Be A Mentor! Teach A Boy to Golf!

It doesn't cost a dime at most public courses to sit a boy aged 7-and-over down in the golf cart seat beside you and shove off toward whatever challenges await you that day.
Taking on the immense responsibility of helping to mentor a needy black boy into manhood could be as easy as including one in your next golf outing.



Let's salute and support the effort by Sporting News Radio stars, "The Two Live Stews", (Doug and Ryan Stewart, above) for their daily pleas for all the men who can to get involved in fatherless boys' lives.

If we don't, who will? Learn more about mentoring opportunities in your community, by clicking here.

I can tell you from experience that mentoring is not easy. I did a two-year "tour of duty" in Detroit, and the threat of personal injury factored into the equation. I chronicled the situation, long ago, for Essence magazine.

But I also recall the one-time opportunity I had to take a nephew who'd been evacuated by Katrina out on a walk-through of my neighborhood nine. If nothing else, I tried to teach him about manners and perseverance and strategy and patience. I haven't heard a word bad about him since, so maybe a bit of my advice and admonitions wore off.

Each one teach one. Or else...

Joltin' Joe's Mightiest Blow?

Does anyone have a fast and reliable way to contact Joe Louis Barrow?



Since it's Black History Month, any respectable media entity that can is paying homage to the roots _ deeper than anyone grasps _ black men have to the game of golf. So, Barrow's father, the great boxing champion, Joe Louis, figures prominently in the conversation. (The Golf Channel and even majorleaguejerk.com score well in noting this.) Now's a good time to cull Barrow's brain; put the past, present and future of the game in perspective.

Besides smashing the Germans' last vain claims of Darwinian superiority over all other humans by crushing Max Schmelling in the boxing ring in the late 1940s, "The Fist" also broke down a major PGA barrier for all that followed him.

It was in 1952, at the San Diego Open. I won't bore you with all the details here. Just read up on it at your leisure. It'll put your next round into perspective...
Photo: Joe Louis on the links/majorleaguejerk.com