The Washington Post - 19.08.2019

A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019

email to Curry in May, to congrat-

ulate him on the Warriors win-

ning the Western Conference fi-

nals. Still nothing.

But Curry had been reading

the emails and was determined to

figure out how he could bankroll

a golf program at Howard.

Like Ferguson, Curry picked

up golf from his father, former

NBA player Dell Curry, first join-

ing him on the course when he

was about 10, then spending

three years on his high school

golf team.

“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 under-

served communities, have the

talent to play but just don’t have

the funds or the resources.”

Once the NBA season had

wrapped, Curry’s team reached

out to officials at Howard to ask

what it would take to restart the

program.

“It was sort of a jolt for us,” said

Kery Davis, Howard’s athletic di-

rector, adding that university

leaders had in the past discussed

the idea of reviving the golf

program.

“Golf has always been a game

of privilege,” Davis said. “An asso-

ciation with the sport can break

down barriers.”

University administrators be-

gan working with Curry’s repre-

sentatives to figure out what it

would take to sponsor a team and

whether it was possible to get

things in place before the coming

fall semester. Amid the flurry of

calls to work out details, they

realized that in the scramble, no

one had told Ferguson.

He found out from a message

on Instagram sent by Jeron

Smith, a former Howard basket-

ball player who now runs Curry’s

creative and business ventures.

“I don’t know what you said,”

Smith wrote to Ferguson, “but

you inspired Stephen.”

The next day, the long-awaited

phone call finally happened.

“I don’t know how to describe

how I felt when I realized the

power of that moment,” Ferguson

recalled. “I was pretty much

speechless.”

[email protected]

It took until the following fall for

Ferguson to work out the logis-

tics, and by the time Curry ar-

rived in January, the club had

begun figuring out where it

would practice.

Curry was now squatted in

front of him, offering to help in

any way he could and providing

his email address.

They touched base once, then

Curry suddenly stopped respond-

ing. It was basketball season, of

course. Ferguson decided to keep

sending updates.

He emailed Curry to say he had

found sponsors for the golf club

and to cover the cost of tee times.

He sent additional messages as

the club competed in each of its

first two tournaments. He

emailed again to relay that he

had had a short conversation

with the university president,

who seemed receptive to the idea

of expanding the golf club into an

official team.

Still having not heard back,

Ferguson sent a fifth and final

grams, instead focusing the bulk

of their resources and scholar-

ships on sports more likely to

generate revenue, such as foot-

ball 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 Jack-

son State University’s golf pro-

gram, 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.

“It broke my heart,” Payton

said. “It’s a damn shame that our

university leaders don’t see the

value.”

During the spring of his sopho-

more year at Howard, Ferguson

posted fliers suggesting the for-

mation of a campus golf group.

He was unsure of what to expect,

but nearly 40 people showed up.

cans 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.”

Most often, it’s a sport passed

down from parents to their chil-

dren, which was the case for

Ferguson, who spent his boyhood

in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., swing-

ing a set of plastic golf clubs,

eager to join his father on the

green.

He was playing competitively

by middle school and made the

varsity team his freshman year of

high school.

That same year he took at trip

to Howard, where his father and

uncle had gone, as well as all

three of his older sisters and

several cousins. Captivated by

Howard’s homecoming, Fergu-

son decided at 14 he would some-

day enroll, too.

But attending Howard would

mean giving up competitive golf.

Few HBCUs prioritize golf pro-

generations of families can play

together,” Howard President

Wayne A.I. Frederick said.

Curry’s announcement comes

as the sport — more than 20 years

after Tiger Woods became the

first black golfer to win the Mas-

ters — continues to see deep

diversity struggles: The PGA Tour

is nearly as white today as it was

in the 1980s, a number of historic

black golf courses across the na-

tion have shuttered, and golf

programs at HBCUs are strug-

gling to survive.

Observers and historians note

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 “For-

bidden Fairways: African Ameri-

ard — bringing competitive golf
to the university for the first time
in decades.
“To hear somebody as passion-
ate about the game as I was, all
the while still pursuing their
education at Howard... impact-
ed me,” Curry said in an interview
Saturday.
The cost of a collegiate golf
program, including both operat-
ing expenses and scholarships,
can add up to hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars a year. While
declining to reveal the exact
amount, Curry’s team 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.
“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,” said Curry,
who is encouraging these players
to make an impact, as well. The
student-athletes who join How-
ard’s golf program also will agree
to volunteer in Greater Washing-
ton with Eat. Learn. Play., a
foundation run by Curry and his
wife, Ayesha, that encourages
healthy development in children.
For decades, Howard had a
Division II team, which univer-
sity officials believe was discon-
tinued in the 1970s. 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 say it will
take about a year to hire a coach,
recruit athletes and figure out
where the golf teams will practice
and play. One option, they hope,
will be Langston Golf Course, the
District’s historic black golf
course — named for John Mercer
Langston, Howard Law School’s
first dean and Virginia’s first
black congressman. Curry’s an-
nouncement Monday will be held
at the course in Northeast Wash-
ington.
“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

HOWARD FROM A

Howard to add golf teams thanks to a donation from Curry

WILL NEWTON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

NBA star Stephen Curry greeted fans in January after the panel discussion and screening of the film “Emanuel” at Howard University.

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