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CHRIS LANG; FRED VUICH, USGA |
looked forward to doing,” says Woo, who was a P. J. Boatwright intern for the VSGA last summer.“ The First Tee has enabled me to become a better golfer, but a few aspects of the program that stand out to me are the life skills that are embedded in each First Tee activity and the network and relationships I created while going through the program. My entire life has been built on a First Tee foundation.”
The First Tee began in late 1997 with an announcement in New York’ s Central Park by former President George H. W. Bush, then-PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and Earl Woods.
Fred Tattersall, a successful businessman in Richmond, saw a newspaper article about the announcement, called the PGA Tour and asked about how to get something established in Richmond. Tattersall
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also asked the Tour to send someone to Richmond to talk about the program.
“[ The Tour ] sent two guys,” Tattersall, a First Tee icon, recalled in a recent interview. Tattersall got some friends together— Harry Easterly, Bill Goodwin, Robert Wrenn, Bobby and Jimmy Ukrop among them— to hear about the program.“ They had a lot of questions for these two gentlemen, and the [ Tour guys ] didn’ t have the answers.”
The national First Tee, a non-profit founded by a coalition of all the major organizations in golf, hired an executive director in January 1998 and set a target of 100 facilities across the country. The facilities would provide access and affordability for children and youth. Augusta National chairman Jack Stephens contributed $ 5 million in April that year as the program’ s first benefactor.
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Richmond, supplying vision and ideas to the national level through Tattersall and others, became a pilot city for the program. Tattersall announced the formation of The Richmond First Tee in January 1998.
“ The common bonds are the love of kids and the love of golf. We’ re trying to blend the two to create a great program. We want to make this special and be a model for the rest of the United States. Juniors don’ t always get the same treatment as adults. We’ re excited about the possibilities of providing first-rate instruction and access,” Tattersall said during that announcement.
The Greater Richmond chapter currently operates two golf facilities designed by well-known architect Lester George, a First Tee supporter from the beginning. George has designed five other First Tee facilities.
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