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A bright twilight
Rays of renewed recognition shine on Charlie Sifford, GCSAA’s 2007 Old Tom Morris Award winner.
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“Better late than never” is a well-worn saying, usually in a breezy kind of way.
It’s also four words that are often connected to Charlie Sifford’s difficult and courageous mission in life — words that become more serious in context and more to the point.
In 1961, Sifford became the first African-American to play on the PGA Tour; six years later, when he was 45 years old, he was the first to win a tour event. Real recognition of the significance of Sifford’s quiet determination to claim his rightful place at golf’s elite level was slow in
coming as well.
While the inroads in diversity made by other major sports in America have been deep and prolific, golf has followed suit to a lesser degree and even less yet in attracting young blacks. Some say Charlie Sifford has been rediscovered as a result.
Many honors marking Sifford’s 50-year career have come his way in his later years. Most prominent among them, he was the first African-American to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame (Lifetime Achievement category), to be given an honorary degree of law from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and, most recently, to be named the winner of GCSAA’s Old Tom Morris Award, which he will receive on Feb. 22 during the Opening Session of the 2007 GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show in Anaheim.
“We are honored to have Charlie Sifford accept this award because, like Old Tom Morris, he was also a pioneer in golf,” says GCSAA President Sean A. Hoolehan, CGCS.
A fellow World Golf Hall of Fame member and a fighter for diversity in his own right, professional golf legend Gary Player says the honor is as much for the course Sifford took in life as it is for his accomplishments on the course.
“Persistence is an ingredient that is essential to success, and Charlie had that persistence,” says Player, who has been one of Sifford’s closest friends for many years.
A path less traveled
Sifford has long been the symbol of the ongoing struggle to bring diversity to golf, from his hardscrabble days of hustling games and playing on the United Golf Association tour, to his relentless knocking at the door of the PGA Tour and finally breaking through to tear down its Caucasian-only barrier nearly 50 years ago, to his disappointment today at age 84 that so little headway appears to have been made.
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In his 1992 autobiography, “Just Let Me Play” (another four words that sum up his life), Sifford tells about the trials and tribulations he endured before and during his breakthrough in professional golf and also some of the anguish that persists yet today.
“All I ever wanted to do was play,” Sifford said in his book, noting that he faced death threats and taunting on the course in his first appearance on the PGA Tour at the 1961 Greater Greensboro Open in his native North Carolina. There were many other tournaments he couldn’t play in because they were held at private country clubs where blacks weren’t allowed.
While recuperating from open-heart surgery this past September, Sifford relived his early days, his quest to right a wrong and his frustrations over what’s still wrong in an interview with GCM at his home alongside Stonewater Golf Club in the Cleveland suburb of Highland Heights, Ohio. He moved there in 1999 following the death of his wife of 51 years, Rose, to be closer to his sons, Charles Jr. and Craig, and three grandchildren.
Pursuing a dream
Born (June 2, 1922) and raised in Charlotte, N.C., Sifford was a caddie in his early teens and was already a scratch golfer by then. He continued to hone his game, moving to Philadelphia where a young black man had more opportunities to play. He also got an early taste of competition in the United Golf Association tour.
“A lot of black guys who wanted to play golf were there (the UGA),” Sifford says. “People like Sugar Ray Robinson, Billy Eckstine, Bill Lewis and others sponsored a little tour. We had a lot of good players then, but no opportunity.”
In 1943, Sifford joined the Army and served with the 24th Infantry in World War II. Following the war, he set his sights on becoming a professional golfer. Of course, that was easier said than done.
He befriended Eckstine and became the jazz great’s personal golf pro for many years while scrambling for action of any sort.
“He (Eckstine) helped keep me in the game,” Sifford said several years ago in an interview with Black Voice News. “I also hustled and played anywhere I could to make a buck and to just play for the love of the game. ... We played in celebrity tournaments and worked with the top black athletes of that era. The UGA became a nice opportunity for us to travel and play the game, as well as earn a small buck.”
A key turning point for Sifford came in 1946 when Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball. A year later, Sifford met Robinson and told him of his dream to play on the PGA of America’s professional golf tour. Robinson encouraged Sifford to take the challenge, warning him, however, of the prejudice and obstacles he would face.
Serving notice
For the next dozen or so years, Sifford, with his ever-present cigar and smooth swing, established a track record the golf establishment could hardly ignore. He dominated the UGA tour, won the National Negro Open six times — including five in a row — and also played in a number of non-sanctioned PGA events, which included a victory in the Long Beach Open in 1957.
Still, the PGA Tour, armed with the Caucasian-only clause in its bylaws, was a closed game. Sifford says the frustration went beyond golf. The era of the 1950s and early ’60s before the civil rights movement were discouraging times for blacks in America.
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“I never could really understand how a man could put his life on the line in the war and then come back and not be given a chance to prove that you could do something,” he says. “I just took it upon myself to try to break that Caucasian-only clause.”
Sifford finally got some muscle behind him in 1960 when pressure from the California attorney general forced the PGA to give him a players card. A year later, the whites-only clause was rescinded.
In Sifford’s words, though, “Things still weren’t so great.” There were the threats and other prejudicial abuses and the closed country club tournament venues. Plus, there was little financial incentive or reward.
“The possibility of a sponsorship and endorsements, or having a manager or someone to get them for you, was pretty tough for a black man,” Sifford says. “You had to do what you could do on your own.”
Wins reward effort
But Sifford persevered and made his own way, even with his best playing days behind him. The big breakthrough came in 1967 when he fired a final-round 64 and won the Greater Hartford Open. Two years later he beat South African Harold Henning in a playoff to win the Los Angeles Open. In each of his first nine years on the tour he was among the top 60 money winners.
