Dr. George Franklin Grant

I thought it was important to start a collection of golf biographies of African Americans who have played an instrumental part in shaping the game of golf into what it is today. Tiger Woods has done much to make golf more popular in the African American community, but he is not the first African American to swing the club. Dr. George Franklin Grant was born in Oswego, New York. His parents were former slaves. Dr. Grant was the first African American professor at Harvard. In 1868 Dr. Grant and Robert Tanner Freeman, another son of former slaves, became the first blacks to enroll in Harvard Dental School.

Grant was an avid golfer and in 1899 he invented and patented a golf tee whittled from wood and capped with gutta-percha, a latex resin used in dentistry for root canals.