Two weeks ahead of Christmas, there will be some people celebrating another kind of holiday for the first time. Or, rather, celebrating the life of an extraordinary man—who happened to be an ordinary golfer.

You likely have never heard the name Dr. George F. Grant. I certainly hadn’t until a follower of mine on X reached out with his amazing story. But he’s certainly a figure worth noting. And now this dentist is finally getting his long overdue day in the sun.

(Golf Digest+ members get access to the complete Golf Digest archive dating back to 1950. Sign up here.)

For golfers, Dr. Grant’s importance stems from his creation of the modern golf tee, having received a patent for his wooden invention in 1899. But it took nearly a century for the USGA to recognize that feat and even longer for his former hometown of Arlington Heights, Mass., where he developed the device that would eventually replace pinching damp sand to prop up golf balls, to officially honor him.

The first wooden golf tee was patented in 1899 by Dr. George Grant, dentist and avid golfer. 🤯

Full details. 👇

— USGA (@USGA) January 19, 2023

Thanks to reader and realtor Dave Ledwig for alerting us to this story and fighting the good fight on behalf of Dr. Grant. The town made the following proclamation on Nov. 18: “NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that we, the Members of the Select Board do hereby honor and recognize, on the 125th Anniversary of Dr. Grant’s patent day for the invention in Arlington of the first golf tee and for his amazing life story as the first African American faculty member at Harvard and as a pioneering dentist in Boston, and proclaim December 12, 2024 Dr. George F. Grant Day in the Town of Arlington.”

RELATED: Why golf fans loved to hate this former Super Bowl announcer

Grant graced the October 2000 issue of Golf Digest as part of an excerpt from Pete McDaniel’s book, Uneven Lies: The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf. Here’s how it appeared in the magazine:

But as McDaniel writes, the golf tee was a small part of Grant’s remarkable life. Born the son of freed slaves, Grant was “a gentleman and a scholar, having graduated in Harvard University’s second class in dentistry in 1870. A leading authority on the cleft palate, Dr. Grant developed a thriving dental practice. And like many dentists today, he spent much of his down time playing golf.”

Grant also became the first black faculty member at Harvard, and the school honored him in 2023 with a new portrait that hangs alongside the portraits of other historic figures. But despite all his accomplishments in dentistry, Grant’s hobby wound up being where he affected the most people.

Dr. Grant had other ideas.

In 1899 he invented a wooden golf tee.

Even though he had a patent, he never profited on it. He handed them out to family and friends.

In 1991 the USGA officially recognized Dr. Grant as the original inventor. pic.twitter.com/ujSekDyNTP

— Jared Doerfler (@DoerflerJared) February 23, 2022

Even if the tee never took off during his lifetime.

“But Dr. Grant was more innovator than businessman, more philanthropist than Fuller Brush salesman,” McDaniel writes. “He never marketed his invention. He gave some of the tees—manufactured in a small shop in the Boston suburb of Arlington Heights—to friends and playing partners, but the majority of them were squirreled away at his residence.”

Still, it’s great to see him properly recognized. And, ironically, it was another dentist, Dr. William Lowell, who brought the wooden golf tee to the masses through his own patented product, the Reddy Tee (from them being dyed red), a quarter century later. How ’bout that? Go dentists!

Anyway, you can read more about Dr. Grant and the evolution of the golf tee here. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the Golf Digest archive. And in the meantime, happy Dr. George F. Grant Day to golfers all over the world.

RELATED: Johnny Miller opens up: ‘I choked so many times’

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com