The Genesis Invitational benefits the TGR Foundation, who is building a TGR Learning Lab at Cobbs Creek.
Getty Images/Graphic: Adam Christensen
Like many kids who grew up in the 1990s and played golf, Chase Johnson idolized Tiger Woods.
“There was a movie called The Tiger Woods Story, and I watched it religiously,” Johnson told me the other day.
The 1998 film chronicled Woods from his birth to groundbreaking win at the 1997 Masters. It didn’t win any Oscars, but that didn’t bother a young Johnson.
“To me, it was the greatest movie,” he said. “And he had mentioned in the movie how he lets his clubs do the talking.”
Woods wasn’t involved with the film’s production, but coincidentally, the “lets his clubs do the talking” line is almost verbatim to what Woods said in a statement last month when he announced Johnson as the recipient of this year’s Charlie Sifford Memorial exemption, which will allow Johnson to compete alongside Woods at the Genesis Invitational, in Los Angeles, this week.
“He let his game speak for itself, and that is something I know Charlie would be proud of,” Woods said in the statement.
As Woods was for Johnson, Sifford was Woods’ idol.
“Tiger’s often said that Charlie was like a grandpa to him when he was on Tour, kind of coming up through his career,” said Mike Antolini, the Genesis Invitational tournament director. “He, obviously, named his son, Charlie, after Charlie Sifford.”
The Sifford exemption is awarded each year to players who advance diversity in the game. Sifford is the perfect namesake, having moved to Philadelphia at 17 to escape Jim Crow laws in the South. He picked up golf in 1939 and became the first Black member of the PGA Tour in 1961. Eight years later he won the LA Open.
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Sifford learned the game at Cobbs Creek, a muni on the edge of Philadelphia with a rich architectural history and noted for welcoming all players. But in the years following Sifford’s introduction there, the course did not age gracefully.
Johnson, too, has a quaint public course he owes for his introduction to the game. Copley Greens is a nine-hole executive course outside of Akron, Ohio, where Johnson grew up. He describes it as being built by a local farmer who simply had a ton of excess land in his “backyard.”
“I started playing there, you know, when I was like 2,” Johnson recalled. “And when I was 5, I won my first tournament or I had shot I shot a certain score out there and [the owner] gave me a lifetime membership.”
However, these are the types of courses the game is losing at a rapid rate. The places where those who don’t belong to private country clubs learn to play the game. Copely Greens closed in 2015 and Cobbs Creek was shuttered in 2019 despite it’s place in the National Black Golf Hall of Fame.
“If we don’t have public golf, I think it’s a real loss or golf as a whole,” said Mike O’Neil, executive vice president of the Cobbs Creek Foundation.
However, long-rumored plans to restore Cobbs started to become a reality in recent years. The Cobbs Creek Foundation secured a lease from the city of Philadelphia to run the course in 2022 and broke ground on a $150 million Gil Hanse-led restoration effort last summer.
Last spring, given the site’s connection to his idol, Woods and his TGR foundation got involved.
“Cobbs Creek Foundation was looking for an education partner and TGR Learning Lab provided everything that they were looking for,” TGR Foundation CEO Cyndi Court said. “And then, of course, the connection between Charlie and him being the first black player on the PGA Tour and calling Cobbs Creek his home course and his relationship as a mentor to Tiger makes it a really impactful and authentic partnership.”
In 2025, just the second TGR Learning Lab location will open at the site, even before the course’s restoration is complete. Woods will also design a 9-hole short course to accompany the learning lab.
None of that would have ever happened had Sifford not wandered onto a bus to take him to the muni one day in 1939.
This week during the Genesis — which is the same event Sifford won 55 years ago — that connection will be highlighted throughout the week by the TGR Foundation as one of the main beneficiaries of the tournament.
“There is there’s a lot that goes behind the impact that a golf tournament that like the Genesis Invitational,” Antolini said. “Obviously, a lot of people watch it wondering who’s going to win. You know, exciting. They come out, they enjoy it, they experience it.
“But at the core, it’s really improving communities. And we’re proud to kind of play a role in helping and helping get that done.”
Fans will also come to see Johnson compete, under Sifford’s name. He’s coming off an outstanding season on the Advocates Professional Golf Association Tour, a Tour with the goal of bringing more diversity to the game and preparing minorities for careers in golf, where he won three times and had seven runner-ups in 11 events. He also got a taste of PGA Tour weekend action, making the cut in two of three events.
He’s got big aspirations for this week.
“I don’t want to set a limit, but a win is obviously goal No. 1,” he said. “To perform and just play to the best of my abilities is my main goal and hopefully that can catapult me into the same categories as J.J. Spaun and Cam Champ [former Sifford exemption recipients who are now PGA Tour winners].”
If Johnson can play his way into the same breath as those names, what might he try and do? Get Copely Greens reopened, just like Woods is helping to do at Cobbs.
“I would absolutely do anything in the world for someone to go back and refurbish that,” he said.
