Champions Retreat Golf Club, Evans, GA: No, I didn’t pay six figures to Lil Baby, who is tied with Prince and Paul McCartney for the most songs ever charted on the Billboard Hot 100 charts at 47 songs, for the above-captioned headline. I simply summarized in a single line the ongoing history-making exploits of the most decorated African American siblings in amateur golf history, Amari and Alona Avery. And no, “The Mack” isn’t a reference to Max Julien as “Goldie” trying to evoke memories of Pam Grier as “The Godmother,” Coffy. “The Mack” refers to the PGA sanctioned Mack Champ Invitational golf tournament for aspiring African-American and other minority junior golfers hosted by 3-time PGA Tour winner, Cameron Champ, in homage to his late grandfather, Mack Champ, who introduced his PGA Tour champion grandson to the game of golf.
“Back-To-Back” refers to the fact that a then 17-year-old Amari Avery won the inaugural Mack Champ Invitational last year, only to have her 15-year-old younger sister, Alona, win the 2nd annual installment of the event just two weeks ago on March 20, 2022. Now that Amari, who shares that same birthday with Tiger Woods, was born in the same minute and hour as Tiger (they have the birth certificates to prove it), and had her first hole-in-one on the same golf course where Tiger had his first hole-in-one, is out of the nest and is off setting records at the University of Southern California (USC) as the most accomplished freshman golfer in the school’s history, Alona, who has been lurking impatiently in big sis’ shadow, is now poised to shine under her own spotlight. You may have seen Alona in her recent Golf Channel feature interview from the Mack Champ Invitational showing a poise and aplomb that belied her tender age of 15.
Before Alona could celebrate her important victory, she was forced into a playoff by a very worthy Shyla Brown of McKinney, TX. “When I went into the clubhouse I thought I had won the tournament,” Alona stated. “She really is a tremendously talented junior golfer, a real beast, so I wasn’t at all surprised when one of the organizers came to tell me that Shyla had matched my score on her final hole and that the two of us had to have a playoff to decide the winner,” Alona continued. “When I went into the playoff I had one thing on my mind and one thing only,” Alona effused. “A little mini gallery of young girls had followed me throughout the tournament, shouting my name, giving me high fives, and the whole nine. I just kept saying to myself ‘Do NOT let this thing go past the first playoff hole and win it for those little girls!’ By the grace of God I was able to do that,” she concluded.
Before we get into a recap of Amari’s history-making opening round at the 3rd annual Augusta National Women’s Amateur on Wednesday, I would be totally remiss if I didn’t share with you Amari’s unprecedented achievements as an incoming freshman at the Pac -12 powerhouse, the University of Southern California. In only her second start for the school, on February 22, 2022. Amari recorded a solo win with two-course record low rounds of 65 en route to taking First Place honors at the aptly named Icon Invitational at the Golf Club of Houston’s notoriously unforgiving Tournament Course.
In her very next start at the Gold Rush Invitational at Old Ranch Country Club in Seal Beach, CA, Amari put on a veritable short game clinic, shooting two more rounds in the 60s en route to her second consecutive solo win.
No one in the history of the school has ever had such a prodigious start to a collegiate golf career. The school’s trustees, not the least of whom is USC Board of Trustees Chairman and Los Angeles Mayoral Candidate, Rick Caruso, are taking note.
Amari made history during Wednesday’s First Round of the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur when she became the first African American golfer to have a share of or have the outright lead in the world’s premier championship featuring the most outstanding amateur women golfers in the world. As per her scorecard below, Amari’s historic achievement occurred when she got to 2 under par to lead the field on hole #3 after starting the event on hole #10 and finishing the back nine at 1 under.
“I caught a bad break and ended up with an absolutely terrible lie on #4,” Amari lamented. “That double bogey there erased my lead and took me back to even, but I felt that my play was solid and I still felt in great shape to execute on all of the things that my dad and my caddie had worked on with me,” she continued, referring to her father, Andre Avery, and her caddie, Head USC Women’s Golf Coach, Justin Silverstein. Amari’s First Round 73 put her solidly in a tie for 9th place leading into the weather-delayed second round in her bid to make the cut and to play on TV in the tournament’s Final Round on Saturday at the fabled Augusta National course next door where the PGA top dogs will be teeing it up in The Masters starting in exactly one week on April 7.
Here are some sights from yesterday’s Opening Round.
After USC Head Women’s Golf Coach, Justin Silverstein, got Amari through qualifying rounds 1 and 2 at the Champions Retreat course, the helm of caddying for Amari will be handed over to Augusta National Master Caddie, Larry Sampson, who is going into his 11th season caddying for the world’s best PGA Tour pros during The Masters.
Notwithstanding Amari’s, Alona’s, Andre’s, and their mother’s, Maria’s, achievements as a golf family, there is a much, much bigger story here, and that story involves changing the game, literally, and in the idiomatic sense of the phrase. It is said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result is insane. I have met with, had meetings with, spoken with, had Zoom calls with, exchanged emails with, dined with, played golf with, attended conferences with, and done anything else you can do with the golf powers that be. I even volunteered to help them raise some or all of the $100 million they said they were trying to raise.
