With Support From a Champ, Women’s Four-Ball Competitor Hinds Is on the Rise

When Lamar Hinds took his only child, Alaythia, to watch fellow Sacramento native Cameron Champ compete in the PGA Tour’s Safeway Open as an amateur in 2017, Hinds had no idea just how big an impact it would have.

Having recently gravitated to the game at age 11, Alaythia was wowed by the prodigious distances that Champ hit the golf ball. But there was something else that excited her beyond Champ’s remarkable skills.

Hinds saw herself in Champ, who just a few weeks earlier had become only the second African American to play on the USA Walker Cup Team, joining Tiger Woods 22 years earlier.

Seven years later, Champ is one of just a handful of Black golfers to win at the game’s highest level, and the three-time PGA Tour titlist is using his success to create a platform for the next generation of aspiring minority players – a group that includes Hinds.

To honor his late grandfather who introduced him to the game, Champ started the Mack Champ Invitational for golfers ages 13-18 from diverse backgrounds through his Cameron Champ Foundation.

Last April, on the Nicklaus Course at The Club at Carlton Woods outside Houston, Hinds holed a 25-foot birdie putt on the 18th green to claim the 3rd Mack Champ Invitational (MCI) in a sudden-death playoff. The victory took place on the same course that would later host the year’s first women’s professional major, the Chevron Championship.

Champ and those in his foundation felt a sense of pride as Hinds, a senior at Pleasant Grove High who plans to play golf as a student at Howard University this coming fall, became the first player from Sacramento to win the MCI. 

“This will help grow the game in Sacramento,” Champ’s father, Jeff, told The Sacramento Observer. “There is growing talent in Sacramento, and we want to market it. The foundation has given [Alaythia] good exposure. This will help encourage kids to see golf as an alternative.”

The previous two female winners were sisters Amari (2021) and Alona Avery (2022), the former a current All-American at the University of Southern California who went 4-1 as a member of the victorious 2022 USA Curtis Cup Team and has qualified for two U.S. Women’s Opens.

Four months later, Hinds and partner Erica Villegas, of Fairfield, Calif., shared medalist honors in a Las Vegas qualifier for the 9th U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship with a 5-under 67. Although they lost a playoff for the lone available spot, they received a call from the USGA in January that they had earned entry in the championship as alternates. They will be among the 64 sides to tee it up May 11-15 at Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio, Texas.

Hinds, who turns 18 on Day 1 of the championship, will be one of two Black golfers in the field. University of Delaware senior Christina Carroll is competing with teammate Marissa Malosh.

“She’s a lot more talkative,” said Hinds of Villegas, 17, who like Hinds, will be competing in her first USGA event. “I’m more quiet and definitely more level-headed. We keep each other steady.”

According to the National Golf Foundation, Blacks make up just 3 percent of the golf community and half of that demographic are competitive players. The Cameron Champ Foundation and other grassroots organizations such as First Tee and LPGA*USGA Girls Golf are working hard to improve those statistics in a game that hasn’t always been welcoming to people of color.

Nine-time USGA champion Woods has inspired a generation of young golfers, and USGA-sponsored initiatives such as Drive, Chip & Putt, and the recently launched U.S. National Development Program, with its grants component, are providing more opportunities for golfers, especially minorities.

Shyla Brown, a Black player from McKinney, Texas, who finished second in the 2022 MCI, was named to the inaugural U.S. National Junior Team in March.

“It’s definitely a sign there’s a lot more [Black golfers on the rise],” said Alaythia. “Living here [in California], it’s not too uncommon [to see Black players]. There’s a lot more diversity. When we travel to other states, it’s a lot different.”

Like many of his peers, Lamar Hinds never thought about playing golf in his youth, choosing instead to play baseball. While in college at Sacramento State, a good buddy, Tim Cooper, introduced him to golf. Cooper later became friendly with Jeff Champ, as they played minor-league baseball in the Yankees’ and Orioles’ systems, respectively.

Once he took up golf, Lamar got hooked, eventually seeking guidance from area instructional guru Don Levin, a former standout at San Jose State University who qualified for the 1983 U.S. Open at Oakmont. Levin’s son, Spencer, became a college All-American at New Mexico and was the low amateur (T-13) in the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.

As Lamar started competing in local tournaments, he occasionally saw  an 11-year-old who hit the ball remarkable distances for someone that young. That youngster was Cameron Champ.

Jeff Champ, recognizing a need in the minority golf community, took over Foothill Golf Course in Citrus Heights, about 13 miles northeast of downtown Sacramento, and made it the home for the Champ Foundation. Now Alaythia makes occasional visits to the course to assist with foundation-sponsored clinics.

