The National Basketball Association star scheduled an appearance at Washington, D.C.’s Langston Golf Course on August 19 to officially announce his seven-figure endowment that will allow Howard to have Division I men’s and women’s programs for the first time in its 152-year history. “I just think about how many kids, especially from underserved communities, have the talent to play but just don’t have the funds or the resources,” Curry said of his motivation for the sponsorship.
Three-time National Basketball Association champion and two-time Most Valuable Player Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors, who is also a passionate golfer, was scheduled to make an appearance at the Langston Golf Course in Washington, D.C. on Monday, August 19, to announce his sponsorship that would revive the golf program at Howard University, The Washington Post reported.
The cost of a collegiate golf program, including both operating expenses and scholarships, can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, The Post reported. While declining to reveal the exact amount, a spokesman for Curry said he will make a seven-figure donation paid out over the next six years, aimed at giving Howard time to raise an endowed fund that would make the program self-sustainable.
The student-athletes who join Howard’s golf program also will agree to volunteer in Greater Washington with Eat. Learn. Play., a foundation run by Curry and his wife, Ayesha, that encourages healthy development in children, The Post reported.
For decades, Howard had a Division II team, which university officials believe was discontinued in the 1970s, The Post reported. The new program being financed by Curry is believed to be the first time Howard will have a Division I golf program in the university’s 152-year history.
University officials said it will take about a year to hire a coach, recruit athletes and figure out where the golf teams will practice and play, The Post reported. One option, they hope, will be to use Langston GC, the District’s historic black golf course in Northeast Washington that was named for John Mercer Langston, Howard Law School’s first dean and Virginia’s first black congressman, and where Curry’s announcement was scheduled to be held.
“It’s a big opportunity for us to expose students to a game that oftentimes is played as business deals are decided, and a game that generations of families can play together,” Howard President Wayne A.I. Frederick told The Post.
In an interview with The Post about his sponsorship, Curry explained that in part his motivation came from remembering that “No matter where you come from or what socioeconomic background you had, we all were that kid once upon a time that was just excited about finding out who they were as a person through athletics.”
Curry picked up golf from his father, former NBA player Dell Curry, first joining him on the course when he was about 10, then spending three years on his high school golf team in Charlotte, N.C.
“I was blessed at a young age that we could afford to play,” said Curry, who launched a mini-golf reality show on ABC this summer and is a frequent golf partner of former president Barack Obama. “I just think about how many kids, especially from underserved communities, have the talent to play but just don’t have the funds or the resources.”
The Post reported that the idea for the sponsorship first took root after a January screening of “Emanuel,” a documentary about the deadly 2015 shooting of nine black worshipers at a church in Charleston, S.C., for which Curry was an executive producer.
After Otis Ferguson, then a junior at Howard, called out, “Hey Steph! Let’s get in a round of golf before you leave,” The Post reported, he and Curry engaged in a brief conversation about their mutual love of the sport, with Ferguson revealing that he had turned down an offer to play golf collegiately to attend Howard, which, like many historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), doesn’t have a golf team.
“To hear somebody as passionate about the game as I was, all the while still pursuing their education at Howard, impacted me,” Curry told The Post.
During the spring of his sophomore year at Howard, The Post reported, Ferguson, who first learned the game playing with plastic clubs and made the varsity team of his high school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. as a freshman, had posted fliers suggesting the formation of a campus golf group at Howard. He was unsure of what to expect, but nearly 40 people showed up. It took until the following fall for Ferguson to work out the logistics, and by the time Curry arrived on campus for the screening of “Emanuel” in January, the club had begun figuring out where it would practice.
After he and Curry had their conversation in January, The Post reported, Curry offering to help in any way he could and provided his e-mail address. Even as Curry was immersed in the basketball season, Ferguson sent him updates to say he had found sponsors for the golf club and to cover the cost of tee times, and additional messages as the club competed in each of its first two tournaments. He then e-mailed again to relay that he had had a short conversation with Howard’s President, who seemed receptive to the idea of expanding the golf club into an official team.
Once the NBA season wrapped up, The Post reported, Curry’s team then reached out to officials at Howard to ask what it would take to restart the university’s golf program. “It was sort of a jolt for us,” said Kery Davis, Howard’s Athletic Director.
Curry’s announcement comes as the sport—more than 20 years after Tiger Woods became the first black golfer to win the Masters—continues to see deep diversity struggles, The Post reported. The PGA Tour is nearly as white today as it was in the 1980s, a number of historic black golf courses across the nation have shuttered, and golf programs at HBCUs are struggling to survive.
Observers and historians note, The Post reported, that while there have always been black golfers and caddies, the sport requires too much money and space to be accessible to many black children.
“It’s not a sport that is cheap for people to play, you have to travel long distances to get to golf courses, and golfers don’t get all of the ballyhoo that basketball and football players get,” said Calvin Sinnette, author of “Forbidden Fairways: African-Americans and the Game of Golf” and a retired professor at Howard’s medical school.
“As a result,” he added, “the game doesn’t attract many young black people.”
Few HBCUs prioritize golf programs, The Post reported, instead focusing the bulk of their resources and scholarships on sports more likely to generate revenue, such as football and basketball. Out of more than 100 HBCUs in the country, about 30 have golf programs—and none have their own golf courses on campus, Sinnette said.
“I think black collegiate golf is going to die unless we come up with another Tiger Woods,” said Eddie Payton, who coached Jackson State University’s golf program, among the best in the nation, for 30 years. In 2017, just one year after Payton retired, the university announced it would disband the golf program, The Post reported.
“It broke my heart,” Payton said. “It’s a damn shame that our university leaders don’t see the value.”
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