'Dear Coach' campaign shines light on First Tee instructors impacting children across U.S.

Durwyn Lamb didn’t take long to set himself apart from the other teenagers at First Tee – Fort Worth.

He was part of the after-school outreach program from nearby Northside High that met at the facility twice a week. Only Lamb was there every single day after school. Weekends, too. He was at First Tee so much, in fact, that he talked the coaches into letting him store his clubs and shoes in the building – turning one of the cabinets into his own personal locker.

“Durwyn was the one who really, really got the bug,” says Charleton Dechert, aka Coach Chuck, who has worked at the First Tee chapter for 15 years. “It’s just rare to see somebody get the bug and then love the challenge of all the things that come along with that. And it’s always surprising to see someone get hooked that good. …

"It wasn't just like he was there for 30 minutes and then gone. He was there. He would be there until they made him leave. He probably shut the golf course down.”

Truth be told, Lamb was initially attracted by the free range balls offered to the kids at Rockwood Park and the First Tee – Fort Worth.

“I was like, I’m never squandering that opportunity,” he says with a laugh. “Range balls are expensive.”

But he also found a home at the facility and what he calls a “village” of people like Coach Chuck willing to help him find his place in the game and later in the golf industry. And in a full circle moment, Lamb is now a Class A member of the Northern Texas PGA Section, helping others learn to play the game he loves.

This week at the Charles Schwab Challenge, First Tee launched a national campaign called “Dear Coach” that shines a light on its instructors by letting young people in the program talk about the impact they had on their lives. Lamb is just one of many who have been positively influenced by First Tee coaches, and he’s now paying it forward.

In addition to fundraisers and golf marathons across the country this week, a group of First Tee alums that includes New Orleans Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan, a product of the Phoenix chapter, gathered at Colonial Country Club on Wednesday for a panel discussion on coaching. Content from the “Dear Coach” campaign will also be featured at Topgolf and PGA TOUR Superstore locations, as well as at FirstTee.org.

Lamb had recently moved to the Fort Worth area, where his dad runs a boxing and martial arts academy, when he first heard about First Tee. He had played on the golf team at his previous school – “I was shooting like 120, whatever it was,” Lamb recalls – but wasn’t sure he wanted to continue.

“I knew what people were going to think about me in that space,” Lamb says.

Golf was “corny,” they’d tell him. Lame, too.

“It's an older, white male sport and nobody likes it,” he recalls. “So, I knew I was going to get made fun of. People talked about it. People talked about me playing golf when I was in (college in) Colorado even. So, I knew that was always going to be a thing, just being Black in the industry and stuff like that.”

At First Tee – Fort Worth, though, Lamb found a community to support him. What he calls a “God-led decision” and a “blessing” gave him a safe space and an alternative to the streets. He learned about making the right choices, as well as the fundamentals of a golf swing. He soaked up everything his coaches could teach him. He first began to think about golf as a career.

There was even a time when Lamb envisioned himself playing on the PGA TOUR, although he now says good-naturedly that he was “delusional.” He lost his swing during his freshman year at Colorado, where he was enrolled in the professional golf management program, and didn’t break 100 in five of the six tournaments he played.

“That’s when God kind of humbled me and was like, 'I'm going to use you this way,'” Lamb says. “And that's when I started transitioning to being, having the vision of just being, my dream goal is to be just the No. 1 African-American golf instructor in the country.”

The slump landed Lamb on athletic probation. He had to improve his scores or be terminated from the program. So, he hit the swing lab hard, practicing every day – “Just like I did at the First Tee,” he recalls – and soon was shooting in the 70s again. His mindset had permanently changed, though.

“I shifted my gears to saying, this game is really difficult, but I have a thirst for understanding the golf swing on a deeper level, mechanically understanding the mental side of it and just wanting to make people better,” Lamb says. “And I'm trying to be the best that I can be in any capacity in golf.”

When Lamb’s internship at Topgolf fell through during the pandemic, the coaches at First Tee – Fort Worth welcomed him back, this time as a peer helping kids learn the game he loves. He spent three months working alongside them, and he knew he’d made the right decision.

“It felt like I never left, but it was cool to full circle, get to now teach the kids and go through the program from a different set of eyes, different lens, and get to see Coach Chuck and get to see everybody… and just get to pick everybody's brain,” Lamb says. “I think that was the cherry on top for me.”

Lamb now teaches aspiring golfers with a variety of skill levels at The Clubs at Stonebridge Ranch in McKinney, Texas, which is about an hour from Fort Worth. One of his best students is Maylin Edge, a 14-year-old Black teenager who is already shooting in the 70s

Others, though, are beginners or recreational golfers just trying to improve. Sometimes their dreams get lost in the struggles, but Lamb – more than most – can relate.

“I really do like the season of humility that God put me in so that I can now express that to my students so that they're more encouraged when they think that they suck,” Lamb says. “And I can tell 'em, 'No, you don't suck. I promise you, I was 10 times worse at your age, and I probably had more experience as well'. So, it is definitely been a blessing to be able to grow people, give 'em confidence through my story.”

Coach Chuck sees his former student as one of the Fort Worth chapter’s biggest success stories. Lamb didn’t go through the life skills program like many others did, and he only had two years in outreach before graduating from high school. But he embraced the opportunity, practiced daily and discovered things about himself that led to a career in golf.

“This still comes to the top,” Dechert says. “It still comes to the top for me because from a rags-to-riches type story, almost a little bit to where it's just, I think he's going to be set up for the rest of his life in a way that he's got a great career ahead of him.

“I'm just so excited that that's what he's doing. He's passionate about it. He's getting to do something that he found that he didn't know that he would be passionate about. He found it through First Tee and found it through encouragement from a lot of different people, not just me. A lot of people encouraged him in his journey.

“So I'm just excited that I got to be just a little blip of it, just a little piece of that encouragement that is going to go on and make a big difference with a lot of people.”