Tiger Woods opens TGR Learning Lab at Cobbs Creek Golf Course
Tiger Woods unveils new TGR Learning Lab at Cobbs Creek Golf Course to support youth education.
- Tiger Woods opened a new TGR Learning Lab in Philadelphia to provide educational opportunities for local students.
- The facility is part of the Cobbs Creek Golf and Education Campus, a place with historical significance for Black golfers.
- Woods was inspired to partner with the project due to its connection to his mentor, Charlie Sifford.
- The Learning Lab is the second of its kind and is projected to serve more than 4,500 students annually.
Anytime that Tiger Woods stood within six strokes of the lead going into the final round of a PGA Tour event, which was just about every time he teed it up, he’d find a yellow Telex message taped to his locker from Charlie Sifford, who was the impetus for the removal of the PGA’s Caucasian-only clause in 1961 and the first Black member of the PGA Tour. The message was always the same: “Go kick their ass!”
Woods did that and then some, winning 15 majors and 82 Tour titles in all, and along the way, he never forgot the impact that Sifford made on the game and his life.
“He became the grandfather I never had,” Woods said on Monday at the ribbon cutting for the Smilow Woodland TGR Learning Lab.
New campus near Philly could serve 4,500 per year
At the heart of a sprawling 350-acre campus on the border of Upper Darby and West Philadelphia in Pennsylvania is a 30,000-square-foot facility, which opened its doors with a soft opening on April 1, and provides local students access to educational programs and opportunities to prepare for their futures. With 10 elementary schools and 19 high schools within a one-mile radius of the campus, the Learning Lab is projected to serve more than 4,500 students annually.
“It’s a place that all kids should have access to, but they don’t and now they do,” Woods said during his remarks. “I didn’t start the Foundation to produce golfers that hit golf balls; I started the Foundation to produce the greatest humans possible. In order to do that, you have to have a place that is tangible, something that they can call theirs. It’s their home. We provide the programs, we provide the material for them, but more importantly, it’s a safe place where they can learn and grow and be amongst others they probably wouldn’t have met in the first place.”
The Cobbs Creek Foundation partnered with Woods’ nonprofit, TGR Foundation, to provide educational enrichment opportunities through the TGR Learning Lab on the Cobbs Creek Campus. Tiger’s vision is simple: to create “a safe space for youth to learn, grow and chase after their dreams.” The Cobbs Creek location is expanding TGR’s impact to serve more students and communities in need with a second location – the first being in Anaheim, California, in 2006.
Since opening, the Learning Lab has served over a thousand first through 12th-grade students in Philadelphia. Programs available to local students include a wide range of educational offerings, including tutoring, school-day field trips, after-school classes, and academic support, along with college and career readiness workshops and resources.
“Some of these kids are underserved,” Woods said. “They look at life very myopically through a straw because they’ve never been given that opportunity. This allows them to have that opportunity.”
Short course to open this year
The Smilow Woodland TGR Learning Lab is the first completed phase of the Cobbs Creek Golf and Education Campus. A new short course created by Woods’ TGR Design and the Lincoln Financial Center which includes a state-of-art public driving range, restaurant and heritage center will open later this year, followed by the renovated Old Course in 2026 and 9-hole Karakung Course in 2027 by Gil Hanse, a Philadelphia resident, and partner Jim Wagner, a Philadelphia native who grew up playing high school matches there. Part of the appeal to Tiger of being involved in the project was the role that the facility played in Sifford’s life. When Tiger heard the pitch for the partnership, he knew all about Cobbs Creek because of his longstanding relationship with Sifford, who passed away in 2015.
“He used to call this home,” Woods said. “And now I’m able to fix this up.”
After leaving Charlotte, where he was born in 1922, under the cover of darkness at age 17, Sifford arrived in Philadelphia with little more than his determination. One morning, after an all-night poker game, he stepped outside and saw a Black man boarding a bus with golf clubs.
“Where you going?” Sifford asked.
“Cobbs Creek,” the man replied.
“We can play out there?”
Cobbs Creek gave Sifford a place to hone his game
Cobbs Creek was an integrated golf course without the restrictions of the Jim Crow South of Sifford’s youth in North Carolina. “That moment changed everything,” said Charlie Sifford Jr., son of the World Golf Hall of Famer. “From then on, my father spent every free moment at Cobbs Creek working on his game. It was Cobbs Creek that gave him the opportunity to take his game to the next level … a place where talent, not skin color, defined a golfer.”
Sifford won twice on the PGA Tour. According to Sifford’s son, Tiger met Sifford when he was 14 years old, hitting 6-irons into the wind, and it didn’t take much for Sifford to realize he was going to do great things. Tiger looked up to Sifford, calling him grandpa, and he never forgot how Sifford blazed a trail for him to become arguably the game’s greatest player ever. In 2009, he named his second child and first son, Charlie, after Sifford.
“There’s no greater respect than I can give the man than naming my child Charlie after him,” Woods said on Monday.
“That caught us completely off guard,” said Sifford Jr. “It was the highest honor.” Tiger also reinstituted the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption when he became tournament host of the Genesis Invitational, which grants a spot into the signature event held in February. And he also noted on Monday that he sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to consider Sifford for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2014, President Obama awarded Sifford that honor not long before his death at age 92.
Asked what Sifford would say if he were still alive to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony and see the rebirth of Cobbs Creek and the Learning Lab that has come to life, Woods didn’t hesitate. “He would say he’s proud of me,” he said.
