Star profiles

Black Enterprise, Sept, 1996 by Bobby Clay

She's the No. 1 golfer at one of the finest private schools in Atlanta. Not the No. 1 women's golfer. The No. 1 golfer, period. Dara Broadhus was the only girl on Westminter's varsity golf team last season and she was better than the boys. Hands down. No doubt about it. Check your egos at the clubhouse, please.

She shot a 77 to win Georgia's Class 3A girl's state championship in May. Her personal best is a 70, turned in three years ago when she was only 14. And those who know her say the best is yet to come. Dara, a spirited, 5'5", 140-lb., 16-year-old senior, lives to play golf and hopes to one day do it for a living.

"You never master this game, you just work on it for a lifetime, so I'm starting early," says Broadhus, who has been golfing since she was five. "I know that it takes a lot of hard work and practice and dedication. I try and give that to the game everytime I go out."

That, of course, would be basically year round. If the sun don't shine and the creek don't rise, Broadhus is ready, willing, if not exactly able, to play every day.

"Of all our kids that we've introduced golf to, she's the one who has really enjoyed it," says her father, Battiste, who has a daughter, Ebani, in the pro golf management program at Mississippi State, and two sons, B.J., 16, and Patrick, 10, who also compete.

"Dara has always been competitive," her father explains. "She tries to do her best in everything she's involved in. She's one of a kind because she's self-disciplined and self-motivated, and as a parent, that's an ideal situation."

Besides the 12-13 tournaments Broadhus competes in each year for Westminster, she crisscrosses the country, playing in roughly 17 other tournaments. This past July she competed in Lexington, Ky., one week, played in Phoenix the next and then back to Georgia for another tournament.

Ask her what she likes about the sport and she responds quizzically: "You mean besides everything?" As for her dislikes: "I don't like losing." Once she clears that hurdle everything else is gravy.

"I like the people that I meet. I get to do a lot of neat stuff that normal people my age wouldn't do," she says. "I like the challenge. I like being nervous. I like having to play and compete. It's great."

No wonder college recruiters are beating down her door. She gets letters almost daily, but says that she doesn't open half of them because she already has a private list of where she'd like to go.

Dara's final decision won't be revealed for months, probably with little fanfare, but this much is already clear. The game of golf is richer because another young, black woman has given her heart to it.