Date: 04 Nov 2006 13:40:03
From: IMJ
Subject: East Lake foursome tee off for a full ride
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With this week's annual Tour Championship being played at East Lake Golf
Club in Atlanta, it's a good time to focus on the great things that are
happening in the transformed East Lake neighborhood.
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East Lake foursome tee off for a full ride
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
05/09/06
Charles Yoo
It was no ordinary field where the boys from the East Lake neighborhood
grew up playing. The grass was always immaculately trimmed. Its
clubhouse sold polo shirts. Men who wore tailored suits to work were
regulars there. It was a rarefied environment for four black kids from a
housing project so violent it was dubbed "Little Vietnam."
For a decade, a group of boys took free golf lessons at the East Lake
Golf Club through a program for kids from the surrounding neighborhood
on the western edge of DeKalb County. And it paid off. The boys -
Brandon Bradley, 17; Shelton Davis, 18; Willie Brown, 18; and Rodriquez
Lowery, 18 - have all been accepted to Louisiana's Grambling State
University on full golf scholarships.
The scholarships are sweet redemption for the young men who were dissed
by their peers because they played golf. "They said it's easy to play,
it's boring to watch, and it's white people's sport." Brown said.
There's not much of that kind of talk anymore. "When they started seeing
us in the newspaper and on TV, they respected us more," Brown said.
The teens all were part of First Tee, a national after-school program
that teaches golf and day-to-day skills that supersede athletics:
sportsmanship, etiquette and leadership. The program is funded by the
East Lake Foundation. More than 400 boys and girls have participated in
the program at East Lake, said head instructor Jeff Dunovant.
The four graduating seniors are First Tee's first generation of success.
Davis, Brown and Lowery started when they were 7 or 8 years old. Bradley
started five years ago. The teens, who live in the East Lake
neighborhood, were once residents of the East Lake Meadows housing
project, which was plagued by crime and shootings. In 1990, a 4-year-old
girl asleep on a couch was killed by a stray bullet fired during a
shootout.
The boys practiced at the East Lake course in the afternoons. They took
to the game. "[Golf] is a little like drugs. You get addicted," Davis
said, adding he watches professional golf on TV. "Since I'm a student of
the game, I'd like to watch their swings and everything so that I could
be on their level one day."
The housing project was demolished in 1999. In its place stands a spiffy
apartment complex where young professionals and people on public
assistance live side by side. A YMCA and a charter school have opened
there, too, along with a Publix supermarket and an award-winning
Danish-style "co-housing" development and its organic garden.
Last year, the foursome led their Southside High School Lasers to the
city championship and a third-place finish in the Region 5-AAA
tournament. Golf has helped the four become the first in their families
to go to college. They chose Grambling on the advice of Sam Puryear, the
former head coach of First Tee and now assistant golf coach at Stanford
University.
Pamela Davis, Davis' mother, is proud of her son's accomplishments.
"Golf was the foundation. It taught him how to go through adolescence
and to be a young man," she said. The sport has also cemented the boys'
bond. They traveled together to distant places, from Alabama to
California, from Bermuda to Scotland. Posing for photos, they horse
around together easily.
They all have the ambition to turn pro. But also they have Plan B. Davis
wants to major in business management and start his own company. Brown
is considering sports management. Bradley wants to become an electrical
engineer. Lowery wants to study either engineering or architecture.
Their success could spin off to other kids. "There are so many
scholarships that go to waste because there aren't enough kids playing
golf," said Debert Cook, publisher of the trade publication, African
American Golfer's Digest. But, "they now see it as a new opportunity
that hasn't been looked at before."
Brandon Bradley and Shelton Davis at the 2005 British Open
http://www2.cybergolf.com/sites/courses/view.asp?id=346&page=8841
The East Lake Miracle: A reborn golf course leads to new lease on life
for many
http://www.pga.com/news/tours/pga-tour/eastlake103106.cfm?rss
East Lake Foundation
http://www.eastlakefoundation.org
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