Developing Love for Game Is Just Par for This Course

Tierra Manigault, who has lived several places in greater Los Angeles--Inglewood, Compton, West Hollywood now--scored her first hole in one Oct. 9.

“A 135-yard par-three. I hit an eight-iron into the wind,” Manigault says.

She is calling from Jackson, Miss., where she is a freshman biology major with premed aspirations at Jackson State. She is also a member of the fledgling women’s golf team.

The team is coached by Eddie Payton, Walter’s brother, who has built the Jackson State men’s program into a power among black college programs and hopes to do the same with the women’s program.

Manigault will be playing No. 1, she says proudly.

She also says, “It’s been pretty emotional. Eddie spoke at his brother’s funeral. Everybody around here respects Eddie and Walter a lot.”

On Monday, the LPGA Urban Youth Golf Program will hold its annual pro-am at Woodland Hills Country Club. The 10-year-old program is about bringing to golf the kids of the city, the kids who hardly ever see grass and never hold golf clubs.

Ten years ago, Tierra Manigault was one of those kids. Her mother, Yolanda, is a cashier. Her father, Wayne, is just a peripheral part of Tierra’s life. Yolanda, who has severe asthma, which is made worse by grass--”I’ve almost lost my mom twice to asthma,” Tierra says--heard, somehow, about the Urban Youth Golf Program, and took her rambunctious young daughter off to learn this unfamiliar sport. If her mom couldn’t be out there on the course with her, Tierra knew, she always had Yolanda’s support.

“She wanted me to have something like this I love,” Tierra says.

“It was at El Segundo,” Manigault says. “I couldn’t hit the ball but I really loved it. I don’t know why.”

The program offers lessons by volunteer professionals as well as equipment. It offers practice times at places like Griffith Park and even transportation.

On a fall afternoon, just after school has let out, 10 boys and girls have gathered at Griffith Park. Some have been brought by parents, some have come on a city van which picks them up at a local rec center.

This is how 9-year-old Natalie Perez, a fourth-grader at Logan Elementary, has arrived. She is wearing a frilly tank top and blue jeans. Though she is thin, fragile looking, Natalie takes a ferocious swing at the ball. It flies 100 yards or so and Natalie giggles.

Natalie says she heard of the golf program at her school. She knew nothing about golf but she had heard of Tiger Woods. Natalie told her mom, Gladys--”My mom works feeding other people’s babies,” Natalie says--and her mom thought learning golf would be good.

Eddie Ponce, 10, and a fifth-grader at Logan, has joined Natalie in the van and the program. This is his second lesson and he listens with his brow wrinkled when Paula Olsen, a 38-year-old teaching professional, offers him tips on where to put his feet and what to do on his backswing.

Milton Padilla, 17, and Robert Bustamonte, 17, stand side by side, whacking balls with drivers. They are seniors at the Downtown Business Magnet School and have become good enough to play in tournaments as members of the program’s team.

Olsen loves teaching the kids. She says Padilla and Bustamonte played in their first big tournament this summer at Verdugo Hills and finished third. Sometimes the kids have to raise their own money for entrance fees. This time Olsen found a sponsor willing to pick up the $500 charge.

That’s what keeps so many kids from playing golf, Manigault thinks.

“My mom could never have afforded clubs for me,” she says. “Especially when you start so young, like I did. You outgrow clubs, you need new ones. Without the program I could never have played this game. Nobody in my neighborhood played. And now I’m at Jackson State, half on an athletic scholarship and half on an academic scholarship.”

Manigault’s plans include becoming a doctor. Some day. She shyly confesses to another goal:

“I would love to play professional golf if I could get good enough.”

Manigault has watched Tiger Woods stir up interest in the game. She arrived at Jackson State to see that there are other African American women who are as excited about the game as she is.

“I played on the boys’ team at my high school [Westchester Aerospace Magnet School] because there wasn’t a girls’ team,” Manigault says. “It’s so cool to have a women’s team to play on. I think it would be so great to keep going and make it on the LPGA tour. I could be a good role model I think.”

Monday at Woodland Hills, LPGA pros Kay Cockerill, Pearl Sinn, Muffin Spencer-Devlin and Nancy Harvey will co-host the pro-am. Someday Manigault would like to be one of those hosts, helping raise money so that other kids will have a chance to learn this game.

The program’s aim is not to raise pros, Olsen says. The idea is to give kids a game they can play all their lives, that’s all. But if Tierra Manigault were to someday become an LPGA player, no one around the Los Angeles Urban Youth Golf Program would be unhappy.

*

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.