On the Right Course

DETROIT —  It is late afternoon on McDougall Street in northeast Detroit--a neighborhood that is no stranger to the siren’s lure of drugs and the sharp crack of gunfire. A group of determined mothers has cut down the tall weeds on two vacant lots between their neatly kept small homes. They want their young children to learn golf.

And like a magnet drawn to small metal filings, Selina Johnson, resplendent in the khaki and white uniform of the Hollywood Golf Institute, arrives in a white van driven by her good friend Alicia Jones.

Kevin Mobley, a 25-year-old golf pro who started at age 6 in the institute founded by Johnson, a former police officer, follows in his own car. Waiting for them on McDougall Street are the other instructors--Ronald Gross, 24, a scratch golfer, and Ernie

Mathews, 56, who once caddied on the PGA tour.

On the way, as the van passed through streets marked by a boarded-up factory, small stores and a recreational center with broken glass on its basketball court, Johnson and Jones talked about the institute’s philosophy. “Hollywood Golf provides the nurturing that a lot of urban youth don’t see,” Jones said.

“Golf in America is like apple pie and hot dogs,” Johnson said. “I think it should be part of every young person’s resume. When you are a very skilled player, it really opens the doors of opportunity. The objective is to have a quality golfer and master the fundamentals and the beginning skills of the game. Putting, personal discipline, personal management, self-esteem are involved here. . . . This program also inspires the kids to dream,” she said.

Within minutes, 25 children ranging from toddlers to preteens were lined up in rows, holding irons on the newly cut grass.

“Everybody take the golf grip now,” Gross said. “We’re going to start on our 1-2-3 drill.”

He shouted numbers like a Marine drill sergeant.

One! The youngsters moved their clubs to the top of the backswing.

Two! They assumed the impact position as if striking an imaginary ball.

Three! They swung up to a full finish.

As Gross conducted the drill, several mothers watched from a nearby front porch.

“We are tired of broken streets, broken lights and broken children,” said Viola M. Vaughn, a health planning consultant. “When I asked Miss Johnson if she would come and teach our kids, we were thrilled. We first asked the recreation department to give our kids golf, but they didn’t understand.

“This is considered a very high crime area, high-risk area,” Vaughn said. “Eighty-seven percent of our kids are classified at-risk. We don’t want any more high-risk kids. We are going to do it ourselves.”

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By now, the children had formed a line and were taking turns hitting golf balls with the guidance of Gross and Mobley. Two-year-old Malik Chavers, the smallest in the group, stood bare-chested, wearing cutoff jeans.

He looked at the ball and swung a golf club almost as long as he was tall. He hit the ball! Everyone clapped and cheered.

When the lessons ended, Malik was the last to surrender his club. While youngsters stood around and talked, the 2-year-old kept hitting a ball along the ground. As he swung, his eyes showed fierce concentration far beyond his years. Malik’s mother, Anita Jones, said her son watches golf on television. “He says like the commercial, ‘I’m Tiger Woods.’ ”

All across America, children are sitting in front of TV sets repeating the words of the Nike commercial. Golf industry professionals call it the Tiger Woods syndrome and say a floodgate has been opened.

At a recent youth day in Detroit, 4,000 children lined up to putt on a miniature course run by Hollywood Golf. After a clinic Woods held in Phoenix, 100 kids showed up at a local driving range eager to learn the game. Los Angeles is seeking sponsors to reopen the nine-hole Coolidge course in Griffith Park as a youth clinic.

“We are actually overwhelmed by kids. We have 2,000 kids,” said Dedric Holmes, director of operations at San Diego’s Pro Kids Golf Academy.

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Several weeks before the 79th PGA Championship, which begins today at the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., Woods held a clinic 25 miles to the south on Randalls Island, facing Manhattan.

As aides wearing more tags than at a national political convention scurried around, Woods corrected swings, strengthened grips and disbursed advice to the thousands of children and their parents, who first heard his father, Earl Woods, deliver an inspirational message.

“I am a walking example you can be something as long as you maintain your dreams. Work hard. Hit those books. Do what is necessary to succeed,” the elder Woods said with evangelistic fervor.

“My dad always taught me that respect is earned over time. It has taken 21 years for my dad and I to become this close,” Tiger told the throng. “I don’t care what color you are, whether you are brown, green, purple, lime green, polka dot, it doesn’t matter. We’re all human. Therefore, we should respect one another.

“I want every one of you to go home and try to become a role model, whether you are a father, a mother, sister, brother, friend, it doesn’t matter. Become a role model for someone,” he urged.

After answering questions (“I started playing golf when I was 11 months old” and “I don’t have a girlfriend right now”), he started hitting balls with a wedge and then an eight iron. After swinging several other clubs, he picked up his driver.

It was the moment the crowd had waited hours for. With deceptive ease, he swung the club, his hips turning through the shot with lightning speed. The ball soared in a straight line well over 300 yards.

“There is no question Tiger Woods has served as a catalyst,” said Carl Donner, administrator of the Youth and Education Grants Program of the United States Golf Assn. “We have increased funding to all our youth programs.” In 1966, the USGA gave $420,000 to support youth golf. So far this year, it has given $1.17 million.

