Danny List, a 26-year-old golfer from Georgia and Ghana who now lives in San Diego, spent more than five hours Thursday playing his first round in his first PGA Tour event.
As he walked out of the scoring room at Torrey Pines, the air was cold, the wind was howling and the slate sky was spitting rain. List probably wanted nothing more than to give his mom and girlfriend a hug and find the nearest warm room.
But there were kids (and a couple adults) nearby yelling his name, asking for an autograph. And while in that moment List might not have been thinking about the days when he was on that side of the fence, his mother Diala was.
“Seeing this is quite surreal. He knows what it means to stand there and try to get autographs,” she said.
The hugs could wait. Diala — who arrived Wednesday in San Diego after an 18-hour trip from Ghana — smiled as List took a couple minutes and signed every hat, ball, glove and piece of paper put in his way.
“I’m just so proud to see him out here,” Diala said. “I couldn’t miss seeing him play today.”
Thursday did not go exactly as Diala or Danny wanted; List finished the opening round of the Genesis Invitational with a 7-over 79.
“It was tough,” he said. “Cold, wet … not the easiest conditions. But we live to fight another day.”
And this day really was about more than the score. This was about a kid born in Macon, Ga., but raised in Accra, Ghana — “My mom was just visiting my aunt and the doctor told her she couldn’t fly home,” List said — who was introduced to golf at the age of 3 by his uncle, who was a caddie at one of the few golf courses in the West African country.
“I would say less than 10 in the whole country, and the conditions of the golf courses are pretty shocking for the most part,” List said.
Diala said there were no other juniors playing golf in the area, so her son’s only opportunity was to play against adults. “I when he was 9, he won a tournament against all these men,” she said.
He wasn’t going to fulfill his potential in Ghana, though, and when he was 13 he won a one-day golf trial for a scholarship to Wellington School in southwest England, which offered golf training as part of its educational program. Not surprisingly, his game improved — at 14 he was the European junior champion and he also earned National High School champion honors in 2015 and 2016. He moved on to the University of Washington, where he played one season before turning pro in 2017.
Unfortunately for List, the transition to pro golf has been about as smooth as the sand greens on the Ghanian courses where he began playing. He did have two top-25 finishes in 14 starts in PGA Tour Latinoamerica events, but he missed the cut in the two starts he made on the Korn Ferry Tour.
A stress fracture in his lower back kept him from playing in 2023, but last year he set a tournament scoring record while winning the California State Open.
Then, at last, a breakthrough: In November, he earned his tour card on the DP World Tour through Q School.
List missed the cut in his first four DP World tournaments, but two weeks ago in South Africa, he shot 24 under to finish third in the second-level MyGolfLife Open.
It’s a long way from that tournament to the Genesis, but one day recently, while he was practicing on the driving range at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, he answered a call from an unknown number. It was tournament director Mike Antolini, informing List he was the recipient of the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption to this week’s event. (Sifford was the first Black player to compete on the PGA Tour and won the 1969 Los Angeles Open.)
“As he’s kind of telling me, I knew what was going on and I was getting a few goosebumps,” List said. “It was a pretty special moment for me.
“I don’t think I got a lot of practice done after that; I was just over the moon. Called my mum straight away. She couldn’t have been more excited. It kind of was pretty surreal.”
What probably helped catch the eye of the TGR Foundation committee that picked him for the exemption was his community service work in Ghana. In 2021 he founded the Danny List Foundation to help young golfers get opportunities he never had. He has hosted youth clinics and provided equipment and coaching.
“I can see the love and the desire for the game is there,” List said. “It’s just grown very organically where we’ve got some from various entities around the country that they’ve seen the traction that it’s bringing and the way that the love of the game is growing over there. … Now we have kids that are traveling internationally to play in events in the U.K.”
List said he’s spent “probably 1,000 hours” watching tournament host Tiger Woods hit balls on TV or YouTube, but has not met him this week since Woods is still home in Florida mourning the death of his mom.
“It’s amazing to see how much he’s developed,” Diala said of her son. “… It’s such an honor for him to have gotten this exemption from Tiger.”
