While some young people are trying to figure out whom to include in the cell phone “five,” Mariah Stackhouse has already chosen her favorite golf foursome: herself, Christina Kim, Lorena Ochoa and Tiger Woods. The 15-year-old Riverdale, Georgia girl is the highest ranked African-American player in the American Junior Golf Association rankings.

Stackhouse, who has been playing since she was two, won the 2008 Georgia Women's Amateur Champion, the Georgia Women's Match Play in 2007 and 2008 and the 29th Annual Georgia Girl's Championship in 2007 and 2008. She was second in the 2008 Greater Atlanta Amateur Championship, fourth in the 2008 Top 60 Women's Classic, and was on the 2007 winning teams for the Georgia-South Carolina Girls Junior Challenge Match Play and the 2007 27th Annual Georgia-Florida Women's Team Matches.

At the Georgia Women’s Golf Association (GWGA) Amateur Championship, Stackhouse won in dramatic fashion, coming from behind to win a three-hole playoff and becoming the youngest champion in the 79-year history of the event.

“It’s exciting,” Stackhouse told USGA New Media before last year’s girls championship. “The [Carmel Country Club’s] greens were the fastest I had ever played on. It helped me prepare for this year. I knew the greens would be really fast, and the rough would be really thick. I’ve been playing on fast greens and practicing out of thick rough to make sure I was ready.”

In 2008, she also won the Billie Wickliffe Trophy (formerly known as the Medalist Trophy), awarded to the player who has the lowest 36-hole qualifier, with a score of 146 after 36 holes.
 
Stackhouse will compete April 17-19 in the Aldila Junior Open in Georgia, which will feature 78 of the nation's top junior golfers from 21 states and Canada at the Country Club of the South.

She is ranked 33rd in the American Junior Golf Association’s national female rankings. That’s no small feat for a sport that, even with Tiger Woods’ prominence to the game, doesn’t see many African-Americans on the links.

Golf isn’t cheap, even for the occasional duffer who plays on public golf courses. Add to that the cost of lessons, golf training camps, equipment and greens fees, and you have a recipe for a sport that remains out of reach for many, and spending as much as $35,000 a year for equipment, coaching and travel expenses isn’t unheard of.

Stackhouse has honed her game on Atlanta’s municipal golf courses and on private courses in the area, thanks to the intervention of former Olympian Ralph Boston, who introduced the family to a private course owner. Stackhouse’s first coach, her father Ken, who works in residential construction and design, takes off from work to accompany his daughter to tournaments.

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