Tiger Woods
Anytime that Tiger Woods stood within six strokes of the lead going into the final round of a PGA Tour event, which was just about every time he teed it up, he’d find a yellow Telex message taped to his locker from Charlie Sifford, who was the impetus for the removal of the PGA’s Caucasian-only clause in 1961 and the first Black member of the PGA Tour. The message was always the same: “Go kick their ass!”
Woods did that and then some, winning 15 majors and 82 Tour titles in all, and along the way, he never forgot the impact that Sifford made on the game and his life.
“He became the grandfather I never had,” Woods said on Monday at the ribbon cutting for the Smilow Woodland TGR Learning Lab.
New campus near Philly could serve 4,500 per year
At the heart of a sprawling 350-acre campus on the border of Upper Darby and West Philadelphia in Pennsylvania is a 30,000-square-foot facility, which opened its doors with a soft opening on April 1, and provides local students access to educational programs and opportunities to prepare for their futures. With 10 elementary schools and 19 high schools within a one-mile radius of the campus, the Learning Lab is projected to serve more than 4,500 students annually.
“It’s a place that all kids should have access to, but they don’t and now they do,” Woods said during his remarks. “I didn’t start the Foundation to produce golfers that hit golf balls; I started the Foundation to produce the greatest humans possible. In order to do that, you have to have a place that is tangible, something that they can call theirs. It’s their home. We provide the programs, we provide the material for them, but more importantly, it’s a safe place where they can learn and grow and be amongst others they probably wouldn’t have met in the first place.”
The Cobbs Creek Foundation partnered with Woods’ nonprofit, TGR Foundation, to provide educational enrichment opportunities through the TGR Learning Lab on the Cobbs Creek Campus. Tiger’s vision is simple: to create “a safe space for youth to learn, grow and chase after their dreams.” The Cobbs Creek location is expanding TGR’s impact to serve more students and communities in need with a second location – the first being in Anaheim, California, in 2006.
