Ira Molayo started roaming the Cedar Crest Golf Course around the age of 7. While his mom was playing golf, he was down in the creeks, playing with insects and chasing squirrels.
It wasn’t about golf at first.
However, by the age of 9 Molayo discovered the game and a safe and fun place in Cedar Crest that became the foundation of his life in the sport of golf.
Now the director of golf at Cedar Crest, Molayo’s nonprofit — The I AM a Golfer Foundation — unveiled a historic tournament that will take place on the greens he grew up just a “short course away” from.
In partnership with Southwest Airlines, Cedar Crest will host a first-of-its-kind event featuring the top 21 male and top 21 female Black collegiate golfers in the country for 54-hole stroke play contests, the foundation announced Friday.
The three-day tournament, set to start Nov. 12, 2023, will be nationally televised live on Golf Channel and be accompanied by opportunities for participants and area residents to engage with the community surrounding Cedar Crest.
A chance for Molayo and IAMGF co-founder Dave Ripley to invigorate young generations of golfers, particularly those living nearby and in their youth programs, is paramount to what they’ve tried to build since 2018.
“For that to be an example that all the kids in our programs see,” Molayo said, “it’s going to change golf for them and their whole mind. The possibilities they’re going to see for themselves are numerous and endless.”
Among them is Trinity Harris, a junior at Bishop Dunne, who has played golf at Cedar Crest since she was 6. She was an early participant of the programs put on by IAMGF and has taken part in their internship initiative with hopes of using golf to attend college.
“Seeing all the African American men and women coming here, seeing them at the colleges I want to go to and seeing where they’re ending up, I can see my future,” Harris said.
Cedar Crest has long been a fixture of the southern Dallas community. First chartered in 1919, the grounds designed by famed architect A.W Tillinghast played host to legendary events such as the 1927 PGA Championship won by Walter Hagen and the 1954 UGA Negro National Open won by “the Jackie Robinson of golf”, Charlie Sifford.
“You have a Monet, a Rembrandt, a Picasso in southern Dallas,” said Ripley, who has become “evangelical” about the course since his first time playing in 2014. “And people north of the Trinity River don’t know that.”
As part of IAMGF’s efforts, statues of Hagen and Sifford — featuring his famous arms-raised pose following his 1954 victory — will adorn Cedar Crest’s new Legends Plaza.
Among those who spoke at Friday’s announcement at Cedar Crest were Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, Mayor Pro Tem and District 4 City Councilmember Carolyn King Arnold and former Mayor Mike Rawlings. All three expressed their love of golf and excitement to bring more eyes to the area.
“This is a monumental moment where you have a major corporation, who is not fearful of coming across the Trinity,” Arnold said, “coming into our neighborhood, a neighborhood of color, to invest in children.”
The Southwest Airlines Showcase at Cedar Crest will be the first televised tournament exclusively featuring top male and female Black collegiate players and first event televised at Cedar Crest. A second event has already been scheduled for 2024.
+++
Find more golf coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Credit: Source link
