Shamar Wilson’s untraditional path to PGA Works Collegiate Championship

When Shamar Wilson, a junior on the men’s golf team at Paine College in Georgia, was 19 years old, he was nearly struck by a golf ball while passing through a course in his hometown of Runaway Bay, Jamaica.

Wilson had only run track and had never considered playing golf before the incident, but when his grandmother encouraged him to explore the sport after the incident, he decided to go back to the same course to give it a try.

Now, eight years later, Wilson will represent Jamaica and Paine this week on a national stage at the PGA Works Collegiate Championship (PWCC) in Wisconsin.

“Golf in Jamaica is not a primary sport nor a secondary sport. Track and field is, or soccer or cricket,” Wilson said. “So for me to get this opportunity to play PGA Works, you know, it’s doing a lot for my community, back home and also my country. I’m also a big role model for many kids that I haven’t even met.”

The PWCC is an annual golf tournament for students from historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions to showcase their skills nationally. Wilson will be among 45 athletes competing.

Wilson attributes his rapid acceleration in the sport to the support his community has shown him throughout his untraditional route to golf.

Despite his late start in the sport, he played well enough to be selected for the Jamaican team that would compete in the Caribbean Amateur Golf Championship in 2021.

Golf afforded Wilson the opportunity to move to the United States and pursue higher education. In 2022, he enrolled in Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut. In his collegiate golf debut in September that year, he led the men’s golf team to a season-opening win at the Mitchell Invite I, finishing second in the 20-person field. His performance resulted in Wilson being named Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Rookie of the Week, the first of three times he would earn the honor in his freshman season.

A few months later, he suddenly found himself facing financial hardship after his scholarship fell through, placing his collegiate career in jeopardy. That’s when Andrew Foster, Albertus Magnus’ vice president for student affairs and dean of students, introduced Wilson to the Jamaican American Connection (JAC), an organization that promotes the well-being of Jamaican and Caribbean/West Indian communities in the Greater New Haven area.

When JAC president Karaine Holness met Wilson, she didn’t know it would become a pivotal moment in the trajectory of Wilson’s collegiate career.

“In 2022, we [JAC] got a call about a student at one of the colleges in our town [New Haven]. It was around Christmastime, and all I thought about was that I’m just going to go pick somebody up and they’re going to have dinner with us for Christmas because he was on campus by himself,” Holness said.

While she was taking Wilson back to campus after dinner, she said, she saw sadness in his eyes, prompting her to ask about the source.

“I [said] to him, ‘I want you to be honest with me, and that’s the only way I can help you,’” she said. “He was honest with me by saying his sponsor wasn’t able to continue taking care of him, and so he was at a crossroads. Spring semester was coming up, and he just wasn’t sure what he could do.”

After Holness made the JAC board aware of Wilson’s plight, the power of community and crowdfunding managed to raise enough money to cover his spring tuition.

Inspired by Wilson, the JAC hosted its first golf tournament fundraiser in June 2023. After the tournament, with the support of his honorary JAC “aunties” in the States, including Holness, Wilson decided to enter the transfer portal.

After seeing Wilson was in the portal, Paine’s head golf coach Andre Lacey reached out with a candid pitch.

“I just kind of gave him what it was,” Lacey said. “You know, Paine College is not a big school. We were a school in transition. … But what we can do is facilitate and birth one of the best HBCU golf programs that we’re going to see in the States here soon.”

Though Wilson received interest from 23 schools, Paine’s location in the same city as the Augusta National Golf Club, site of the Masters Tournament and one of the sport’s most iconic venues, made the decision easier for him. He enrolled at Paine in 2024.

“We realized Paine was a no-brainer. … It just felt like the right fit,” Holness said.

In October 2024, when Paine competed in the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) National Championships for the first time in school history, Wilson led the men’s program, placing 17th overall in the field of 48.

“We’ve been trying to get recognition and show up in places that we haven’t been in, [trying] to get that national recognition,” Lacey said. “So they had the opportunity to [do that with] Shamar nationally [and] it speaks for itself as a national opportunity at the PGA Works tournament. So we’re, you know, essentially, at the highest of tournaments that we could be in.”

When Wilson tees off Monday, he said he will feel a mix of pride and pressure.

“There’s pressure, because everybody’s looking up to you and they’re wishing you the best, and they expect a lot, right?” Wilson said. “But it’s for you to stay grounded within yourself and be compliant and stick with the plan. … I’m excited for this opportunity, and I’m going to make the best of it.”