From the slum to the European Tour

"Give a hungry man a fish, and he will be fed once; teach him to fish, and he will never be hungry again."

What this well-known wisdom from the Chinese philosopher Laozi also has to do with the sport of golf will be described in this report. It is intended to remind us how positive prospects can be opened up even from the most hopeless situations, and how, through self-discipline and the support of a few helping hands, incredible successes were achieved, which in this case even made people from the slums of Kenya into golfers on the European Tour.

It all began with the courage of desperation and a few discarded golf clubs. The four caddies Dickson Barasa, Hassan Kalamu, William Odeck, and John Timbe began, away from their daily life as bag carriers, to work intensively on their own golf game.

Around the same time, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Jörg Brunecker, managing director of Swietelsky-Faber GmbH, received information from Golfclub Buxtehude, through contacts in the refugee shelters of the Berchtesgadener Land, about the appalling conditions during the curfew imposed in Kenya.

At the height of the refugee crisis, in the German-Austrian border town of Freilassing, where Jörg Brunecker operates a branch of Swietelsky-Faber , a football club called BGL International had been founded to promote integration. The sports scientist and UEFA A-licence coach Thomas Mooser, who had launched this project in 2018 with mental coach Bernard Payet and involved Jörg Brunecker from the very beginning, reported on the serious situation on the ground in Kenya.

Through a quickly improvised fundraising campaign by the refugee team, the families in need from the friendly Good Hope Soccer Academy in the Kisauni slum of Kenyan Mombasa were able to be helped. Jörg Brunecker was deeply impressed by this gesture and from that point on also supported the project in Kenya.

From this fundraising campaign, a deeper friendship and a connection quickly developed, which, during the first visits on site, immediately set three further aid projects in motion. Due to the immense need for action, the non-profit association “Universal Lighthouse e. V.” was founded, which now, with many additional supporters, looks after two football academies, a drama and cultural association for children and young people from the rubbish dump, a school, and also the caddies of the “Nyali Golf and Country Clubs” in Mombasa, Kenya.

The upbringing of the caddies was marked by poverty, lack of education, and a bleak absence of prospects. Their life story becomes connected in a special way with the sport of golf, which saved them from even greater hardship. Nevertheless, in practice all caddies struggle daily with financial worries, discrimination, violence, and oppression.

The founder of Universal Lighthouse e.V. is the mental trainer Bernard Payet, who is well known in professional sports and has coached, among others, the US Ski World Cup team and some professional golfers on the European Tour. He had long been aware of the situation of caddies in poorer countries, and therefore he had always wanted to give talented and determined caddies a real chance.

Payet is also supported by co-founder Thomas Mooser, who is responsible for the physical preparation and nutritional coaching of the caddies.

On this highly professional basis, achievable goals could be agreed upon and continually readjusted. In this process, consistency and further improvement of the already achieved high service level was an enormous challenge that the caddies had to face despite the everyday hardships that still remained present.

For us in Europe, it sounds absurd, but for the caddies, their first set of golf equipment of their own was a quantum leap forward. Motivation soared and a new goal was set: participation in international golf tournaments. This was initially followed by calls up to selection teams and invitations to coaching courses. These milestones, once thought impossible, led to more attention and numerous scenes of the harshest discrimination. Caddies are and remain caddies. So it was necessary to show perseverance and swim against the tide. In the end, all efforts culminated in a sensation, and William Odek won the "Kenya Strokeplay Championship" in a highly exciting playoff in 2024 and thus qualified for the "Magical Kenya Open 2025", a tournament on the European Tour.

Thus, it became a kind of heroic story that is already making the rounds in Kenyan clubs and inspiring and encouraging many people from the lower class.