Week 9: How to Write a Paper

Hello, and welcome back to the blog! Now that we’ve gotten past the research phase, the next step is the product. For my project, that’s a research paper on my findings. Most papers in this program are often filled with numerical calculations, derivations, and some sort of quantitative analysis. However, given that my project is 90% qualitative, I need to determine how I can make my findings academic beyond the somewhat casual results that I talk about on this blog. So without further ado, this is my paper outline.

1. What is the question, and why is it important?

This has changed at least a few times over the course of the project, but here’s my final objective. Minority interest in golf has risen significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, with many initially joining due to it being a sport where you can get physical exercise without contact. However, that rise we saw has persisted well into the decade, despite golf being a historically discriminatory game built on hierarchy and prejudice. My question, plainly put, is simple: why is this the case? Why are people continuing to get involved in a sport that has spent centuries excluding them? Being in the Bay Area, I’ve focused my project specifically on the Latino demographic.

2) What’s the methodology, and how did I get my data?

The main methodology of this project was nine sit-down interviews conducted during the spring season of First Tee at Rancho del Pueblo Golf Course in East San Jose. My interviewees included four Latino parents, two junior coaches, two paid instructors, and First Tee’s Latino Outreach coordinator, a deliberate mix designed to capture as many different perspectives as possible. As you’ve read, I definitely had some issues with getting interviews with substance, but once I shifted to the sit-down interviews, I was able to cut the earlier interviews and only use these as part of my insights. Three of those nine interviews required Spanish translation, requiring me to use an interpreter. Additionally, I was able to use First Tee’s demographic data over the past four years to build a pattern of Latino participation in the post-pandemic era.

3) What were the findings?

I had three major findings that I want to discuss in the paper:

A) The appeal of community, and what that means to different types of golfers. Kids found community within their classes and the slow-paced environment that combines socializing and competition. Meanwhile, parents and golfers in general could find community through the basic setup of a golf round: when you spend merely a fraction of the 4 hours on the course hitting the ball, the rest of the time fosters conversations with your fellow playing partners. On multiple occasions, I understood that the Latino community was one that sought community in everything they do, so golf’s natural ability to provide that was very appealing to their demographic.

B) First Tee specifically acted as a gathering space. I went into this one much deeper in the previous blogs, but the point was that First Tee acts as a space where recent immigrants find others in the same situation. These parents often come to the course to meet one another, and sometimes end up doing administrative volunteering or even learning how to play golf from their kids, representing another way in which First Tee acts as more than a golf class.

C) Golf acts as a gateway to professionalism, and First Tee is a place that prioritizes life skills over golf itself. From their earliest classes, they teach students how to shake hands with strangers, make eye contact and hold a conversation, make small talk with their playing partners, and show courtesy. Those skills, along with the fact that many of these parents consider golf a ‘corporate sport’, believe that setting their kid up with golf will benefit them later down the road with their career and their mindset.

4) What can First Tee do better as an organization to further prolong this resurgence of Latino golfers?

The simple recommendation I plan on proposing is to lean into the professional benefits of the sport. Regardless of people’s views on the sport and its discrimination, something that can clearly provide success later in life for their children is often enough to persuade these parents to consider the program. This would include prioritizing this aspect of their program during outreach events, and centering their curriculum around the soft skills that make good golfers successful businessmen.

This is my basic outline, and I’m building the paper as I write this blog. I’m excited to finish it, and I look forward to the presentation that’s coming up, where I can explain all of my findings firsthand! Thank you so much, and I’ll see you next week.