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I wish I could say I was born with a golf club in my hand. Although the local country club was a couple miles from my grandfather’s neighborhood store in Summerlee, W.Va., I really never took in its rolling greens and fairways until Bobby Ferris invited me fishing. I was about 10 years old, casting into the murky waters of White Oak Country Club’s ponds when I first noticed the golf balls dotting the landscape around me. When the blue gill weren’t biting, I’d start my own collection, hauling balls home in my tackle box to swat around later in the woods with my baseball bat.

My buddies and I were serious competitors at baseball, football and basketball. It was nothing to start a game on a Saturday morning and, before we knew it, the evening sun’s orange glow would settle on us and granddad would start calling me to help him plant tomatoes before it got dark.

The game of golf didn’t exist in our world; it was as foreign to us kids as grown-up talk around the Sunday dinner table. And these were the days of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. What’s more, some of the men who hung around my grandfather’s store said black people didn’t play golf. To me, it wasn’t much different than the unwritten social rule that said black folks weren’t welcome at the city’s public pool. Their opinion toward the game was enough for me, as a youngster, to dismiss it without asking the whys that would become so important to me later on.

Although I wasn’t born with a golf club in my hand, I was reborn by one. Today, having played golf since my college days (about 13 years), I define myself by the game. I’m a professional golfer. That’s what I tell folks, because that’s the path I’ve chosen.

I’m not a card-carrying member of the PGA; I’m not a country club pro. But I’ve paid my dues as a grounds crew member and honor caddie at the renowned Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. I’ve been an assistant golf professional, college golf instructor and college golf coach. But foremost and always, I’ve been a steadfast player, devoting my life with countless hours, days, months, and years of training to find my path in life.

Although I've played in several tournaments and some mini-tour events, one of the highlights of my career so far has been as a participant on The Golf Channel's "The Big Break." I was chosen from a nationwide search as one of 10 aspiring tour professionals to be featured on the reality show's premiere series in the fall of 2003. The show pits contestants against one another in various skills challenges, culminating with a winner who received four exemptions on the Canadian Tour.