the stability, they and the other HBC golf and tennis coaches face a tremendous uphill battle in trying to qualify for the NCAA tournament. In golf, for example, there is no automatic NCAA berth for conference champions as there is in basketball. Golf qualifiers are chosen by a committee based on the team's win-loss record and its strength of schedule. Trouble is, for the longest time the HBCUs weren't getting invitations to play alongside the nation's more reputable programs.

`A coach once told me," says Payton, "that the reason black colleges weren't invited to tournaments is that tournament organizes feared the teams wouldn't show up. And if a team did show up, the kids would probably play so badly and wouldn't know the rules, that it would take them forever to play.

"We had to overcome a lot of preconceived perceptions," Payton says. "One, that black colleges were not serious about their golf programs. Two, that black kids were not serious about their development. And three, that we were not skilled enough as coaches to develop a program that is as good as the best programs in the nation.

"I knew that in order for us to become recognized nationally, we had to get into the larger tournaments and do well against those teams. If we hadn't done that, the committee would have always labeled us as playing lesser competition or inferior competition. I tell my players all the time that in order to be the best, not only do you have to play the best but you have to beat the best."

Bowens takes it a step further, stressing that the HBCUs also need access to practice on better courses and more funding for their programs. "The public courses we practice on are not comparable to the courses we go to play on," he says.

Jackson State is fortunate in that regard because the Tigers have been granted access to at least nine Mississippi courses free of charge. The Jackson community also does a lot to supplement Payton's paltry $5,200 golf budget. That's partly why he was so disappointed that the Tigers didn't do better in the NCAA playoffs. Jackson State entered the regionals with a stroke average of 293, 29th best in the nation. They shot 294 in the opening round at Ann Arbor, Mich., but the team's performance ballooned to 297 the next day.