Sports movies usually their specific sport to create tension and excitement as their teams or individual performers attempt to overcome adversity to achieve a championship or a personal best or, sometimes, redemption.  Occasionally there is a moral, a social statement being made, that is just as important, but it is traditionally subservient to the sports action.  Here, the social motivation for the story is the primary reason for its telling and the sport of golf is simply the pathway for the story to be told.  Based on true incidents, one cannot exist without the other, but it is clear which aspect is predominant.

Julio Quintana’s film takes place in 1956 Texas, at San Felipe.  The high school gets a new superintendent, J. B. Peña (Jay Fernandez), who happens to love golf.  He notices five young Mexican-American buddies who play and persuades them to become the school’s first golf team.  Facing racism and prejudice, a lack of proper equipment and no funding, the five boys, with the help of coach Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quaid), overcome hostility and apathy to compete for the state championship.

Ostensibly this is a sports movie, yet despite many shots of young (and older) golfers teeing off, chipping or putting, the golf is simply not very important to the scheme of this story.  We simply have to take on faith that these five boys are good enough to compete.  Coaching is almost nonexistent; the coach and superintendent are there to get the boys into tournaments, keep them focused and well-behaved, and chaperone.  It’s enough that the kids meticulously construct their own ragged practice course, work nights surreptitiously on their putting and bond together in their community.

The story’s focus is squarely on the casual discrimination they face from the white community, sometimes at their very high school, which continually oppresses them and their families.  Well-meaning people try to help but equality is an uphill battle in 1956 Texas.  Ultimately the golf team’s biggest battle is just to be accepted and respected.  This is what sports has been able to do over the last century; to integrate minorities into its systems, to accept and teach and promote gifted athletes no matter their backgrounds, to demonstrate that people of all races, colors, shapes and temperaments are worthy of respect — especially if they can do something special on a field of play.  This cinematic history is a microcosm of how things were, and how they (gradually) changed.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  19 February 2026.