Elijah Walker
May 9, 2020 —The pioneer of inner-city youth golf programs is the legendary Mr. Elijah Walker of Atlanta, Georgia. Every golf program was tailored after his accomplishments at John A. White Park Golf Course on Cascade Road. Mr. Walker developed the best group of young Black golfers in the world from barrels of rusted golf clubs, crates of worn golf balls, and five overgrown golf holes. One gentleman made history by dedicating his life to teaching inner-city youth the game of golf, creating college golf scholarships, developing well-rounded contributors to the world, and equipping them with life skills while battling opposition.
Elijah Walker instructed all of us to have a proper golf swing with a pose at the end. That pose exhibited a sense of pride and helped disguise errant golf shots at times, but the structure that Mr. Walker taught created more good golf shots than bad. Every day was preparation for local Atlanta Junior Golf Association tournaments by hitting crates of balls into an open field, manually retrieving them, and hitting them again. This was followed by 5-hole rounds of golf where the grass on the greens was higher than the fairways that our competition practiced on.
Elijah Walker
Mr. Walker valued exposure so all of us visited and followed our favorite professional golfers such as Calvin Peete at the yearly Coca Cola Golf Classic held in Atlanta. In turn, Peete, a good friend of Walker’s, would give annual clinics at John A. White Park. Due to local success and parent involvement, Mr. Walker began taking us to national golf tournaments.
Nationally, Elijah Walker’s students dominated the Midwest District golf tournament which caught the attention of Bill Dickey, an advocate for minority college golf scholarships. At this point, there was a spike in golf teams at minority schools because there was talent to fill the availability.
The dreams and goals that Walker envisioned kept going. Elijah Walker expanded to international golf tournaments by connecting with the late Charlie DeLuca of Miami, Florida, at the Doral Publix Junior Golf Classic, enabling his students to compete against the best in the world. Every Christmas, Mr. Walker made it his duty to register and personally drive young golfers from Atlanta to Miami for this experience. Ultimately, Walker was the catalyst for hundreds of inner-city youth golfers ranking in high school and receiving college golf scholarships.
Years later, all of Elijah Walker’s students are grateful. The comradery, golf skills, and life skills built at John A. White Golf Course are engrained in our souls and have helped us to become better people. Mr. Walker instilled a connection in us that we will have for life. Elijah Walker is survived by his daughter, Tamara, son, Travis, and grandkids.
