Why Tiger Woods is building a golf education center at Cobbs Creek Golf Course in Philadelphia
After years of neglect, Cobbs Creek Golf Course in West Philadelphia is making a major comeback. Opened in 1916, it was one of the only courses in the area to allow all races, ethnicities and genders to play.
"It really has great history," said Enrique Hervada, who is the COO of the Cobbs Creek Foundation.
In recent years, the Cobbs Creek Foundation took over and raised more than $100 million dollars to rebuild the course. Eventually, there will be a state-of-the-art two-story driving range with a restaurant and an 18-hole course capable of hosting PGA events.
In addition, there's a 9-hole short course that is nearly complete.
But the centerpiece of the project is the TGR Learning Lab, which is being built with the help of Tiger Woods — one of the greatest golfers of all time.
"We partnered with Tiger Woods and his foundation," Hervada said. "He has a TGR Learning Lab in Anaheim, California, for about 20 years. This will be the second one."
So how exactly did Cobbs Creek get Woods to expand his TGR Foundation to Philadelphia?
"There was a very special golfer who got his start here and he was the first Black PGA winner named Charlie Sifford," Meredith Foote, the executive director of the TGR Learning Lab, said. "Charlie Sifford was friends with Tiger Woods' father, Earl, and mentored him and became a father to him in his adulthood. And when Tiger had his second child, he named him Charlie after Charlie Sifford."
Once it opens, the TGR Learning Lab will focus on STEAM, educational enrichment, career and college readiness, and health and well-being. But it'll be open, for free, to the community for so much more.
"After school, summer, weekends, at night to explore an array of things ranging from podcasting, how to fly a drone," she said. "You name it, we have it here. And we want kids to feel like this is a home away from home."
And to the people working at TGR and living in the West Philly community it will serve, it means everything.
"I want be a doctor when I grow up," Fatima Choudhry, a TGR Learning Lab intern, said. "It's really, really awesome how there's courses here specifically tailored to science and engineering and math and arts and technology and all that, and it's just really cool to get that hands-on experience."
