Feature of the Month - The Brown's of San Diego

Feature of the Month

The Brown's of San Diego

STORY reproduced from the San Diego Union Tribune

Youngsters prosper under Brown's Inner City Golf Foundation

By Todd Leonard
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER - December 16, 2003

Associated Press.

There was a time 30 years ago when Earl Woods felt compelled to call Gordon Brown every so often to see how his kids were doing in the San Diego County Junior Golf Association.

Brown was well-known among Southern California's African-American golfers in the '70s, because he'd played in the all-black National Golf Association Tour with the likes of Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder. Later, when Brown settled in San Diego, he and wife Harriett had five children, all of whom became skilled golfers.

Avis Brown won the Girls 9-10 Division of the Junior World Championships in 1974, a year before Earl's son, Tiger, was born. Horace Brown captured three straight section match play championships and one individual title before Tiger picked up a crayon in kindergarten. Oran Brown won another section individual crown in 1983.

Earl Woods was understandably inspired.

The father of the man who would become the world's most famous golfer has long since lost contact with the Browns, and Tiger Woods has never met them. But if the two ever dropped by a Southeast San Diego strip mall, they'd find the Browns carrying on their own golfing legacy - without the benefit of $70 million a year in income.

In 1996, the same year Woods turned pro, the Browns founded the nonprofit San Diego Inner City Junior Golf Foundation. They picked out office space behind the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, got $1,500 of seed money from bail bondsman George "King" Stahlman, and have since worked with an estimated 400 children to teach them golf skills and life lessons.

This year, the Browns are celebrating some of the fruits of their first "graduating" class. Bonita Vista High golfer Franco Garcia, who came to Inner City Golf when he was 10, has received a scholarship to play at Cal next fall; Patrick Henry graduate James Neely, 11 when he joined the Browns, is going into the Navy and wants to be a doctor.

The kids currently in the program range from ages 3 to 18.

"We've always been involved with junior golf, and this was our way of giving back to the community," said Horace Brown, 41, Inner City Golf's administrative director. "We felt we have been leaders in that area, and that if we didn't do it, nobody else would.

"And," Brown added with a smile, "Tiger Woods didn't have time to come down to Southeast."

It has been a sizable conundrum since Woods won the 1997 Masters and made golf fans out of a generation of kids who didn't know a birdie from a bogey. How are underprivileged, inner-city kids, inspired by Woods' phenomenal success, supposed to take up golf and stick with it when they have no place to play and no way to pay?

The First Tee program, established in 1997 by the World Golf Foundation, was set up specifically to develop affordable and accessible golf facilities. Woods himself has formed his own foundation and is building a golf and learning center in Orange County.

San Diego has its own First Tee facility in the Pro Kids Golf Academy at Colina Park.

But, said Brown, there remains a huge need for other such outlets, established at the grass-roots level, if those in golf are serious about reaching out.

The Browns run their program on a budget of $25,000 a year, raised through small grants and their annual charity golf tournament. This year's event, supported by athletes such as Terrell Davis and Tony Gwynn, will be played Friday at Singing Hills Country Club.

"Tiger can donate money all over the place to his foundation and never get to the inner city to see what's taking place," Brown said. "The influence of Tiger Woods in the inner city is practically nil; he's not going to come to the ghetto to give anybody a golf lesson. That's the bottom line here: Nothing's going to happen unless there is a foundation like our program.

"I honestly believe," Brown added, "you cannot have enough foundations like ours. Little League baseball has a diamond in every park. And you'll find a football field at every elementary school. But you're not going to find a golf course or a chipping green everywhere."

At the 800-square-foot Inner City Golf office, a putting green was installed over the stage that formerly served as a church's pulpit. There are five desks with computers on one side of the room and a mock pro shop counter on the other side for the youngsters to practice retail skills. Video cameras are available to tape the kids' swings.

"For them to come out and try the sport is a success in itself," Brown said. "They're willing to take on a new challenge in life. Some of them haven't seen a golf course before and they don't know the other kids. But they get to interact on a golf scale, which is totally different than football and baseball, with the yelling and screaming and running."

On several afternoons a week, kids from the program get help with their homework from Vital Link, an organization affiliated with the Southeast Community Church. On Saturdays, Gordon Brown Sr., 67, and other members of his family escort the kids on golf outings at courses across the county.

"They are the most well-behaved group of kids you've ever seen in your life," said Kip Puterbaugh, the director of instruction at the Aviara Golf Academy, which will host a two-day clinic for Inner City Golf this weekend. "We're really impressed with what Gordon does with his kids."

The children who come to Inner City Golf are from a melting pot of ethnic groups, some of them from broken homes. James Neely, for instance, didn't have a father figure and was being raised by his mother and grandmother when he started with the Browns. He almost immediately "adopted" Gordon Brown as a grandfather, Horace Brown said, and has often sought the family's counsel and advice.

"The program's done a lot for me," Neely, 19, said. "It was a confidence builder for me. It made me talk to people and interact more. I was more of a keep-to-yourself person, and golf made me talk and speak up."

If not for the Browns, Neely said, "I would probably be somewhere trying to figure out what to do."

Said Horace Brown: "He could have gone either way. I've honestly watched that kid make a decision not to go to the streets, not to give his life to drugs or gang violence . . . He really touches me."

Horace Brown, a plus-5 handicap who will pursue his own PGA Tour dreams next year by attempting to Monday qualify at events across the country, said he never expected Neely to become a professional golfer. That was never the point.

"To start something and nurture it, to actually see these children graduate and become something in life . . . that really means a whole lot," Brown said.

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