Golf-‘On absolute fire’: New Jersey governor praises surging Ganne

Allyn Stephens has competed in numerous American Junior Golf Association events, as well as the national finals of the Drive, Chip and Putt competition at one of the game’s most iconic clubs, Augusta National. Plenty of high school tournaments, too. She even partnered with Michael Allen at the 2019 PURE Insurance Championship, a team competition that pairs First Tee members with PGA TOUR Champions veterans at venerable Pebble Beach, no less. But the Mack Champ Invitational in March was different. Very different. For once on a golf course, Stephens wasn’t in the minority. As the talented teenager looked around Memorial Park Golf Club in her native Houston that week, she saw lots of other Black and brown golfers competing in the inaugural MCI. “It was huge,” Stephens says. “It was so like mind blowing to see so many young people of color playing golf in the same tournament. It’s not normal to see something like that so it was a beautiful sight.” Stephens, who plans to play golf at Texas A&M next year, estimates that before she competed in the Mack Champ Invitational she might have known two or three other Black golfers her age and “they lived in states that were like 2,000 miles away from me.” That changed at historic Memorial Park where 109 golfers from diverse backgrounds gathered for the unique event hosted by the Cameron Champ Foundation. It’s the same course where the PGA TOUR’s best will play this week at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open. The golfers competing in the MCI represented 26 states, as well as Canada and Costa Rica. Entries for 2022 close on December 1 and already over 170 kids have applied, which is about 50 more than last year. Stephens, who loves watching Rory McIroy, Matt Wolff, Brooks Koepka, Ariya Jutanugarn and Nelly and Jessica Korda play, will be back for the second year. “I basically think it’s insane to see,” says Stephens, who was the only Black golfer competing in the DCP at Augusta National back in 2018. “I honestly didn’t think that there were that many people of color who played golf at that level. So, I mean, it was great.” Mack Champ, who died in 2019 at the age of 78 after battling stomach cancer, would certainly have been happy to hear Stephen’s assessment. His son, Jeff, who is Cameron’s father, says his dad, who learned to play golf while serving in the military, is still “always talking to me” and he knows he would be proud of the way his grandson is giving back. “My dad’s always been that kind of person and our whole family (is, too),” says Jeff Champ, who combed the Internet and social media to find talented minority golfers deserving of invitations to the tournament. “It’s one of those things. So many people help helped us get Cameron to that point to where we have to help the next kids out.” Kids like Stephens, whose family survived the trauma of Hurricane Harvey that left 4 feet of water standing in their two-story house and kept them away from home for months. She started playing golf at the age of 7, then took a 2-year hiatus before getting hooked again when her dad, Joe, who played for the Houston Rockets and is a single digit handicap, put a putting green in the backyard. Stephens joined First Tee-Greater Houston, which has nine chapters, serving more than 1,000 kids, including one at Memorial Park that offers programs four days a week. Her goals now are winning a national championship at Texas A&M, which is where she found out later, Cameron Champ, went to school, and turning pro, although earning her degree in biomedical science is a solid back-up plan. “The whole time really stands out,” Stephens says when asked about the MCI. “I met so many great people. I connected with a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a while. … The whole tournament was a great experience.” Cameron Champ, the three-time PGA TOUR winner who is himself bi-racial, was a hand’s-on host at the MCI. Over the course of the three days, he held a clinic, fielded questions from the kids, signed autographs, posed for pictures and gave out the trophies. The parents listened closely, as well. “It’s really neat because Cam can relate to those kids,” Jeff Champ says. “He was one of those kids at one time. … And one of the biggest things for our family is to share our knowledge. If I just keep everything that we’ve learned to myself, I don’t know what I would do with myself, you know? “So, we have to share our experiences, share the hard work and also explain to these families what we went through to where they understand all the different pieces. And then they have to decide what’s the best situation for their family, because every family is different.” Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to compete in the Masters, was a virtual speaker at the banquet. Cameron Champ made his debut at Augusta National in 2020. “This is just a start for us,” Cameron Champ said that week. “Obviously we want to grow from this year each and every year and make it bigger and better for the kids. It’s all for the kids. “It’s all for their exposure — just giving them, like I said, a fun environment and to play against competition their age that are just as good as them. But then also for the ones that have success during the week, there’s also other opportunities for them to play even bigger and better events.” Glenn Weckerlin first met Cameron, Jeff and Mack Champ on the 10th tee at Del Monte Golf Club at the PURE Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee in 2012. Cameron was the junior in the group and Mack was caddying for him. Weckerlin remembers everyone hitting their tee shots – except Cameron, who strangely held back. “And he said, well, I can’t really hit yet,” Weckerlin recalls. “… He’s a scrawny little kid in high school and, and I’m thinking, the first thought was, he was too nervous to hit. And we said, oh, okay, but don’t worry. We are all going to go out and have fun today and he’s like ‘No. No, you don’t understand. I can’t hit, because they’re still on the green.” Sure enough, Cameron proceeded to drive the green and birdie the first hole. He drove the second, as well, and made eagle. Weckerlin looked at his partner, smiled and said, in understatement, “This is going to be a good day.” But the best part for him was getting to know the Champ family, a friendship that has endured for a decade. After Cameron turned pro and decided to start a foundation, the family asked Weckerlin to serve as its chairman of the board. The organization is dedicated to unlocking the potential in the lives of young people in underserved and underrepresented communities. The MCI, which was in the works before the COVID-19 pandemic and had to be postponed for a year, is one way to help. Cameron remembers playing in a similar event for minority golfers called the Bill Dickey Invitational when he was growing up. “So, when my grandfather passed, we kind of thought, what could we do?” Cameron says. “Could we maybe start our own? It kind of went through our heads and why not? Let’s just try. So, we put it all together and it all the sponsors, volunteers, people around us — close family and friends — all came together, and we got it going.” Weckerlin said the group considered courses on the West coast – Champ is from Sacramento, California – and in Florida. But they settled on Texas, which is centrally located, and then zeroed in on Houston, where the TOUR pro now makes his home. The next piece of the puzzle was finding a golf course. So Weckerlin called Giles Kibbe, who is president of the Astros Golf Foundation, which is the sponsor and beneficiary of this week’s Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open. The Astros Golf Foundation also happened to have funded Tom Doak’s restoration and the overall renovation of Memorial Park, the sprawling municipal gem that hosts more than 60,000 rounds a year. Among the goals was to bring life to the downtown area and create opportunities for inner-city kids. “(I) said, hey, what do you think?” Weckerlin recalls. “This is what we’re trying to do. It seems like it’s really consistent with the whole point of remodeling and renovating Memorial Park to be able to do this sort of thing. “And he said, absolutely, give me the dates. And that was it. It’s one of those things where, you know, sometimes those things could have dragged out forever, but it took two seconds to say, yes, absolutely.” Even better was the reaction Kibbe, who played golf at Lamar University, had when he spent time with Weckerlin at the MCI in March. It wasn’t just the kids competing that drew him in, it was the friendships being developed and the networking among their families with shared goals. “He just shook his head and he said, ‘This is unbelievable,’” Weckerlin recalls. “The energy that’s out here and the parents and the people that are watching. “And so, we got to the last day of the tournament and he said, ‘Are you guys going to do this again?’ And I said, yeah, well, that’s the whole plan. And he said, ‘Well, is there, can we be part of it again?’” There are big plans for 2022, when the tournament will be held March 18-20 at Memorial Park. The junior-am that COVID scuttled earlier this year will finally be a part of the event, pairing a foursome of corporate leaders with one of the MCI kids. Jeff Champ and Weckerlin continue to seek MCI exemptions into other amateur events, as well. The MCI was a start, but everyone knows there is much work to be done. According to National Golf Foundation, only 18 percent of golfers today are non-Caucasian and just 3 percent are Black. And in 2020, only 2 percent of male and female golfers playing in the NCAA were Black. Even so, Weckerlin was filled with pride last summer when he played in the PURE Insurance Championship once again, and there were six juniors in the field who had played in the MCI at Memorial Park in March. He saw them hanging out together, and he saw how people were drawn to them. “And I had a big grin on my face because it just proved, it demonstrated kind of what we wanted out of the Mack Champ Invitational,” Weckerlin says. “We may not produce another Cameron, but if we can have a bunch of kids, show up, play golf, have a bunch of confidence and go on and play another tournament and get to know each other and make lifelong friends, that’s not a bad end result.”

