Week 1: Reevaluation and Logistics

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the amazing world of golf! I’m sure if you had to translate golf into a person, it would be a cigarette-smoking, beyond-rich, retired white man. To be honest, if we went back even fifty years ago, you would probably be right. But in the modern game, especially post-pandemic, the average golfer represents the opposite traits of your depiction: working, middle-class, and — most important to this project — not white. My question is as simple as “why”. Why has the average golfer changed so drastically in a game that has prioritized being reserved for the elite since the lords of Scotland created it in the 1500s? More importantly, why have those who have been deterred from the sport for centuries trickled in over the last fifteen years?

When doing my initial literature review for this topic, I’d see one consistent answer come up: the undeniable impact of Tiger Woods as a role model to millions of black and brown kids worldwide. In fact, his 1997 Masters win was so instrumental to the introduction of minority golfers to the sport that a “Tiger Effect” was dubbed as the reason that thousands of young African-Americans entered the sport. His stardom alongside the natural effects of the pandemic were supposed to be fleeting moments of minority interest. Instead, we are seeing over 25% of golfers coming from these communities, a prolonged resurgence of a game that has had an “elitist” tag associated with it for centuries. Beyond these reasons, however, my hypothesis centers around the impact of youth-development programs and their work to make sure that the students who enter the sport continue for years afterwards.

That’s why I’ve decided to intern with the First Tee of Silicon Valley, one of the biggest chapters of the largest golf and youth development organization in the United States. I’ve been a participant in their program for over a decade and a junior coach with them since my freshman year, giving me the rapport to investigate my hypothesis through an interview-centric methodology. I plan on discovering the leading causes of this heightened minority engagement and retention with the First Tee and golf as a whole through an interview process with their network: students, junior coaches, volunteers, parents, and board members. Using a variety of closed and open-ended questions, I hope to gain some sort of trend for why certain interviewees will have certain answers, but I also intend to make each story I hear unique in the overall cohesive result I get.

While my first week consisted of some initial literature review on interview protocol and the initial setups for how I’ll conduct my interviews at Rancho del Pueblo and Gavilan College Golf Course, there will be more to come as the First Tee season resumes and I can collect some answers to my questions.