BY AAGD STAFF | August 13, 2020
For professional golfer Kirk Triplett, whose playing in the Senior Players Championship that is being held this week in Akron, Ohio, he didn’t just put any sticker on his golf bag. Kirk’s sticker was special and very personal to him, it read: Black Lives Matter. The sticker resonates the Black Lives Matter movement, one that has become a prominent stance against racism in America.
Kirk and his wife Cathi are aware that the mission of the Black Lives Matter Movement is to fight for freedom, liberation and justice, and they’re all in. The couple has several adopted children, and his youngest, Kobe, is Black.
Kirk, 58, is an eight-time winner on the PGA Tour Champions arrived in Akron, Ohio, for this week’s Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club with a Black Lives Matter sticker on his golf bag. According to Golf Digest, Kirk is the first pro to endorse Black Lives Matter: ‘It begins with talking about it. And right now, golf isn’t’
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“This seems like a good venue where this message maybe doesn’t get spread as much,” said Triplett in a PGA Tour Champions video on Tuesday. “Golf’s a very insulated game. For me, personally, I was affected kind of more personally this time and it seemed like a natural thing having an African-American son in the house and having to have these conversations.”
“That’s a conversation that I think people around golf, it doesn’t hit home,” Triplett said of the Black Lives Matter movement. “It doesn’t just have to come from the African American side, it needs to come from all sides, so, hence the sticker.”
“Listen, it’s not easy,” Triplett says. “The makeup of our game—be it social, economical, people—is drastically different from other sports. But we can’t use that as an excuse to not do something.”
Triplett said the decision was entirely his own, that he didn’t talk it over with his son. “He’s a teenager. If he could, he’d take an invisible pill,” Triplett says. But being a father means showing your son what it takes to be a man, he says. And that means doing what you believe is right.
“I can’t possibly have the same connection to Black Lives Matters as LeBron James or other athletes promoting the message,” he said. “But I can understand why it’s important, and why I need to do my part.”