Golf wasn’t Alaythia’s first choice. She played basketball and softball, and was also an accomplished violinist who has played with the Sacramento Youth Orchestra. Her favorite composer is the German-born Felix Mendelssohn.

Because Lamar played regularly, Alaythia asked to join her dad on the course, and she displayed preternatural gifts with a golf club. She loved being able to play and practice in solitude, and does so now at Rancho Murieta Country Club, where she has a junior membership.

By age 11, Alaythia had dedicated herself solely to golf, and that’s when Lamar took her to see Levin.

“A lot of upside,” said Levin, who has worked with Alaythia for nearly 10 years. “She has a trained golf swing that’s very accurate. We’ve structured her mechanics … to get a very true, controlled ball flight. She never has times where she struggles because of accuracy.

“She [also] has a very good personality for golf. She’s stoic. You wouldn’t know if she was 5 over or 5 under if you watched her going down the fairway. In the long run, that’s a very good asset.”

Althea Gibson, the first Black to play on the LPGA Tour, Ann Gregory, the first to play in the U.S. Women’s Amateur, and fellow pioneer Renee Powell laid the foundation for African American women in the 1950s and 1960s. Among those currently taking up the mantle are Cheyenne Woods (Tiger’s niece), who has competed in five U.S. Women’s Opens and won on the Ladies’ European Tour, and Mariah Stackhouse, who helped Stanford University to the 2015 NCAA title and became the first Black female to compete in the Curtis Cup in 2014. Now a professional, Stackhouse has logged five top 10s on the LPGA Tour.

More recently, Bailey Davis, a sophomore at the University of Tennessee, reached the final of the 2021 U.S. Girls’ Junior, where she lost to phenom Rose Zhang. Other up-and-coming players include Amari Avery, University of Tulsa redshirt freshman Allyn Stephens (third in 2022 MCI), and U.S. National Junior Team member Brown, 15, who won this year’s Kathy Whitworth Invitational to earn a spot in the LPGA Tour’s Walmart NW Arkansas Championship. 

Events like the Mack Champ Invitational are helping to raise the profile of young Black golfers. Winning the event has led to Alaythia receiving other high-level tournament opportunities, including the IMG Junior World Championship in San Diego, the Girls’ Junior PGA Championship in Hot Springs, Ark., and the First Tee Championship in Palo Alto, Calif., where she finished second.

She also was second in the Girls Division of the PGA Tour Champions’ Pure Insurance Open, where First Tee members/graduates tee it up alongside top senior golfers in a best-ball 54-hole event at iconic Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill. She played with Brian Cooper, a Black professional, and her week was highlighted by making an eagle on Pebble Beach’s par-5 second hole..

“It was a lot different than a regular junior event,” said Alaythia. “I got to meet a lot of people and experience the courses. [Brian] was a really nice guy; I learned a lot of different shots for different situations.”

Given her on-course success as well as her prowess in the classroom, where she maintains a 4.0 grade-point average that includes advanced-placement courses in calculus and statistics, Hinds drew interest from several Division I schools before settling on Howard, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C.

Howard’s golf program made national news in 2019 when NBA superstar and accomplished golfer Steph Curry made a seven-figure donation. Hinds, who has yet to meet the Golden State Warriors’ guard, decided Howard was the right fit because of the coaching staff’s philosophy on academics.

“A lot of schools say you can’t do any STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) or challenging majors,” said Hinds, who wants to study applied mathematics. “Coach [Sam] Puryear believes academics are very important. You can major in anything as long as you’re committed to the team and get your academics in order. I was a good fit for them.”

Before she enrolls at a school more than 2,700 miles away from her Rancho Murieta home, Hinds has a full schedule of competitive golf, which includes the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball and attempts to qualify for the U.S. Girls’ Junior and U.S. Women’s Amateur in July and August, respectively.

If there’s an Achilles heel to Hinds’ game, it’s distance. Only averaging 220-230 yards off the tee, she is working hard to improve in that area. Levin knows that is the next step in her evolution as a competitive player.

As for the upcoming Four-Ball, Levin reminds Alaythia that golf remains the same game no matter the venue or competition.

“Whether you’re playing in the Sacramento City Championship or for the U.S. Open, it’s the exact same thing,” he said. “The score goes up next to your name. People who can deal with that are the ones who excel.”

Perhaps the next time Hinds competes in an event at The Club at Carlton Woods, there will be stands filled with fans for the Chevron Championship.

David Shefter is a senior staff writer for the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.