Malachi Knowles, a Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame member and the founder of Inner-City Youth Golfers, Inc. has been named as the Junior Golf Director for the Sunshine State Amateur Golfers Association (SSAGA). The SSAGA is the only principally African American statewide association of male and female golfers in the United States. Nine clubs currently comprise the association and approximately 1,000 golfers of all ethnicities from Daytona Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce, Miami (two clubs), Orlando, Titusville, Sebring and West Palm Beach.
With the support of the SSAGA Board of Directors, Malachi is on a mission to “grow the game of golf through its current member clubs and start or partner with existing programs in other cities such as Tampa, Naples/Ft. Myers, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Lakeland, Pensacola, Tallahassee, and St. Augustine to form the membership.”
Malachi Knowles has been involved in the game of golf since he was 10 years old when he began working as the “shag boy” at Everglades Country Club in Palm Beach. Knowles went on to attend Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland. At Morgan State, he worked with the athletic director to establish a golf team in 1960 that he captained for three years. After graduation, he went on to become the first African American to graduate with a master’s degree in regional and city planning from the University of Oklahoma. Knowles would go on to hold several executive positions with the government from 1965 to 1991.
In 1993, he returned to his home, Riviera Beach, Fla to found Inner-City Youth Golfers at JFK Middle Magnet School with a mission of combining golf and education to positively impact local youth. In 2004, he founded the African American Golfers Hall of Fame and later – the African American Collegiate & Youth Golfers Hall of Fame – all based in Riviera Beach, Fla. to provide future generations of golfers with role models within the sport. He was inducted into the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame in 2016. He currently serves on the Palm Beach County Sports Commission Board of Directors.
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