Corporate America is facing new pressure to fight back against a wave of restrictive voting measures such as a law recently passed in Georgia viewed by critics as an attempt to disenfranchise Black voters. On Wednesday, Delta (DAL) CEO Ed Bastian blasted the Georgia law after the Atlanta-based airline and other corporations faced criticism over their silence.
The pressure is on the sports world, too, with the National Black Justice Coalition calling on the PGA Tour and the Masters Tournament to pull the upcoming championship at the Augusta National Golf Club from Georgia to another state. (The Masters is run by the Augusta National Golf Club, not the PGA.)
While professional golfer Kamaiu Johnson doesn’t believe the event will be relocated from Georgia, he told Yahoo Finance this week that the world of golf needs to talk about diversity.
“I think the more conversations we have about making golf more [diverse] and making it more inclusive for all is the way that gets better. It’s just bringing the conversation up to people who don’t really want to have the conversation,” Johnson told Yahoo Finance.
The golf world notoriously lacks diversity, though the sport has seen an upswing in women and young adult participation amid the pandemic. Golf’s professional field, in particular, has consisted largely of white players, with Tiger Woods being the sole African American competitor among 156 players at the PGA Championship in 2018.
For his part, Johnson, who is Black, says that golf has changed his life. “I’m an eighth grade dropout,” he said, “but when I got involved in the game of golf, it really, really changed my life for the better.”
At the age of 13, Johnson was spotted by a woman named Jan Auger, the general manager of Hilaman Golf Course in Tallahassee, Florida, as he was practicing swings with a stick near the course.
“Jan Auger charged me $1 a day to play golf,” he said. “She showed me tough love and that’s what I needed to be the person I am today.”
Johnson has come a long way since practicing swings with a stick: he won the Advocates Pro Golf Association (APGA) Tour Championship last September and has played in several PGA Tour events. His major sponsors include Cisco (CSCO), Farmers Insurance, and Titleist.
“It took a village to really get me where I am, no matter if the person was white, Black, or whoever it was. That’s what I want for the country I live in,” said Johnson. “America...to be a village [for] each other because that’s the only way we can grow. That’s the only way the game of golf is going to grow.”