This week, the Super Bowl of golf is taking place in Augusta, Georgia. The Masters stands as golf’s most important annual event. However, the Augusta National Golf Club hasn’t always been inclusive, accepting its first Black member in 1990, nearly 60 years after it first opened.
Racism at golf clubs has marred the sport, but the rise of Tiger Woods and diverse golf groups has helped to add more inclusion.
Golf enthusiast Roger Steele is using culture and his love for golf to introduce the sport to a new generation. With videos that have gone viral on social media and wearing “Golf is Dope” T-shirts, Steele has proven that golf can be cool and fun for diverse demographics.
“Before I built the platform on social media, I recognized that golf lacked real diversity,” Steele said in an exclusive interview with ADW. “There were so few Black people that were in the game. But a lot of times, those who were on the golf course would do a lot of code switching to fit in. I wondered, ‘Why are you letting golf change the essence of who you are?’ When I started creating content in the golf space, I just wasn’t afraid to speak to the audience the way that I would speak to one of my homies. And I think that’s something that served me very well. As long as you understand the rules and the etiquette of the game, that’s the beautiful part about it is because, you know Golf has the ability to connect you to people that are completely different.”
Steele’s ability to stand out in golf has led to him making content with NBA All-Star Steph Curry and NBA Champion, J.R. Smith. He’s been able to reach more people by being himself while on the course.
“I don’t care how good I would have gotten in basketball or football, there’s no way that I would have had opportunities to interface with some of these guys,” Steele says. “The way to bring myself closer to my heroes was this thing that I was trying to run away from the whole time. The ability for golf to connect you to people that you never thought was possible is insane. Steph Curry is like a larger than life figure for me. I hold him in a very high regard as a player and as a matter of skill. During a video shoot, he told me that he had been watching my stuff on social media. So it’s just crazy to think about the power of this game. Like once you love it. Once you really love it. The opportunities for you to connect with people are just unprecedented.”
Although golf has allowed Steele to create his own path, he initially hesitated with embracing the sport as a youth. He credits his father with helping him fall in love with the sport.
“I had a very forced relationship with golf early on,” he reveals. “My father was a police officer at the time. He’s retired soon, but he really saw the benefit of the game. His whole community was built through the game of golf around the time that I was born. So it was really no way for me to avoid it. But it was tough for me being a young Black kid, growing up in Chicago during the Michael Jordan era. All of my friends wanted to be some version of a basketball player. And so golf was not something that I really saw myself in early on. So him introducing me to golf and making sure that I had a support system of people that cared and looked out for me, it was important. It wasn’t that way in the beginning. But But I do appreciate it deeply now.”
When it comes to introducing golf to the next generation, Steele believes that making the sport cool and accessible will help to bring in more diverse groups.
“There’s so many interesting and compelling stories in golf, but not just in the sport of golf but in the periphery of golf,” he says. “Now that we’re starting to see how golf intersects with all of these different spaces. I’m inspired by how so many different verticals converge in golf, and how compelling and interesting a lot of these narratives are. And so I’m just I’m interested to just connect the dots with as many different factions of coaches as possible. ‘m trying to see how we could plant that message and get a lot of them to come over to the golf side of things.”
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