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It was just a few days ago that we crowned a FedExCup champion. There's no rest for the world's best, however, especially in today's unique circumstances. After an unprecedented season that was put on hold by a pandemic, the PGA TOUR embarks on a super-sized campaign that features 50 events, including six major championships. The largest PGA TOUR schedule since 1975 starts Thursday with the first round of the Safeway Open in Napa, California. The winner of the 2021 FedExCup, which will be decided Sept. 5 at East Lake Golf Club, will have endured a marathon march to the PGA TOUR's ultimate prize. To prepare you for this monster season, PGATOUR.COM's writers convened for a roundtable discussing the season's hot topics. 1. Who’s your 2021 FedExCup champion, and why? SEAN MARTIN: Rory McIlroy. Now that his first child has safely arrived, I think McIlroy will have a banner year. He already has a good grasp of things, but players always say that the added perspective that comes with fatherhood helps their game. If that's the case, it could be a big year for McIlroy. CAMERON MORFIT: I think we could be entering the Jon Rahm era. I liked the way he shrugged off that mental lapse and one-stroke penalty to win the BMW Championship, and the fact that he prevailed at two of the most maddening courses we've seen in a while, Olympia Fields and Muirfield Village, speaks volumes, as well. He's a mega-talent, and he's on the rise. BEN EVERILL: With so much of the landscape yet to be clear you have to lean to the tried and true. It would be easy to suggest McIlroy (good choice Sean), Rahm (no arguments Cam), Justin Thomas or Dustin Johnson and I think it likely comes from that quartet. I am going to throw one out a little from left field, however. Xander Schauffele. He won at East Lake in 2017 and was runner-up in 2019, so he has an affinity for the site of the season finale. 2. Which player is poised for a breakout in 2021? SEAN MARTIN: Sam Burns. It wasn't that long ago that he was the NCAA player of the year and then made a splash with his performance at The Honda while playing alongside Tiger Woods. He's still just 24 years old and I think this is the year that he gets that first TOUR win. CAMERON MORFIT: Lanto Griffin still flies pretty far under the radar, and I think we haven't seen his best yet. He looked built for biggest stages at the major-esque BMW Championship (T10) and was also T19 at the PGA Championship. BEN EVERILL: Cameron Davis. The young Aussie is starting to find his feet, contending at times and getting some valuable experience under the gun. But outside of my Aussie bias look to Abraham Ancer and Viktor Hovland. I think their rise will continue. 3. There are six majors this season. Who wins the most and how many? SEAN MARTIN: Jon Rahm. He won on two of the four hardest courses this season. Muirfield Village and Olympia Fields were playing like major-championship venues. He has back-to-back top-10s at the Masters, finished T3 in the most recent U.S. Open and we've seen him pick up two Irish Opens on links courses. Sign him up for wins at one of the two Masters and the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the site of his first PGA TOUR victory. CAMERON MORFIT: Bryson DeChambeau. I know he's not playing great at the moment, but I don't know how you defend against that length advantage at Augusta National, and there are two Masters. It feels like he's going to figure it out. BEN EVERILL: Jon Rahm is the most likely on paper, even though he hasn't yet won a major. But he has an all-around game that is proven at Augusta and also Torrey Pines where he's won before. Those who know me, though, will not be surprised to hear me say Jason Day and Marc Leishman are two you should not sleep on. Day has five U.S. Open top-10s, including two runners-up, and has two TOUR wins at Torrey Pines. He has four top-10s, including a second and third, at Augusta. Leishman has form at Torrey Pines also with a win, he's a proven links golf performer and has threatened at the Masters. 4. More likely to win another major: Rory, DJ or Brooks? SEAN MARTIN: Rory has two shots at the career Grand Slam and the PGA is returning to Kiawah, where he won by eight. But I'm going to vote DJ. At 36, and with length to spare, he still has plenty of good years ahead of him. CAMERON MORFIT: Ordinarily I'd say Brooks, but I don't really know about the status of his knee/hip, and he had a dud of a season. DJ has his own issues, and has dealt with a bit of bad luck, besides. I guess I'd go with Rory. BEN EVERILL: All three will win another one at least, but first I'll go with the new dad, Rory. He will ride the rollercoaster but appears to me as the type of guy who will turn perspective into performance. 