“I am getting requests for applications every day,” Donner said. “I call it the Tiger Woods syndrome more than anything else.”

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What’s more, the PGA tour will announce in the fall a broad program to bring greater access to golf. “The objective will be to help create facilities along with local civic and public entities in urban areas,” said Ruffin Beckwith, executive director and chief executive officer of the World Golf Foundation, a new nonprofit organization created by the PGA tour.

“It is one thing to introduce kids with a video and a clinic. We’ve got to put a club in their hands. We’ve got to give them a place where they can play and practice and help get them to the next step,” Beckwith said.

Since its inception in 1984, the National Minority Golf Foundation has given more than $500,000 in scholarship funds to promising players so they can attend college. This year, it will disburse $130,000. Bill Dickey, the Phoenix-based foundation’s president, said more than 100 minority golf programs exist in the United States.

“We have to keep plugging away and finding ways to develop programs to give these kids a chance to play,” he said. “The bottom line is the dollar bill.”

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No one knows that more than Johnson, who founded the nonprofit Hollywood Golf Institute in 1983 because her daughter Jamila (now captain of the women’s golf team at Jackson State University in Mississippi) wanted to learn to play.

Johnson, 47, picked the name Hollywood Golf because other cops on the force called her Officer Hollywood because she loved to perform (she has even written a golf song, “I Come to Play,” which is her school’s anthem).

Though immensely satisfying, running the institute remains an uphill fight. In the beginning, Johnson collected old clubs from pawn shops in the Detroit area and cut them down so they could fit children. Gradually, a cadre of supporters such as Carl E. Rose, owner of the store Carl’s Golfland, have helped with clubs, balls and free range time for her students.

But, like others who operate minority golf programs, Johnson lacks funds to send her best players to tournaments run by the American Junior Golf Assn., which are heavily scouted by coaches of the most successful college golf teams.

The list of AJGA alumni reads like the who’s who of the PGA tour and includes such players as Woods, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III; on the women’s tour, alumni include Michelle McGann, Brandie Burton and Vicki Goetze. It can cost as much as $30,000 a year in expenses to play the AJGA’s tournaments. The organization, which is heavily supported by the golf industry, sends biographies and updated scores each week of the high school players in its tournaments to college coaches.

With very few exceptions, coaches at colleges with predominately minority enrollments don’t have the budgets, practice facilities and tournament schedule to compete for AJGA alumni.

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Johnson does a lot of nurturing. Often, she is a surrogate parent. Hugs are as common as good scores in her school, which attracts about 100 young golfers and operates on a $50,000-a-year budget, funded in part by the city and private contributions. Often she pays for additional expenses herself.

She teaches much more than golf. “We talk about poise, public speaking, dressing for success,” she said.

All children in the program must wear the school’s uniform--khaki pants, white shirts and hats with the institute’s logo. Six retired schoolteachers help the young golfers with their studies, and for a small fee will tutor at home.

When they travel by bus to tournaments, Johnson insists her students pack a shirt and tie and a blazer. Often, the young golfers are not used to leaving the security of their neighborhoods, and Johnson spends a lot of time calming jittery nerves.

Evenings on the road, she gathers the players together and analyzes their scorecards. “To play sociable golf is one thing, but to play competitive golf, that is a hat of a different color,” she said. “To get these kids ready to be competitive is a job in itself.”

On a trip to a tournament in Chicago, a 12-year-old was distraught with his score after the first round. Johnson asked what club he had selected on the first tee. It was the driver, and it turned out he was spraying his shots.

“Why don’t you use your irons for this particular hole?” she advised. “He went out there and won the tournament. But the first day, he was a basket case because he was scared.”

Johnson has also found victories come in other ways. At a second tournament, another 12-year-old came off the course, crying. “I asked him, ‘Why are you crying?’ He said, ‘Miss Johnson, I had to disqualify myself.’ There was no one there to check on him. He checked on himself.

“We are talking about honesty here,” Johnson said. “I think that was such a commendable thing he did. I will never forget it.”

One of Hollywood Golf’s biggest supporters is Leroy C. Richie, a member of the executive committee of the USGA who is the vice president and general counsel for automotive legal affairs at Chrysler Corp.

“Selina, she’s absolutely committed. She is just phenomenal,” Richie said. “We need recognition that golf teaches life skills, and the goal may be to make a good golfer, but the real goal is to make a good citizen. If you come out with an 18-year-old who is a 90 golfer, but who understands the principles involved in calling a penalty on himself on the golf course, you’ve got a winner,” Richie said. “That kid may never be a golf star, but he will be a star in life.”

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Two days before he teed off at Winged Foot today, Tiger Woods held a news conference in the massive media tent near the first fairway. He discussed his strategy for playing in the PGA championship, keeping the ball below the hole on the very fast greens, refraining from hitting his driver on tight tree-lined fairways, the absolute necessity of patience and mental toughness in order to win.

It is a cliche to say the distance between McDougall Street in Detroit and the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck can be measured in light-years. But for little Malik Chavers--who wants to be Tiger Woods--watching in front of his family’s television set, it’s not a cliche. It’s a dream.

* Times researcher Lynette Ferdinand and special correspondent Lisa Meyer contributed to this article.