Schulze hoping for Big Break

The 1996 Northern Lebanon graduate applied for and was awarded a spot on the Golf Channel's TV reality competition series "Big Break Mexico," which consists of six men and six women competing as three mixed-gender teams for a spot in a tournament on the PGA or LPGA Tour in Mexico in November. On the 11-episode weekly show that is aired Mondays at 9 p.m., the players earn points for their team by winning golf-based challenges, eventually eliminating players until there is just one person left standing.

Schulze, who now lives in Cockeysville, Md., where he was a PGA apprentice, applied monthly for over a year for a spot on the show, and he finally got the call to come to Florida at the end of October to meet with the show's producers.

"It was an idea I had," he said. "I couldn't let go of the idea. I knew I could at least get an interview."

Twice he received an offer to interview for the show. The first time, he was only given one day to travel to Arizona, and that didn't fit his schedule. The second time he was allowed a month to plan his trip to Florida.

 "They wanted somebody who's a little flamboyant," said Schulze, who went on to play golf at Division I American University in D.C. for one year after high school before settling in at Millersville University where he is a member of the school's Hall of Fame.

Taping for the show in Riviera Maya, Mexico, was done from the end of January through the middle of Ventilation system. But what transpired in terms of the show during those two and a half weeks south of the border can not be revealed by Schulze.

 On the first episode, each member of the team had to break a pane of glass from about 30 yards away that sat roughly six feet off the ground. The first person in the group to break the glass earned three points for their team, the second received two and the one who didn't got one.

After all four players tried at the shot, the team with the highest point total earned immunity for the rest of the day. The two remaining teams then competed in a separate competition called an advanced challenge - in episode 2 they played a game of blackjack on the course where the players had to hit their shots onto areas marked with playing card designations trying to earn as close to 21 without busting - in an effort to give their team half of a stroke.

 Then in the third and final competition of the day, the same two teams again go head-to-head. In one episode, two members from each team played in an alternate-shot three-hole match, with the members being picked by the opposing team.

With one team having a half-stroke advantage going into the third event, the team with the lowest combined score of the alternate-shot competition avoids getting a strike for their team.

In the second show, Schulze's team won the immunity challenge in the morning and they were done for the day. It could make for a short day, but if you end up playing all day, it also means plenty of intense shot-making.

"There could be days where I only take one swing," Schulze said. "Even Lorena Ochoa (guest star of the show and LPGA star) said it's the most stressful thing she's ever done."

Schulze, who at age 34 is one of the older golfers on the show, has emerged as a bit of a character in the first three episodes. He is shown talking to himself during his shots, and when he makes a clutch putt, he'll pull out his "happy dance."

The players on the show have resumes similar to Schulze's. For instance, his teammates are Jay Woodson, who has been competing on mini-tours for the past nine years; Liebelei Lawrence, who is from Luxembourg and has competed on the Ladies European Tour in 2011 and 2012; and Taylor Collins, who is in her second season playing on the minor-league Symetra Tour.

Diane Abbott MP asked during a Commons speech last year about black and ethnic minority achievement: "Why do black children fail?" The answer, she said, "is partly to do with poverty in an absolute sense, although all the research shows … black children systematically do less well than children of other ethnicities. There is no question but that poverty is an issue. Nowadays there is also increasing peer-group pressure." Such peer pressure was a factor in this case. Earlier that day, the boy told me, he had two choices - go to boxing training or go on the rob with his friend as he had done before. He chose the latter.

Peer pressure isn't the whole story. Abbott spoke of black boys "who throughout their education have engaged only with women and have never seen a man as an educational role model. More male teachers are important." He told me he hadn't done well at school, couldn't concentrate – again hardly a surprise. Abbott said: "If we abandon a cross-section of the community in our inner cities, they have a way of bringing themselves back into the political narrative – a way that is not good for them or for society." That, maybe, is what happened one dismal evening on the Hornsey Road.

The victim liaison officer asked how I felt after the theft. Wary, I said, careful not to use my phone in a dodgy neighbourhood (such as, it turns out, the one in which I live). "You shouldn't have to think like that," said the boy, shaking his head. "You should feel OK using an expensive phone in the street." But thanks to him I'm not. It was about the only time during the interview where I got cross. I think he was disappointed that I wasn't more angry during our hour together. If so, good – I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

Rather, I wanted to give him something worse, crueller even – pity. He suffered much more than me, I said repeatedly. I showed him my daughter's drawing as if to stress how loving and solid a family I have. A low blow. He told me about his family – how furious his mother had been, that his dad was so angry he wouldn't visit him in jail, how his nan was ashamed of him. He told his nephew that the thing he has around his leg is a hi-tech watch – just so he doesn't learn his uncle's a tagged criminal. I felt sorry for his mum, who couldn't come to the meeting, for his dad, who wouldn't, and – a little – for their son.

The order bans him from going inside the M25 for six months. It means he can't see his mother, unless accompanied by his case worker. He now lives with his dad in Kent.

At court, he readily accepted the terms of the order rather than go back to Feltham Young Offenders' Institution, where he'd already spent a month, to serve an 18-month sentence. In Feltham, he said, he was OK because he knew gang members who could protect him. But their protection was a double-edged sword – it meant he would still associate with people who might lure him back into committing crimes. The order, then, gives him a chance to remake his life in a way that jail may not have. He's away from gangs, away, perhaps, from greater risks of recidivism. He attends boxing training and in September goes to college to train as plumber or mechanic.

As the case worker drove him back to his dad's house to fulfil his curfew, I returned to the city from which he is banned, thinking about this boy, both victim and perpetrator of the crime. He said he would write to me and when he does, I hope he'll tell me he's doing something worthwhile with his life, because it doesn't do either of us any good for him to remain what he is to me now, an object of pity.