Hundreds of entrepreneurs, athletes and entertainers are converging on Miami Beach this week for Urban Golf Weekend, a five-day event that pairs golf tournaments with business networking and a mission to open the sport to people who have never picked up a club. The 2026 edition runs September 3 through 7, combining tournament play at Miami Beach Golf Club with the event's first-ever business and lifestyle expo.
According to WSVN 7News, founder Cliff Addison built Urban Golf Weekend around the idea of prioritizing charity and networking before golf itself, with the goal of giving more people of color access to the sport. Addison told the station the event draws about 500 attendees. The new expo takes place at the Eden Roc Miami Beach resort, as reported by Patch, marking a significant expansion beyond the tournament that first launched the event in 2023.
The gathering has already lined up major backing for this year's run. Patch reports that Lexus signed on as the 2026 title sponsor, with appearances scheduled from actor Woody McClain, former NFL player Isaac Keys, and Mielle Organics co-founders Melvin and Monique Rodriguez.
From a Lauderhill Youth Program to a Statewide Movement
Urban Golf Weekend traces its roots to Fore Life, a Lauderhill-based nonprofit, per the WSVN report. Fore Life was co-founded in 1998 by LPGA teaching professional Paula Pearson-Tucker and Pro Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, according to Miami Dade College News. The organization still operates year-round out of the municipal Lauderhill Golf Course, offering golf instruction, academic support and character-building programs for youth ages 4 through 18 across Broward and Miami-Dade counties, per the Fore Life website.
That grassroots foundation shows up in the voices of the golfers WSVN spoke with. Kari Thompson-Hughes, a golfer at Nova High School, said golf has opened many doors for her and that she wants Black girls to see that sports include more than track, basketball and soccer. She also said she has learned to help and teach children to play golf. Floyd Harris, who plays for Florida Atlantic University, said the sport taught him to make connections and become more confident, adding he might never have seen, watched or tried golf without playing it. Royce Jones, another golfer featured in the WSVN report, said golf has simply brought him joy.
A Decades-Old Course Hosts a New Kind of Tournament
Tournament play unfolds at Miami Beach Golf Club, a course with roots stretching back over a century. The club originally opened in 1923 as Bayshore Golf Course under developer Carl Fisher before undergoing a complete $10 million redesign by golf architect Arthur Hills in 2002, according to the Miami Beach Golf Club.
Addison is a two-time alumnus of Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University, and that HBCU connection helped shape the foundation's core focus on supporting HBCU golf programs and alumni networks, per the Hy-Lo News report. Over its first four years through 2026, Urban Golf Weekend and its 501(c)(3) arm, the Urban Golf Foundation, have donated more than $50,000 toward HBCU golf scholarships and local South Florida youth golf programs, the outlet reports.
Reviving High School Golf in Overtown
That philanthropic push has already touched at least one inner-city campus. Last November, Urban Golf Weekend donated new golf clubs and uniforms to Booker T. Washington Senior High School in Miami's Overtown neighborhood to help revive the school's varsity golf program, according to Hy-Lo News.
The timing lines up with a broader shift in who is picking up clubs nationally. Data published by the National Golf Foundation in early 2025 showed that 25% of the 28.1 million U.S. on-course golfers in 2024 were Black, Asian or Hispanic, the highest proportion of minority players in the sport's recorded history, per the National Golf Foundation. A separate July 2026 report found that people of color accounted for 45% of off-course golf participants nationwide, including driving range, indoor simulator and golf-entertainment venue users, according to African American Golfer's Digest. That gap between on-course and off-course participation helps explain why Urban Golf Weekend leans so heavily on its business expo and networking tracks, using golf's surrounding culture to pull in beginners who might never book a tee time on their own.
Urban Golf Weekend promotes accessibility of golf to everyone, encouraging people who have never picked up a club to learn about the game while networking with executives, athletes and entertainers over five days in Miami Beach, per WSVN's reporting.
