Jeff Smith is a tech entrepreneur who represents a sport with strong historical ties to his family.
The New Orleans native is the great-grandson of Joseph Bartholomew, one of the first Black golf course architects in U.S. history. Bartholomew, born in 1888, dropped out of school in the eighth grade and learned the ropes of golf by working as a caddy at Audubon Park Golf Course, a whites-only club that was down the street from where he lived, according to Amateur Golf. Bartholomew later became a greenskeeper and was hired as an assistant for Fred McLeod, a pro golfer who taught him the game as well as how to build golf clubs during the segregated Jim Crow era, per The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
When the opportunity came, Bartholomew was able to study golf course design in New York, where he worked with Seth Raynor. He moved back to New Orleans and applied his knowledge by designing the golf course at Metairie Country Club in 1922, and then at City Park, among others . He later created courses in Covington, Hammond, Abita Springs, Algiers, and Baton Rouge, LA. Smith recounts in an interview with AFROTECH that Bartholomew had fully or partially designed over 15 golf courses …