How I Got Here: Quiet on the Tee: He’s Working – George Bradford ’97

Former Terrapin golfer George Bradford, a 1997 graduate of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, had a quick response when people told him to “get a job” after college. “I have a job,” he told the skeptics. “I’m a professional golfer.” Bradford persevered in various mini tours across North America and achieved a milestone in 2004. That’s when he hit a hole-in-one during a qualifying tournament at Little Bennett Golf Course in Clarksburg, Md., and earned a spot in his first PGA Tour event. Bradford still golfs professionally, but he also works as a dual-licensed Merrill Lynch investment advisor and broker in Bethesda, Md. He shares four keys that have guided his career to this point.

Tune out the skeptics: “Everyone’s going to tell you why you can’t be successful or why you can’t do what you want to do,” Bradford said March 4, 2016, during a daylong symposium on race, social class and professional golf, organized by the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Maryland. “If you tune those people out and stay focused, you can do it.”

Fight against barriers: Tiger Woods boosted television audiences and inspired conversations about race when he stormed the 1997 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. “It was a truly seismic moment in the tour,” ESPN sportscaster Scott Van Pelt, JOUR ’88, said during the event. “Galleries started looking more like America.” But Bradford provided a reminder that gaps remained. He was the second-highest ranked black golfer from 2007 to 2010, yet he struggled during most of this period to find sponsors and stay in the game. “By the end of 2009, I couldn’t afford to go to the PGA Tour Qualifying School,” Bradford said. “I was broke.” His world ranking peaked at No. 463. But even when he dropped outside the top 1,000, no other blacks emerged between him and Woods at No. 1. The gap was even more pronounced on the women’s side. “Not only do we have an ethnicity problem in golf,” Bradford said, “but we also have a gender problem.”

Tell your story: Bradford, who grew up with black role models in golf, now fills the role as a youth mentor and tutor at First Tee of Howard County in Maryland. “I continue to share my story,” he said. “I believe that minority kids should have the opportunity to at least plant the seed in the game of golf.”

Remember your roots: Bradford said his Smith finance degree has helped in his golf and finance careers, which is why he stays active in the Smith community. “I like to credit the Smith School with my career,” he said. Others in his family have their own Smith experiences. His wife, Kristie Curameng Bradford, MBA ’05, applies her Smith education as a business development executive at IBM Watson Ecosystem. And his uncle, William D. Bradford, served as a Smith School finance professor and later as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs from 1991 to 1994. “I was raised a Terp,” George Bradford said. “And I’m always a Terp.” /DJ/