Varner: "For only $100, I was able to purchase this junior membership to Gastonia."

Harold Varner took to The Players Tribune to lament that the golf media asks him a bit too often about his race and not enough about what helped him make the PGA Tour. Though Varner could use a few FedExCup points this week.

The Akron, Ohio born golfer is playing his first WGC Bridgestone this week--and throws out a mean first pitch--but it was a program from his childhood in Gastonia, North Carolina that he wants golf to hear about. Oh sure, he mentions The First Tee but he most appreciates the ability to go to a golf course and bang balls.

Now, you may be thinking these summer playing privileges cost some crazy amount of money — that only rich kids would be able to do something like this. I mean, it’s a good enough deal to think that. But this program wasn’t really expensive at all: For only $100, I was able to purchase this junior membership to Gastonia.

It completely subverted the argument that you need to be rich to play this sport. It made playing golf extremely affordable.

That meant the world to my family. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was an incredible deal, not only for what it did for me then, but also what it’s still doing for me now. Without Gastonia, I would’ve never learned to play golf, would’ve never earned a scholarship to East Carolina University, would’ve never made my way onto the PGA Tour, would’ve never won in Australia last December and would’ve never been in a position to help bring more kids into the game.