The PGA Tour invited its official marketing partners to a forum at The Players Championship in March to discuss ways to strengthen each other’s business. One of the topics was a plan to help historically Black universities and colleges cope with travel expenses for the golf team.
United Airlines was interested.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan announced last week — ahead of the Tour Championship in Atlanta — that United Airlines has pledged a $10,000 grant to each of the 51 men’s and women’s HBCU golf programs.
Georgia is home to 10 HBCUs, four of which have golf programs.
The news follows the Tour’s $100 million pledge to support racial equity and inclusion efforts in golf. In the last year, the Tour made $100,000 contributions to the men’s and women’s teams at Prairie View A&M, Delaware State, Tennessee State and Wilberforce University.
Augusta National, home of the Masters Tournament, announced in 2020 the creation of two scholarships named after Lee Elder — the fist Black player to compete in the Masters — for the men’s and women’s teams at Paine College, an HBCU in Augusta. Last year’s The Match: Champions for Change — featuring Phil Mickelson, Charles Barkley, Stephen Curry and Peyton Manning — raised more than $6 million for HBCUs.
The tour learned from HBCU programs and research that it cost about $3,000 to send a team to a college tournament. The new grants effectively allow golf programs to compete in two additional tournaments. The rest of the money could be used for travel to help with recruiting, another important asset cited by the golf programs.
Monahan said the golf programs will start receiving the grants in January.
The tour said other marketing partners already have shown an interest in contributing to the program.
“We are incredibly excited about the positive responses we’re seeing from our corporate partners in wanting to support HBCU golf programs, and we are confident that this momentum will continue,” Monahan said.
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