“A Place in the Game”

Three generations of Graingers at St. Andrews Courtesy of the Grainger family

Over lunch from Bossy Beulah’s Chicken Shack – the Queen City’s self-described “best chicken sandwich” – Ike Grainger III smiles at the sight of a young girl barely taller than her golf bag hustling to the practice tee of the Learning Center at the First Tee of Greater Charlotte in North Carolina.

“Now that,” Grainger, 75, says quietly, “is what keeps both me and the game young at heart.”

As he and a friend sit watching from a picnic table in the open air pavilion next to the former pro shop at the Dr. Charles L. Sifford Golf Course at Revolution Park, the young lady quickly tees up a ball and gives it a mighty swat, sending it flying into a pale blue winter sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Grainger is moved to say. “We have a lot of great kids out here just like her.”

Charlotte's First Tee chapter opened in 2003, a year before Grainger was asked by chapter chairman Mac Everett – the corporate dynamo who ran the Wells Fargo Championship for 16 year...