Justin Milhouse for The New York Times
Sahith Theegala hardly remembered the details, but his father did.
Well before he was a three-time All-American golfer at Pepperdine and long before he made his professional PGA Tour debut this past week at the Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Conn., Theegala was a 10-year-old public course golfer trying to figure out fast greens. So his father, Muralidhar, who was born in Hyderabad, India, took him to a practice area at a local private country club he knew of near their home in the Los Angeles suburbs. In short order, a man walked up to them and delivered a clear message about race in golf.