With the voices of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman filling the living room as the Kansas City Chiefs squared off against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday night, Shyla Brown’s focus wasn’t on the game — it was on sinking a 13-foot putt on her green-and-black Wellputt mat.
Golf consumes Brown’s mind. The 16-year-old, who has been home-schooled since 2020, moved from North Carolina to McKinney two years ago to train with Mark Grovier at Altus Performance Center, which is owned by Jordan Spieth’s coach Cameron McCormick
One night in June, as she was winding down and getting ready for bed, her phone buzzed at 12:01 a.m. She picked it up to find her first invitation for a campus visit from the University of Georgia, just moments after NCAA rules allowed coaches to contact sophomores.
Brown has since received more than 50 Division I offers in less than five months, her mother Dahalia Brown said. She committed to Texas in September and is set to join the fifth-ranked women’s golf program in the nation. But for Brown, this is only the beginning.
“I want to win at least three majors on tour,” Brown said. “I wanna be one of the most successful pro-Black female players out there.”
Brown’s dedication and preparation have helped her reach the No. 28 spot in the American Junior Golf Association’s Rolex rankings, making her one of the top junior golfers in the country. She is also the only Black player on the U.S. National Junior Team and was named to the 2023 AJGA Junior All-Star Team, becoming just the second Black golfer to receive that honor.
However, on her path to success, Brown rarely encounters other Black players with whom to compete or practice. Next week, she’ll play in the Southwest Airlines Showcase Nov. 11-13 at Cedar Crest Golf Course, an event aimed at promoting golf in diverse and historically underserved communities. She is one of only three junior golfers participating in this year’s tournament, following her second-place finish in last year’s inaugural event.
“I don’t really feel pressure,” Brown said about being one of the top Black junior golfers in the nation. “I feel thankfulness and gratitude for my community always backing me no matter how I do in a tournament. I feel so much support, especially at tournaments like the Southwest Showcase where there’s so many Black voices there to support me and the other golfers.”
SMU’s Emily Odwin also will compete in the tournament. She made history as the first golfer from Barbados to play collegiately and again last spring as the first to win an American Athletic Conference championship at SMU.
Odwin, who began her college career at Texas, said she is eager to participate at Cedar Crest, emphasizing the importance of representation in the sport.
According to Golf Digest, fewer than 1 percent of the nearly 29,000 PGA of America members are African-American and fewer than 10 percent are women.
“I remember when I was a kid and I got to watch Mariah Stackhouse sink the winning put for Stanford at the national championships,” Odwin said of the former Stanford golfer. “That was so huge for me. So if I can just kind of do that for even one girl [is] all I need.”
Stackhouse was named to Glamour magazine’s 21 Young Women of the Year in 2011 and joined the LPGA Tour in 2017.
Growing the game
Charles Sifford, often called the Jackie Robinson of golf, broke barriers in 1964 as the first African-American to join the PGA Tour, overcoming years of exclusion under a policy that had restricted membership to the “Caucasian race” from 1936 to 1961.
More than 60 years later, diversity in golf remains limited. This year, Tiger Woods was the only Black golfer at the Masters, and no Black golfer competed in last year’s U.S. Open.
Like the event at Cedar Crest, the inaugural Eastside Golf Collegiate Invitational was created with the mission to promote diversity in the game. The Collegiate Invitational presented by State Farm, which took place Nov. 2-4 at the Omni PGA Frisco Resort, spotlights talent at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and featured four men’s and women’s teams in the field.
“We like supporting diversity,” said Brent Bynum, State Farm’s marketing director. “We like helping people. And when we see an opportunity to do that in the sports environment, we always try to take advantage of that.
“We saw a real opportunity for State Farm to get involved with something that helps elevate the visibility of HBCU sports.”
Founded in 2019 by HBCU graduates Olajuwon Ajanaku and Earl Cooper, Eastside Golf has partnered with major brands such as Nike, Rolling Loud and Mercedes-Benz. These sponsorships have allowed the two Morehouse College alumni to host events such as the Eastside Golf Collegiate Invitational.
The duo has also launched a successful merchandise line featuring a signature logo of Ajanaku swinging a golf club while wearing a gold Cuban link chain — a design worn by NBA stars like San Antonio Spurs point guard Chris Paul.
Prairie View A&M coach Mesha Levister expressed excitement about her women’s team having the chance to play in the event.
“It’s super important for them to see world-class golf,” Levister said Monday. “To play on stuff that’s not flat and stuff that we really can’t get in Houston. It’s important for them to see that they too can play at these big events and play at these world-class golf courses where sometimes they may not have the access to that without tournaments like these.”
Levister said one of the challenges HBCUs face when competing against predominantly white institutions is a lack of facilities. Her team practices at a nearby golf course a few days a week, but on other days they must make do with limited resources at Prairie View A&M — sometimes even using the football field for putting practice.
Prairie View A&M golfer Micaiah Joubert, the first Black student from her high school to receive a golf scholarship, is in her second season with the team. Arriving at the Eastside Golf Collegiate Invitational, she was thrilled to see a diverse crowd.
“Oh my goodness, I see people that look like me,” Joubert said.
By age 11, the 5-foot-7 golfer had undergone double knee surgery to correct “knocked knees,” with doctors placing a plate and two screws in each knee to support her growth. While the procedure helped, she still experiences pain when she walks extensively or stands for long periods.
Despite these challenges, she has kept her love for golf alive. Now, at an HBCU, she’s dedicated to raising awareness for diversity in the sport and inspiring others who look like her to pursue golf.
“I just want to say that HBCU golf is worthy of the attention that any other golf is worthy of,” Joubert said.
