Peter Muthiya grew up in a mud hut, a Black child of colonial Africa in the 1950s who fell madly in love with a game invented by some of the whitest men on earth: the Scottish. And they brought to Africa by British colonialists as a White man’s game, where Peter and his kind were not welcome. But Peter wouldn’t let that get in the way of his love. He foraged for balls in the deadly, snake-infested brush edging the unlikely golf course near his home in Zambia. He was desperate to learn how to drive and putt, but the equipment was ridiculously expensive, available to only the well-heeled ruling class. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, spending as much money on a set of Titleists as your family made in a year is unthinkable, no matter how deep your love for the game.

So Peter whittled homemade golf clubs from carefully curated sticks and played with his scavenged balls. He loved to play golf. Smacking the ball, watching it fly, and trying to figure out how to construct a swing that would make the ball go exactly where he wanted. He was consumed by proper club grip and body stance, correct form and strategy. He relished the history of golf and its great champions, time-honored etiquette, sportsmanship and traditions.

As Peter grew, his love affair with golf ripened and deepened, becoming more than a passionate pastime. It offered escape from a life of extreme poverty, where people survived on less than a dollar a day, the average life expectancy was thirty-seven and contracting AIDS or malaria was more likely than going to college. A few hours with his lovingly carved clubs was a calming balm that let him forget the crippled economy, the often insane, inhumane government policies and the systemic corruption that kept him and millions of his people in a perpetual struggle. He could also ignore the occasional pang of regret for the choice he made—one he wanted his son to avoid. He vowed that his son would have it better than he did, so hitting golf balls became his refuge, his sanctuary, his asylum.

But if you watched Madalitso approach his tee shot with his big, shiny Cleveland driver on that June day, you’d never have guessed that his father learned to play with whittled branches and scraps of wood. Or that he’d spent most of his life surrounded by disease, poverty and the looming legacy of oppression. While his father had passed on his encyclopedic knowledge of golf’s history—the good, the bad and the ugly—he knew he was doing something no man had ever done. But he did not buckle with the weight of his people, his country and his father on his back. He never believed the widely accepted notion that a Black African golfer, without the benefit of coaching, access to world-class courses or proper equipment, could not compete on the grandest stage of world golf. His father wouldn’t let him.

With a placid expression and easy grace, Madalitso prepared to tee off.

The 400 yards of pristine green grass stretching in front of him was like an invitation. But I saw only the brown, patchy, unkempt course in a town that has since been erased from the map: Broken Hill. This is where his dad turned a childhood crush into a lifelong love affair that birthed “Mad,” an award-winning golfer.

This is the story of how Madalitso Muthiya rewrote history. It all began in a rich, bountiful, beautiful country hardened and corrupted over centuries by the slave trade, apartheid and foreign oppression where men, women and children and homes, land and culture were destroyed. In the heart of colonial Africa.