Dave Hyde: From eighth-grade dropout to the Honda Classic — Kamaiu Johnson’s unusual journey to first tee
The story begins 10 feet off the fourth green where the kid lived. Isn’t that how you’d expect a successful golf story to start? In some rich cul-de-sac of society? With a spoiled eighth-grader growing up by a green?
Except this golf story has no spoiled kid, no rich cul-de-sac and the only reason it involves an eight-grader is because Kamaiu Johnson dropped out of school before ninth grade. It was a school day when the story starts, too. That spawned his first lie.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” asked Jan Auger, who was playing the hole.
“I’m home-schooled,’' Johnson said.
With nothing to do, he was swinging a stick like a golfer outside his grandmother’s apartment complex beside the fourth green of Hilaman Golf Course in Tallahassee. Johnson hadn’t swung a real golf club to that point. His mother just moved Johnson from Madison County where Blacks didn’t feel allowed on the golf course. Not that he had thoughts of playing, either.
But Auger saw something in the 14-year-old that day and asked if he’d like to hit a bucket of balls at the range. She even gave him a 9-iron. Thus began a story that restores your faith in the purpose of sports, of the people involved in them — and of larger humanity in general.
Johnson, now 27, plays in the Honda Classic this week on a sponsor exemption after making his PGA Tour debut last month at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in California. But don’t get the wrong idea. He hasn’t made it in the manner of others on the pro tour.
Until recently, he slept for two-and-a-half years on the couch of his friend’s apartment in Orlando to save money. He also just got his first car two weeks ago. Before that, he’d borrow cars to drive to tournaments. He’d get financial help from friends, businessmen — an uncle even passed around a hat at his cigar bar in Tallahassee to fund his nephew’s dream.
“You know how they say it takes a village?” he said. “Well, I’m fortunate to have a village help me.”
It started that day with Auger, who was the general manager of golf in Tallahassee. That connection helped. She offered to let him play $1 rounds of golf if he helped do chores at the course. Paint. Clean Carts. Whatever.
So for the next five years, Johnson was at the golf course from sun-up to sundown, either working or playing golf. It wasn’t some Disney film. His family didn’t understand. They never played golf, the only Black playing prominently on the PGA Tour was Tiger Woods and they’d ask him, “Why don’t you get a real job?”
He also was caught taking food once from the course. Auger talked with him.
“I had no food at home,’' he said. “Fortunately, Jan gave me some tough love. That’s when our relationship really took off. She could’ve wiped her hands of me. She became like a mom to me. She let me stay on the course. And golf honestly saved my life.”
At 21, Johnson moved to New York with a friend and fellow golfer, Vin Hunter, to caddy and play in sanctioned amateur tournaments. He made $400 a day caddying two bags on a round. He also got a taste of tournament golf, qualifying for competitive tournaments and finishing second in the Westchester Amateur.
“That when I knew I wanted to chase the game of golf,’' he said.
It’s an expensive game, and this is where Johnson’s village came in. He starts ticking off names: Ramon Alexander, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, let Johnson live with him for a few years as a teenager; Cedric Shephard, a Tallahassee dentist, gave him a couple of hundred dollars regularly; Marcus Beck, a vice president at Merrill Lynch, who gave him up to $1,200 a month. Paul Dean. Hank Satz. Jaworski Vance. The names go on.
“Black people, white people — so many people helped me,’' Johnson said. “That’s how it’s been. It’s why I want to succeed. That’s the only way I can try to repay some of these people for what they did for me.”
When Johnson began to have some success on the PGA mini-tour last summer, finishing third at the St. Louis Open, his story attracted attention. He got sponsors like Farmers Insurance, Cisco and Cambridge Mobile Telematics.
“Most of those CEOs came from nothing to run Fortune 500 companies,’' he said. “They’ve never seen me swing a golf club, but they believed in me. They’ve heard what I’ve done to get here.”
Johnson was supposed to make his pro debut at the Farmers Insurance Open this year, but he tested positive for COVID-19. That set back his game for a bit. It also got him sponsors exemptions. He missed the cuts in Pebble Beach and the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
“Now I’m back to hitting it like pre-COVID,’' he said.
Now comes the Honda tournament. He’s a long way from the fourth green outside his grandmother’s complex, a long way from being an eighth-grade dropout. The only question now is if his good game can catch up to his powerful story.
