Heroines of the LPGA

Filed in archive Golf Travel on November 9, 2007

Courtesy: golfworld.com

In 2006, LPGA veteran Betsy King traveled to Africa to see first hand how AIDS was destroying a continent. One of the countries she visited was rwanda.

As you should recall, Rwanda was the scene of utter brutality for 100 days in 1994 during which time tribal hatred rose to levels so horrifying that 800 thousand innocent people lost their lives in the bloodiest ways imaginable.

The poverty-stricken country has been trying to claw its way out of that mire. On top of the millions of children now orphaned because of the disaster and the oppressive poverty and rampant disease, the nation faces the Scourge of Africa - AIDS.

Betsy King was horrified but at the same time moved to action. And she spearheaded Golf Fore Africa, one of the few charities in professional golf in America that helps humanity outside the borders of the United States.

Golf Fore Africa is helping to battle the AIDS crisis by sponsoring children orphaned not just by the genocide but now by AIDS as well.

Last month, she brought five other LPGA players and family members back to Rwanda so they, too, could see what their fellow human beings were enduring on a day to day basis.

It was a chance "to see how the other half live" to put it in purposely blunt-edged fashion.

It's about time. It's always about time that we remember, for example, that two-thirds of the world is starving while the industrialized West piles unwanted food by the tons into landfills the size of small countries.

Far too often we - and I include myself here - are overwhelmed by the depth of help that so many millions and millions of people need that we settle our heads into the sand of inaction.

It was the inaction of self-interest at the member level within the United Nations that left Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, who headed the U.N.'s peacekeeping force in Rwanda, out to dry, refusing to allow him to use his peacekeepers in a way that would have made an enormous difference and saved thousands of lives.

But with Betsy King and 18 other LPGA pros, staff and teaching pros taking sustainable action through Golf Fore Africa, a difference is being made. It's small, hell, it's minute but that's because the task is so enormous.

And yet a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And hearts filled with determination and intention.

Golf writer, Ron Sirak, has written an outstanding story at golfworld.com on Golf Fore Africa. He accompanied King and the others in October and writes a moving account.

You must read it.