Detroit attempts to make golf more accessible to the Black community

Shaun Horne is a rarity among his Detroit high school peers.

He only plays golf.

Coaches and community groups in the city are taking ambitious steps to spread the game's popularity among students -- noting that only about 50 of more than 14,000 high school students in Detroit's school district play golf on school teams.

In Detroit, the biggest challenge is exposing Black youth to the game. That’s according to Jesse Hawkins, who is Black and coaches Horne’s team at Renaissance High School.

“In my community when we were growing up, it was just not a recognized sport,” Hawkins said. “It wasn’t something that was well-respected by our community let alone invested in.”

According to the National Golf Foundation, among the 28.1 million Americans who played golf on a course in 2024, about 25% were Black, Asian or Hispanic.

The Rocket Classic has steered nearly $10 million from the annual PGA event held in Detroit to local charitable organizations. Of that, $800,000 has been given to programs that teach kids how to play the game. A golf simulator used by Renaissance’s team was donated by First Tee of Greater Detroit.

The Rocket Classic is the first PGA event held in Detroit and is part of financial tech company Rocket founder and chair Dan Gilbert's vision to bring a world-class golf event to the city.

The PGA brought its first event to Detroit in 2019, and Dan Gilbert's Rocket Companies has been its sponsor.

The company works with partners to bring the game to Detroit’s youth and cover some of the costs, said Trina Scott, vice president of Civic and Community Affairs at Detroit-based Rock, which is Gilbert’s family office. “How do we attract Black and brown youth into seeing this as a possibility? One way of doing that is by making it accessible,” Scott said. “The other way of doing it is by making it accessible but also eliminating the barriers.”