Finding New Golfers In The Inner City

By Adam Ruggiero
Love of Sports Correspondent

Hard work, stick-to-it-iveness and knowing the job you’re doing for your client isn’t going to be easy are the qualities that have made F. Clayton Tyler a successful trial lawyer in Minneapolis.

They’re also qualities he cultivated when he began as a golf caddy some 45 years ago, and they became the bedrock of the Minnesota Minority Junior Golf Association (MMJGA) Tyler later founded in 1987.

The program, which draws inner-city minority youths from boys and girls clubs and youth groups from around the Twin Cities area, aims to provide 12 to 17-year olds with life skills, educational opportunities and honest work.

“What we try to do is start the model to teach kids how to not only caddy, but how to interact in the overall life experience part of society,” Tyler says of the MMJGA. “When you take an inner-city kid and you put him in with a predominantly white group of other kids, you’ve got to learn to get along. You’ve got to learn to accept different challenges that you normally wouldn’t necessarily have to accept in your same environment.”

Besides the social benefits Tyler sees in his caddying program, the MMJGA provides scholarships to some of its exemplary caddies, as well as availing participants to the prestigious Chick Evans Caddy Scholarship. In fact, the MMJGA produced the first black Evans Scholar in Minnesota, Tasha Phillips. With the award, Phillips will have her full tuition covered for her four years in college.

As Tyler notes, providing especially needy youths with educational grants is a standout aspect of the MMJGA.

“A lot of the kids that caddy are from families that belong to country clubs, so they don’t have the financial need,” he points out. “What we’re trying to do is pair up our program – kids that have the financial needs – with the private country clubs that have the caddy availability so that we can get more Evans Scholars out of the state of Minnesota.”

Tyler, who caddied as a 12-year-old for former Golden Gopher Rose Bowl quarterback Sandy Stephens, observes that his own caddying program offers certain benefits that strictly how-to youth golf programs don’t.

“A lot of the organizations just try to cater to junior golf by giving kids golf lessons – the kid comes, hits the ball a few times, then they go away and they never see it again. Whereas when you’re caddying out there, you’re seeing how terrible these golfers are and you say to yourself, ‘I can be a better golfer than that!’ Then you go out and you try and you realize you can be better when you practice.”

The caddies – who Tyler boasts can give the distance, gauge the wind and identify the grain and cut of the grass – must endure the rigors of caddying, pass an exam and log 40 loops (rounds) of golf to successfully complete the MMJGA scholarship program. The regimen isn’t for the faint of heart. Of the annual 80-plus kids who enroll in the program, only about a third, on average, see it through to the end.

But the MMJGA attempts to strengthen kids’ resolve and promotes a team concept by sponsoring summer life skills programs, bowling nights and providing outings to Gophers and Timberwolves games. The program also encourages “graduates” to return to mentor incoming caddies as part of the “each one, teach one, reach one” concept.

As the program gears up for its 21st year, Tyler expects more good things from the charitable organization that owes its beginnings to an eager 12-year-old hauling golf clubs for a college quarterback.

“I think it looks good,” Tyler says, speaking about the future of the MMJGA. “If I can be instrumental in getting other cities to adopt a program like this where kids can succeed and they can learn how to work hard, and at the same time appreciate the game of golf, then I’ve done something. It’s about helping kids out, that’s all it is. It’s about helping kids.”

For more info on the MMJGA, please visit www.mmjga.org.