If you happen to be at the No. 1 tee of TPC Southwind this weekend watching anyone in the field of 70 get started, take some time to look down.

Follow the ground at the No. 1 tee box all the way to the purple, white and orange shoes of group announcer Edward Bogard.

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You probably can’t miss them. Or him.

HUSH. Y’ALL.

Really. It matters. A lot.

It says so. Right there, HUSH on one foot, the right, Y’ALL on the other, the left.

Bogard designed the shoes taking a cue from the pole signs held by volunteers asking the crowd to ‘shush’ — translation for visiting northerners, ‘shut up’ — as players fire away.

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With any luck proceeds from sales of the one-of-a-kind design will make a mint for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the big beneficiary of the FedEx St. Jude Championship that opened Thursday with Jordan Spieth in the lead and runs through Sunday at Southwind in Memphis.

Bogard, who earned his bachelor of fine arts degree from Georgia’s renowned Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in 2005, sure hopes so.

“The inspiration,” he said Friday, “comes from years of coming to this tournament.”

But that’s not the only thing moving about Bogard’s shoes, which were originally designed as a silent auction item for St. Jude’s big fundraising event last week.

Inscribed this week on the inside panel of his exclusively self-designed SoGiv x FESJC shoes are the names of two relatives, both of whom have been St. Jude patients.

He said one is his cousin, Alisha Rice, a patient from 1993-97. She had acute lymphocytic leukemia and is in remission. The other is Andre Randolph, also a cousin. He had leukemia as well. Randolph was at St. Jude in 2013 and took time off from Southaven High, but was able to return the next year and graduate.

“I wrote their names on the shoe earlier this week,” Bogard said, “in honor of them, paying homage to just the great work St. Jude does.

“Every shoe design is near and dear to my heart. It all comes from a purpose, whether directly or indirectly, family member or a friend, the partnerships that we do. It’s all personal for me.”

Bogard is the founder of SoGiv, which he created late in 2011 — taking the ‘So’ out of ‘sole’ and the ‘Giv’ out of ‘give’ for its name — as a nonprofit shoe design company. He designs the reasonably priced, limited-edition shoes, which are sold through the website sogiv.org.

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Proceeds go to charitable causes worldwide, with each charity’s logo and mission built into the shoe design.

The HUSH Y’ALL shoes are not available on the website, but Bogard hopes they will be on sale during tournament week next year in the FESJC’s main on-course retail merchandise store — “with 100% of the proceeds that will directly benefit the life-saving work at St. Jude.”

The work is serious stuff.

The funny thing is that Bogard once turned down a full-ride golf scholarship to Alcorn State so he could pursue his design dreams instead and accept a portfolio scholarship from SCAD— but now the game is helping draw, pardon the pun, attention to the shoes he hopes will make a difference for St. Jude.

“I always had an infatuation with footwear design,” said Bogard, who will soon begin traveling back and forth to SCAD’s Atlanta campus to help mentor future designers in the school’s new “minor in footwear design” program.

The shoe game really is a big deal these days, with the footwear market estimated to be worth more than $380 billion — billion with a ‘b’ — according to various industry analyses.

Spurred by his mother Cora, a now-retired longtime teacher in the Orange Mound neighborhood of Memphis, and his father, Edward Sr., a Vietnam War veteran with artistic talent, Bogard got in early.

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“In grade school, I would recreate the iconic Air Jordans and convert them into the Air Bogards,” he said, “and have a classroom full of students hover me over — usually during math, because that was one of my least favorite subjects — and I’d autograph them.

“Full-circle moment, I’m out here autographing a poster of the (HUSH Y’ALL) shoes at the silent auction.”

“The inspiration comes from years of coming to this tournament.”

Edward Bogard
Shoe designer

Playing pitchman is Bogard’s way of giving back after having a few doors opened for him by Ken Weatherford Jr., who gave Bogard his first job when the youngster — now 41 — was still a 16-year-old Overton High student.

The gig was at Nevada Bob’s Golf in Memphis, which Weatherford owned and operated since opening its doors in March 1993 until closing them in July 2004. You might remember where it was — “an easy 5 iron behind Dan West’s Nursery next door to Target.”

Before he got the job, Bogard — a youth golfer, and the captain of his golf team at Overton — used to go into the store with his parents to shop for equipment.

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“Great personality, so I hired him,” Weatherford said.

Weatherford also gave Bogard his first ticket to Memphis’ own PGA event.

And, just a few years ago, Weatherford — retired gentleman banker, longtime volunteer at the city’s annual Tour stop —tapped Bogard to join him and son Ken Weatherford III as a starter on No. 1 at Southwind.

He became the first Black starter in tournament history, Bogard said.

Weatherford Jr. enjoys sharing the wealth.

“I turned 72 this year,” he said. “I’m in great health, but I do get whooped at the end of the day.”

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So this week Bogard is again taking his turn in the rotation calling names to the crowd seated behind the tee box.

Fighting the annoying buzz coming from the generators outside the course’s media tent, his call is met with a proper golf clap — the bigger the name, the louder the applause.

“(Bogard) loves it,” Weatherford said. “From Day 1, he was really good at it.

“Then the second year, what we said to him (was), ‘Man, you’ve got your legs under you now,’ and he’s become just a dynamite starter.”

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And under those legs this year?

The shoes.

You really can’t miss them. So feel to talk about them. Tell your friends. But, please, HUSH Y’ALL when the driver is out.