5. What does Collin Morikawa do for an encore? SEAN MARTIN: Adjusting to life as a major champion can be difficult but he has a good head on his shoulders. He's obviously capable of more, but I think following his breakout season with even just one win can be considered a success. Winning multiple times in a year isn't a guarantee even for the best players. For perspective, consider that 2020 was the first multiple-win season of Jon Rahm's career. CAMERON MORFIT: I'm thinking two wins, minimum. He's that good. BEN EVERILL: Depends on how long we play without on-site spectators. In the current climate I'm with Cam, he probably wins at least once. If the fans are back, I want to see him down the stretch of the big events trying to adjust to that norm. He will figure it out, of course, but it might take a minute. 6. Which first-time TOUR Championship qualifier has the best chance of returning in 2021? SEAN MARTIN: Morikawa is the obvious answer, but among players who have played multiple seasons on TOUR, I'm going to pick Cameron Champ. The long hitter displayed increased consistency this season thanks to improvement with his scoring clubs. Distance is always an advantage and it doesn't waver week-to-week. Improving his short-iron play will allow him to take advantage of his prodigious length. CAMERON MORFIT: I'll go with Scottie Scheffler. He seems pretty unphased, and to shoot 59 like that was impressive. The only surprise is that he hasn't won yet. BEN EVERILL: Joaquin Niemann. While I think he will continue to be a little streaky in his youth, I think his talent will see him win again and as such be in great shape for a return to East Lake. Viktor Hovland will be back also. 7. Who is most likely to win his first event in 2020? SEAN MARTIN: Scottie Scheffler seems to be the easy answer. CAMERON MORFIT: Yeah, I think Scheffler. BEN EVERILL: Abraham Ancer. Surely any day now. 8. Where is Tiger most likely to get No. 83? SEAN MARTIN: Next to Augusta National, Torrey Pines might be the course that has been most important to his legacy. Setting the PGA TOUR wins record by winning another U.S. Open at Torrey Pines would be storybook stuff. Perhaps instead of holding off a grizzled veteran like Rocco Mediate in a playoff, he will beat back a young up-and-comer like Morikawa. CAMERON MORFIT: Sherwood Country Club, the fill-in host of THE ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. When the Hero World Challenge was held there, from 2000 to 2013, Tiger finished first (five times) or second (five times) in 10 of 12 starts. That's enough for me. BEN EVERILL: Can't fault both answers above, although the U.S. Open setup might prove tough for an aging Woods. I'll plump for Augusta since we play there twice inside six months. 9. Does Phil Mickelson have another PGA TOUR win in him? SEAN MARTIN: I have to be honest, I don't think he does. He has the swing speed, but he appears to struggle with keeping his energy and focus at high levels for 72 holes. CAMERON MORFIT: Fred Funk and Craig Stadler each won on TOUR after they turned 50, and each of them had won on PGA TOUR Champions when they did it. Mickelson is obviously in a different class. He'll definitely win again. BEN EVERILL: Yes, if he varies his schedule a little. No, if he only plays limited times against stacked fields. I can see Mickelson winning the season opener at Safeway if his mind hasn't moved ahead a week, and I guess contrary to my above statement places like Riviera and Pebble Beach will always offer Phil a chance to thrill again. 10. Woods, Day, Scott, Cantlay, Wolff, Woodland, Watson, Casey, Rose, Mickelson, Spieth, all missed the TOUR Championship. Which player who missed East Lake will return with a vengeance? SEAN MARTIN: I think Adam Scott. Class is permanent and he would have made East Lake if he had played more. His truncated schedule was caused by the pandemic, so I think a full schedule will be enough for him to return to the TOUR Championship. CAMERON MORFIT: I've got to go with Jason Day. Although it was too little, too late, he seemed to find something toward the tail end of this season. If he carries whatever that was into the coming season, watch out. BEN EVERILL: THUD! That was the sound of me hitting the floor after hearing two Aussies come out of the guys above! Of course, I agree both will return! As stated above, Day has the benefit of a major schedule that fits his game, so if he's healthy and switched on he will not only return to East Lake, he'll be there to win it.

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