In 1925, Joseph Bartholomew completed construction of Metairie Golf Club in his native New Orleans. He was also named Metairie's first club pro.
 
How did the course play? Don't ask Bartholomew. He wasn't allowed the play the golf course he built, the first ever constructed by an African American, due to the club's segregation policy.
 
For the next decade Bartholomew was the architect of a number of golf courses in his home state, but he was largely barred from playing those too.
 
It's another painful story in the voluminous history of racial discrimination in American sports, and golf in particular. Every major American sport was complicit at one time or another in a litany of horror stories and injustices. Golf has been party to some of the worst.
 
With the additional layer of country club access, the barriers in golf for minorities and women have been, historically, immense. The PGA's "Caucasians only" clause remained on the books until 1961. The Masters didn't invite its first black competitor, Lee Elder, until 1975, and that tournament's home, Augusta National, didn't allow black members until 1990. The club didn't offer membership to women until 2012.
 
While golf has inarguably made strides towards inclusion in recent decades, it still lags far behind many of this country's favorite sports. According to GolfWeek, fewer than one percent of the PGA of America's members are African American.
 
Through more than 40 years as a player and coach, Andy Walker's seen progress, but he's been witness to, and been the target of, the ugly side as well. He's loved golf for four decades, but it hasn't always loved him back.
 
"I had notes left on my car. You know, 'don't let the sun set on your black ass' in Alabama because I was leading a professional golf tournament. I've had people in the crowd scream out 'white power' to me while I'm in my back swing. I've had air let out of my tires in rental cars on the road. Even though I have my credentials on me, I've been stopped and [told] 'the locker room is for players only, sir'," recalls Walker, the second-year head coach of the VCU Golf team.
 
Walker, who is of African American and Mexican descent, grew up in Phoenix, Ariz. and was winning junior tournaments by the time he was five years old. He weaved his way into a golf community that wasn't always antagonistic, but wasn't completely welcoming either. He was met with odd stares and, at times, outright discrimination on the way to a remarkable, trailblazing golf career. He captured numerous tournaments during his time on the AJGA circuit, where he and Tiger Woods were the only black players among thousands of competitors nationwide.
 
He is believed to be the first African American win an NCAA Men's Golf Team Championship in 1997 with Pepperdine. He later captured 28 professional tournaments on various tours. As a coach, he's won National Championships at the junior college and Division II level. Currently, he's believed to be one of two African American Division I men's golf head coaches, along with Kevin Jennings of Central Michigan.
 
He's built a successful life in golf, but therein lies the rub. Despite all his breakthroughs, when Walker looks around, he still doesn't see many people in the golf world who look like him.
 
"I hate being the first African American coach. I hate being the first African American coach to win a National Championship. It's cool sometimes, but it really isn't, because that means there aren't any others, and there's really no pipeline to coaching. When you think about it, there's fewer black players on [the PGA] Tour than there were in the 80s," Walker said.
 
Like any good coach, Walker sees the work still undone, the progress that needs to be made.
 
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Walker's father, Leonard, began playing golf in the 1960s with the Desert Mashies, a pioneering group of black golfers in Phoenix who were barred from most courses in the area. Although he was not initially a golfer, Leonard Walker had become friends with some Mashies and began joining them at events.
 
"He was always the comedian, and he would go on these golf trips to play other black clubs," Andy Walker said. "At first, when he didn't play, they would take him because he would be the bartender and keep everybody laughing and having a good time. And then, he started playing and fell in love with it."
 
Founded in 1946, the Mashies were based out of Encanto Golf Course in Phoenix, but would travel around the western United States to play other African American golf clubs. There were the Desert Trails out of Tucson, the T-Masters and Cosmos of Los Angeles, Mile High in Denver and others.
 
The Mashies played where they could in those days, which wasn't saying much. They were usually relegated to municipal courses, which weren't always well maintained. But it was a place, and a community within, to play.
 
Andy Walker began tagging along with his father to the golf course when he was still in diapers and took to the game quickly. It was in his blood. He began playing against, and beating older kids with regularity. He won his first tournament when he was five, in a field of players, 3, 4 and five years older.
 
"I probably wasn't supposed to play because it was in the 8-10 division, but I was pretty good, so they let me in [and I won]," Walker said. "So, on the front of the Arizona Republic it had a picture of me and it said 'Walker Wins Wire-to-Wire". I'm like five years old with my collar popped, shades on, winning this tournament, and we go to show-and-tell in kindergarten, and everyone has a picture of their dog, and I walk in with a big trophy that's taller than me, and I'm on the front of the paper, and I was a little celeb. I was like, I can do this. I like this. When I was five years old, I knew I wanted to play on tour."
 
