Access is inspirational. The impetus for inspiration is not age-specific but we are most impressionable as we form our views and our motivations at tender ages. Seeing sites that are challenging to describe, sharing a conversation with someone who may change the trajectory of your life, and being given a platform to refine a skill that may define your professional life are events and experiences that are not forgotten. They are also likely to instill a level of gratitude that will envelope you to give yourself once you’re in a position to do so. Who gave you a chance, a break, an opportunity? What and who drove you to strive and commit to a craft, a pursuit or a passion? We all need advocacy in life. For many their parents may be that support system that foundationally gives them what they need to make their way into adulthood with presence and belief. For far more, someone or something intersected whenever or wherever and set them in motion. For far too long, golf, the culture of golf, reflexively kept too many from access and opportunity. Then Steph Curry came along.
I saw him make a jump shot at a very young age, and not long after that I saw him hit a golf shot. The former was a skill that he was refining in a way that would revolutionize the sport of basketball. The latter was and is a work in progress, but his competency is uncommon for an active world class basketball player who only plays a finite number of rounds a year. But it’s not how Stephen plays golf; it’s how he thinks about golf. He sees things broadly and boldly. Yes, he is driven to refine is personal skill but far more importantly, he’s committed to make golf look more like everything and everyone. Many groundbreaking ideas are not hatched in think tanks or in antiseptic boardrooms with marketing wizards white boarding concepts. The Underrated Golf Tour was conceived in its most rudimentary form on a napkin in a restaurant in Toronto. Steph knew golf was going to be a big part of what was next after he puts a bow on one of the most scintillating and extraordinary careers in the history of basketball. But it just couldn’t be how much or how well he played that was going to stimulate or satisfy Steph. He knew what being overlooked felt like at the age that things impact you and those are the things that are never forgotten. More profoundly, Steph knew that far too many, and for far too long, had been left out of the game of golf.
The Underrated Golf Tour is not just a series of golf tournaments for many young black and brown kids. It’s a platform and a movement to 
change the way the game sees itself. The meritocracy of the game is endearing in that the ball doesn’t know who is hitting it and doesn’t care who is putting the number in each box on the scorecard. The blight on the game was that the opportunity was being denied to countless people to hit the shots and post a number simply because of how they looked. Golf’s history of exclusion is not isolated in our society but that doesn’t make it acceptable. The culture of golf loves to celebrate the redeemable chapters of its history and progress but collectively would prefer to skirt around the sad and discriminatory chapters. Golf should never run from its history, it needs to acknowledge, learn and advance way past the narrow-mindedness which persisted for way too long. Steph’s vision for Underrated is aspirational and empowering with goals beyond playing opportunities for aspiring college golfers. It’s to change the trajectory of young lives through golf.
With a cadre of corporate partners aligning and investing in the Underrated vision the members of the tour travel throughout the summer to world-class golf facilities at no cost to them or their families. Relationships formed away from the golf course have included interactive panel discussions featuring the likes of Gil Hanse, Seth Waugh and Butch Harmon. In addition, executives from Underrated’s corporate partners provide counsel on career advancement beyond college and player lounges customized at the host hotels with gaming stations give all a home away from the course. As one parent told me, “My son is comfortable on the golf course, but he has never been anywhere else, until now, and its changed him in every way”. And the boys and girls compete at top venues like Chambers Bay, the Park in West Palm, Firestone and Lake Merced while simultaneously fostering relationships for a lifetime.
International events with playing opportunities for kids outside the United States is coming as well as a supportive and structured internship and job placement programs through an academy is also on the horizon for Underrated. Golf is the vehicle, but Steph understands the narrowness of the road ahead as an aspiring athletes. Making a living playing a sport is rare but using the sport as a means to a professional end is central to the Underrated mission. The tee markers used for the Underrated events say, “Equity, Access, and Opportunity” and they are not simply symbols they are the motivation and the driving force of using golf as an agent for good and for change. Steph Curry revolutionized the game of basketball for the way he played it, and he is driven to alter the game of golf by the way he sees it.