메이저사이트

For Mulbe Dillard IV, The Journey To His Pro Golf Debut Traveled Through Florida A&M

Mulbe Dillard IV is making his pro debut Thursday at the Rex Hospital Open on the Korn Ferry Tour. The 22-year-old Chicago native earned an exemption into the field at the Country Club at Wakefield Plantation in Raleigh, North Carolina, by finishing first in the Advocates Pro Golf Association (APGA) Collegiate Ranking after a stellar career at Florida A&M, where he led the Rattlers this season to the program’s first Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship and an appearance in the NCAA regionals.

Dillard is one of four Rattlers who made the top five in the inaugural class of the APGA Tour Collegiate Ranking, which provides opportunities for the top Black collegiate players. 메이저사이트

A little more than a month after graduating from FAMU with a degree in business administration, Dillard is setting out on a journey to earn his way onto the PGA Tour, where there are currently only four African American players and none from a historically Black college or university (HBCU).

Last week, I caught up with Dillard by phone as he was driving his Chevy Equinox from his new apartment in Orlando, Florida, to meet his swing coach, Charles Raulerson, in Jacksonville. From there, he would make the six-hour drive with Raulerson to Raleigh. And from there, they might drive on to the next Korn Ferry Tour stop at the BMW Charity Pro-Am for a Monday qualifier in Greer, South Carolina.

Most of the journeys to the PGA Tour begin with players traveling in their own cars from one mini-tour event to the next. It’s not the glamorous life of private planes, catered meals and courtesy cars that can come with a successful PGA Tour career, but more often a steady grind to make cuts and eke out a living on small purses to continue the dream. Without the benefit of the close-knit team structure they may have had in college, new golf pros often help sustain each other by carpooling, sharing hotel rooms on the road and sharing wisdom about the nuances of golf courses and instructional gadgets.

“My dad told me that when I go to FAMU he wanted me to make other Black golfers want to come to this school,” Dillard said. “He wanted to have them believe that when they look at me they can believe that because I did it, they can do it too.”

– MULBE DILLARD IV

Since his freshman year, Dillard has had a glimpse of this world as an amateur on the APGA Tour, a pro tour founded in 2010 by Ken Bentley that focuses on giving mostly Black touring professionals a place to develop their games for the PGA Tour. Several good finishes on this circuit have convinced Dillard that he has what it takes to compete against the best players in the world. “I was doing pretty well in these professional events against players who had been pros for a long time, so I didn’t see why I shouldn’t try to play at the next level,” he told me.

But his parents, Mulbe Dillard III and Sidney Dillard, had other plans for their son, whom they raised with their 19-year-old daughter Harper, a sophomore at the University of Miami. Over the summers after his freshman and sophomore years at FAMU, Dillard interned at private equity firms. But during his junior year, the summer internship opportunities dried up because of coronavirus pandemic restrictions. So instead of crunching numbers on Excel spreadsheets, he worked on his golf game and competed on the APGA Tour. Over Christmas in 2020, he told his parents that he planned to turn pro after graduation.

“We were setting him up for a future in some corporate job,” Dillard III said. “We kind of thought that he might turn pro, but kids change their minds about stuff all the time. But after we talked about it, we told him to go ahead and go for it because we didn’t want him to look back and wonder what could have happened had he tried to play.”

Since their son has no lucrative corporate endorsements, Dillard’s parents are now his primary financial backers in a sport where players pay for their own travel expenses and don’t earn money on the course unless they make cuts. “We’re providing for our son now like we did when he was 8 years old,” Dillard III said.

His journey began at age 2

Dillard’s pilgrimage to FAMU and pro golf began in Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side with a foundation laid by his father, a plumber-turned-Chicago Water Department superintendent, and his mother, an investment banker. First taking up the game at the age of 2 when he would tag along with his father to the Jackson Park Golf Course, Dillard developed into an elite player through a tenacious work ethic and a willingness to overcome some of the obstacles posed by growing up in a city not known for turning out PGA Tour players.

Early on, Dillard’s father told him that he needed to put some “skin in the game” if he wanted to succeed in the sport. “We don’t have to do this,” his father told him when he was about 11. “Don’t think you’re doing this for me. You can’t rely on me all the time to take you to the golf course. You have to want to do it.” Dillard took that lesson to heart. Occasionally, during the summer when his parents or grandparents couldn’t drive him to Jackson Park, an 11-year-old Dillard would put a few clubs into a golf pouch and ride his bike along the lakefront with the wind cutting into him along the 35-minute trip from his house. Later after he got serious about golf during his ninth grade year, his parents would often drop him off at the Metro station and he would travel 40 minutes to the southern suburb of Homewood, Illinois, where he would play at the Ravisloe Country Club to experience better course conditions.