On Golf Channel this afternoon and the two days that follow, is live coverage of the Showcase at Cedar Crest, a wonderfully conceived amateur golf tournament that is being played on the Cedar Crest golf course, a public course in Dallas, Texas. This the first of a two-year commitment by both Southwest Airlines who is backing it and Golf Channel who will show it live both this and next year and hopefully on into the future.
The Cedar Crest golf course was the original Tillinghast-designed course for the Cedar Crest Country Club that would go bankrupt during the depression and be forced to sell the club to the City of Dallas. What was the site of the 1927 PGA Championship is now a run-down municipal course that the City of Dallas will not put the resources into to restore the once great course back to what most of it originally was. I say most because several holes were lost a few decades ago when the original club house burnt down and a new one was built on the site of those three holes.
Despite that very negative sounding introduction, this is a tournament all on here should either watch live or record and watch it later. You will see the best 44 African-American college players, 22 men and 22 women, compete on a course whose potential will jump out at you.
The tournament came about when a group of Dallas businessmen came together and formed the I Am a Golfer Foundation and have raised a great deal of money to both restore the course and maintain it into the foreseeable future. The City has turned down this offer, despite how this would renovate, not just a golf course, but an entire community. As of today, the city has said they will reconsider this during the coming year.
Take a look at least at a portion of it and you'll be quite impressed as to its potential...The club, Ira Molayo the head professional who runs the entire facility, in addition to helping a large group of public players improve in both their play and love of the game, and who kept the facility open during the entire Covid crisis by paying the employees who maintained the course and those in the clubhouse out of his own pocket, and the public players who call it their course, all need our help and support.
If and when you might have a moment, look up the I Am a Golfer Foundation website, along with the Cedar Crest Golf Course website, and consider how you might be able to help them and encourage the city of Dallas to allow a restorative renovation that won't cost the city a single penny to take place!