Urban Golf Weekend started in 2023 with 120 people. This Labor Day it sold more than 600 tickets, added an expo, and signed Lexus as title sponsor.
Clifton Addison picked up a golf club at five years old because his father had just picked one up himself. The reason was not recreation. His father was entering corporate America and understood what the game was for.
"He picked up a club because he thought it would be a good idea to help his career," Addison told Local 10. "And at the same time, he put one in my hands."
That is the origin of the largest golf event in the country for Black professionals, and it is also the entire thesis of it.
Urban Golf Weekend began in 2023 as a tournament and a small networking event.
By Addison's account, attendance has doubled every year since — 120 the first year, more than 600 tickets sold for the 2026 edition. He has described it as the largest event of its kind in the country and says he now sees events elsewhere built on the same idea.
The 2026 edition ran September 3 through 7 in Miami, with tournament play at Miami Beach Golf Club and the event's first business and lifestyle expo at the Eden Roc Miami Beach. Lexus signed on as title sponsor.
Urban Golf Weekend is the signature fundraising event of the Urban Golf Foundation. Proceeds support HBCU golf scholarships, youth golf programs, mentorship, and community partnerships.
Over four years, the event and foundation report investing more than $50,000 in scholarships and youth initiatives.
Urban Golf Weekend traces back to Fore Life, a Lauderhill nonprofit co-founded in 1998 by LPGA teaching professional Paula Pearson-Tucker and Pro Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor.
Fore Life still operates year-round out of the municipal Lauderhill Golf Course, running golf instruction, academic support and character-building programs for young people ages 4 through 18 across Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
That is twenty-eight years of continuous work at a municipal course, underneath a five-day event in Miami Beach. The event is the visible part.
The detail that says the most about what this is: the event draws people who did not grow up in the game.
Local 10 reported on a plastic surgeon, Wilton Triggs, who had been taking lessons for roughly a month when he got involved.
A golf event whose growth depends on beginners is not really a golf event. It is a room, and golf is the reason people agree to be in it — which is exactly what Addison's father understood in the first place.
Reporting by Local 10 News, WSVN 7News, the Miami Times and Patch. Attendance figures are as reported by the organizers and are not independently confirmed here.