Walker kept winning, and he kept turning heads. While he was making a name for himself in Arizona and throughout the southwest, he still found himself fighting ghosts. He was occasionally mistaken for a caddy. He says his arrival at tournaments was often met with surprise and quizzical glances, and in at least one instance, he alleges that qualifying criteria was changed to keep him off the America's Cup team for Arizona.
 
"I was pretty upset, and I remember my dad was like, let's talk about that. He just told me, this isn't going to be the last time you experience that, and you've got to just continue to be better," he said.
 
So, Walker went to work. He was determined to be too good to ignore, to brush off, to relegate.
 
"I never use it as a deterrent. I always use it as motivation," Walker said.
 
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Walker had a closer seat to view Woods' impact on golf than most. The two are the same age and were tearing up the AJGA circuit at the same time. They also played against each other in college while Woods was at Stanford and Walker attended Pepperdine. Both are of African American descent (Woods' ancestry is primarily African American on his father's side and Thai on his mother's side, although his ethnic makeup is said to also include Chinese, American Indian and Dutch).
 
In 1996, months removed from winning an NCAA individual title, Woods turned pro and promptly set the golf world on fire. A prodigy by the time he was three years old, Woods immediately signed lucrative endorsement deals with Nike, Titleist and others. The following April, at the age of 21, he became the first African American, as well as the youngest, Masters champion in history by a record 12 strokes.
 
Golf would never be the same.
 
"For me it wasn't that different because he was always the best player. From the time when we were five years old, he was the best player," Walker said. "When we were in college, he wasn't just the best college player. He was the best player in the world."
 
From 1997-2010, Woods ripped off perhaps the greatest 13-year stretch in PGA history. He won 14 Major championships and was ranked No. 1 for nearly 700 weeks. Even today, despite a series of injuries and personal issues, he remains the sport's top draw. His 2019 victory at the Masters, at 43, sent shockwaves through the sport.
 
Woods' historic rise was seen as a breakthrough for inclusivity in golf. While there had been successful black golfers on the PGA Tour like Calvin Peete, Elder, Charlie Sifford and others, Woods has become arguably the greatest player of all time. It seemed as if Woods' ascent would serve as a catalyst for transformation in golf. But in 2022, 25 years after Woods turned pro, there were just four African American players on the PGA Tour: Woods, Harold Varner III, Cameron Champ and Joseph Bramlett. In 2018, then CEO of PGA America Pete Bevacqua called diversity golf's "biggest challenge".
 
The Tiger Effect turned out to be a wave, not a tsunami.
 
"I think the Tiger Effect had a different effect," Walker said. "I think the Tiger Effect was supposed to open doors, but I think it actually closed doors. Because 'we've got one now, that's good enough. Leave it alone'."
 
"On the outside, the people watching it, it exploded. Everyone is wearing red and black, but the impact he had on the game, I would say, was more on the commercial side.
 
Disappointed, but undeterred, this is where Walker looks to step in. The 2022 Atlantic 10 Conference and inaugural Black Golf Coaches Association Coach of the Year sees diversity and inclusion in golf as his ongoing challenge. Like the Desert Mashies opened doors for his father, and by extension, him, he hopes open doors for others.
 
For a time, Walker served Director of the UGA Academy & Player Development, which seeks to provide "the highest level of training to increase a talented and credentialed pool of qualified African Americans who will contribute to the success of the game of golf." While Walker has left the position in an official sense, he continues to work towards those goals on his own.
 
"[After Tiger] everything was introducing them to the game, but not developing their games," Walker said. "Introduction is nice, you know, give them two golf balls and tell them to go putt on this green over here, but taking the thousands you introduced to golf and taking 15 or 20 that are really good and saying we're going to develop you at the highest level, I think that's the access we needed. I don't think we just needed access to a golf course. We needed access to high level training like the players they're going to have to play against and beat."
 
In addition to developing younger players, Walker hopes his coaching career will inspire others to enter the profession. He also believes winning will give him access to a few more ears.
 
"How do I get in and make my voice a little more powerful? How about winning an NCAA Championship over here," said Walker, who led Division II Lynn to a 2019 title. "Now I have a platform where you've got to listen for a second.
 
"I always say, there's few of us who have been inside the ropes, so we have to lift the ropes up, and let the other people come under the ropes. It seems like the ropes have been there to keep us out, so someone has to be there to lift them and to do things and to be intentional about it."