The golf powers that be doing the same thing over and over again resulted in no Black woman in history ever having won an LPGA Tour tournament. The golf powers that be doing the same thing over and over again resulted in no Black golfer, male or female, having won the U.S. Amateur Championship before or since Tiger Woods won an unprecedented three consecutive U.S. Amateur Championships between 1994 and 1996. The golf powers that be doing the same thing over and over again resulted in Tiger Woods being the only Black man in the entire world who had a PGA Tour Card for the twenty years between his pro debut in 1996 and Harold Varner III getting his PGA Tour Card for the 2015-2016 season.
In stark contrast, over that same 20-year span from 1996 to the 2015-2016 golf season, the Korean LPGA Tour DID NOT do the same thing over and over again. They did something different. They presented to the world a young woman golfer named Se-ri Pak and they supported her. Se-ri Pak made her Korean LPGA Tour debut in 1996 and her LPGA Tour debut in 1998, winning two Major Championships in that 1998 rookie season. Because the Korean golf powers that be did something different, Se-ri pak went from being the only Korean player on the LPGA Tour in 1998 to inspiring Korean women to become 60 of the top ranked 200 golfers in the Rolex Women’s Golf Rankings today. (that number has been as high as 80 of the top 200 in the world). That’s insane! And I DO mean “insane” in the true idiomatic sense of the word.
We’re doing something different. We’re changing the game, and the game will never be the same.
There is no question whatsoever that Hip-Hop has become the most pervasive, most influential cultural phenomenon to impact society on a global basis since Chuck Berry invented rock’n’roll. Hip-Hop is elemental to the advertising campaigns and communications strategies of the clear majority of the world’s major corporations, including but not limited to Augusta National Women’s Amateur Presenting Partners AT&T, Bank of America, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, and Rolex. Making Hip-Hop an elemental component of our changing of the game of golf is a process that is in full swing, no pun intended.
When Amari wore a necklace made from an Althea Gibson commemorative U.S. postage stamp while showcasing her mastery of the immensely popular “Stanky Leg” Hip-Hop dance while strutting up-and-down 125th Street as the youngest Grand Marshall in the 53-year history of the African American Day Parade in Harlem as an 11-year-old, an unspoken message was sent, i.e. the game of golf is about to change.
Just as I have spoken to the golf powers that be in my effort to enlist them to help us change the game, so, too, have I spoken to the Hip-Hop powers that be about helping us do so. I have spoken to the single most powerful female executive in the history of the music business, my fellow Wharton School alumnus, Sylvia Rhone.
In Los Angeles we have onboard Ryan Presson, the highest-ranking Black executive at the world’s largest music publishing company, Warner Chappell Music, who recently renewed Saweetie’s publishing contract, giving us ready access to expose her 13.1 million Instagram followers to the game of golf. In my native Philadelphia, we have Robert “Lil’ Rob” Murray, Jr., the political instigator who hosts regular Hip-Hop writers camps giving us ready access to the infusion of golf-related themes and metaphors into Hip-Hop superstars’ song lyrics.
In Harlem, we have Dominic Lord, the artist and music industry operative who is totally tapped into youth culture. In Atlanta, we have multi-platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated music producer, Pyrex Whippa, who has produced multiple #1 hits for some of Hip-Hop’s biggest stars. We have the hyper-intellectual Ivy League-educated rapper, COLDXMAN, who was personally recruited to Julliard by Wynton Marsalis for his outstanding musicianship and horn play.
We have a Hispanic government affairs expert with senior-level White House experience on tap to interface with departments of recreation in cities around the country. We have the first Black man to start at quarterback for West Point Military Academy and we have all four branches of the United States Armed Forces on tap for an unprecedented soon-to-be-unveiled youth golf development initiative. We have on our team the senior leadership from governments in the African diaspora, like Bermuda, whose Sports Department is led by a 3-time Olympian from New Jersey and has more golf courses per capita than any other country in the world, and like Haiti, for which Florida based attorney, DJ Neree, serves as the President of the Haitian Golf Federation and has been invited to 2022 The Masters by Augusta National’s Championship Committee.
We’re going to replace the violence and gunplay depicted in Hip-Hop’s most popular subgenre, Drill Rap, with images of kids doing golf drills. We’re going to replace the glorification of the smash and grab robbery epidemics that have paralyzed our cities with kids glorifying smashing 300-yard drives and grabbing championship trophies at every level of the game.
I’m going to ask my girl, Michelle, who has 49 million Instagram followers, to pardon our misinterpretation of her famous anecdote, “When they go low, you go high.” Being golf people, we understood that to mean, “When they go low, you go lower.” The only definitions of “high” we understand are the highest levels of academic excellence and the highest ideals of exemplary conduct at all times to represent our people and to represent the great game of golf we love so dear. I’ll have her husband, with his 35.3 million Instagram followers, spread the word as only he can.
We’re going to change the game, and we’re going to do it our way.
Leland Hardy (@LelandHardy) is a philanthropist, entrepreneur, financier, and former professional athlete. He is the Founder of RacialBias,org, a certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation focused on identifying and helping to eradicate bias in all of its forms wherever it is found in society, Strivers Row Media, the crisis management and media advisory firm, and Nice Time, Inc., a key manufacturer and supplier of healthcare products to First Responders amid the Coronavirus pandemic via www.AmericanPPEsupplier.com. Hardy is also a Board Member of Sport BLX and is a contributing writer to leading sports and finance publications. Hardy founded the Humanitarian Hiring of Haitians initiative through which he is providing a full-time living wage job to any legally work-eligible Haitian migrant who spent time beneath the Del Rio, TX bridge after crossing the Rio Grande River in September 2021.