Sifford also triumphed in the 1975 PGA Seniors Championship, the same year he retired from the regular tour. In 1980, he was one of the original members of the Senior Tour (now Champions Tour) and won the Suntree Classic that year.
Later on he would team with Roberto DeVincenzo of Argentina to win three Legendary Championship titles at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf, the last one coming in 1991 when Sifford was 69. “A good man ... he was my friend,” DeVincenzo, now 83, said about Sifford earlier this year in an interview in Golf Digest.
Sifford also won seven Mastercard Champions tournaments and continued to play in various outings in the Cleveland area right up until his surgery in July.
The real winners
In all, his career earnings were nearly $1.3 million — most of it on the senior circuit. Of course, what he accomplished meant much more than money for not only himself, but for others who have reaped benefits Sifford can only imagine, such as Lee Elder being the first black to play in the Masters in the 1970s, an invitation denied Sifford despite his two tour triumphs; or the successes enjoyed by the likes of Calvin Peete, who won the 1985 Players Championship, and Champions Tour stars Jim Thorpe and Jim Dent; and, naturally, the greatest of them all, Tiger Woods, who especially has set the standard that Sifford claimed was possible all along.
“When I was going through what I did, I was focused on proving that a black man can play the game of golf as good as a white man,” Sifford said in the Black Voice News. “What I tried to prove has been proven by Tiger Woods.”
Sifford’s legacy is not lost on the No. 1 player in the world, either.
“The pain, suffering and sacrifice experienced by Mr. Sifford in being a lonely pioneer for black golfers on the PGA Tour will never be forgotten by me,” Woods said in Sifford’s autobiography. “His success and personal conduct will provide a blueprint and inspiration for myself and other aspiring black tour players. ... He has my respect and my gratitude for the sacrifices he made to open the doors to this great game to people of color.”
Peete, who won 11 tour titles, cites Sifford’s quiet yet extraordinary courage in paving the way for minorities in professional golf.
“He could have been bitter, but he wasn’t,” Peete said in an article in Golfweek’s SuperNews when Sifford was announced as the Old Tom Morris Award winner. “He’s a hero to me. I don’t know if any other black man would have been able to take what he did. But he took it in stride, kept it under control and handled it.”
Downside of a cause
True, Sifford has said many times he isn’t bitter that he received the short end of the stick even after leading the integration of the PGA Tour. He’s maintained his PGA of America membership since 1962 and has resolutely mentored and tried to persuade young blacks to follow in his footsteps.
The bottom line is, the influx of blacks in professional golf hasn’t happened, and Sifford becomes visibly disappointed when he talks about that.
Consider: As his 14-year career on the PGA Tour was winding down in the early 1970s, Sifford was among more than a half-dozen other African-Americans playing in tournaments. Later, on the Senior Tour, he was joined by some of the same faces and a few new ones. Now consider: Today there are barely a handful of African-Americans on the PGA, Nationwide, Champions and LPGA tours combined.
“Other than Tiger, few blacks are even pursued as future stars and there is little financial incentive for them in professional golf. The opportunities just aren’t there,” Sifford says. “There are a lot of young people who want to play golf, but it keeps going back to the same thing — opportunity ... a place to play.”
Is it lingering racial prejudice or the fact that young blacks see a greener and brighter future somewhere besides on the nation’s fairways? Sifford says it’s some of both.
No doubt, black athletes today are attracted by the huge contracts and signing bonuses possible in the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball as opposed to professional golf’s performance-based rewards.
The number of prep schools and colleges that offer golf is relatively low and practically non-existent in the inner cities. And, while growing-the-game programs like The First Tee, Golf 20/20, the USGA’s For the Good of the Game initiative and the PGA’s Play Golf America are promising, Sifford says they haven’t done enough yet regarding the major issue — a place to play for minority youths ... and adults, too, for that matter.
“I think what The First Tee does is OK,” Sifford says. “And, nothing against it, but there’s room for improvements for the kids. For instance, I’d like to see more black instructors. It’s a fact that black kids listen to black adults more quickly than they will others.”
As far as the big picture goes, Sifford is like many activists who have spent much of their lives trying to change things — it remains an uphill struggle.
“Things have changed in golf, but only for the famous like Tiger and other big-name black athletes ... not for the average person,” he says.
Unbroken determination
The main thing about Charlie Sifford is that despite all the hatred, abuse, frustration and disappointment, he’d step up and do it all over again.
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“Yeah, I’d do it again,” he says. “I knew then what I was getting into. But I believe if a man is qualified to do anything, I don’t care if he is white or black, he should be given a chance. At least I put it on their minds back then. If you don’t challenge something you think is wrong, it’ll never be changed.”
What’s more, Sifford gives one the impression that if he was 20 or so years younger he would indeed do it again. To paraphrase PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem at Sifford’s induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2004, we’ve come a long way and have a long way to go.
“Let’s be honest, blacks are still being treated poorly in this country,” Sifford says. “It’s hard to believe all that about equality and freedom of speech. But, I don’t have anything against nobody. I’m not prejudiced, you know.”
Knights in arms
Sifford’s longtime friendship with Gary Player is really all you do need to know.
Sifford chose Player as his Hall of Fame presenter, something that may have given pause to more than a few. But, the odd couple are really two kindred souls — the black man with a cause and the white man from South Africa enriched by unparalleled success in golf worldwide who nevertheless brought hatred down upon himself because of his criticism of his country’s apartheid policies.
“I have such admiration for this man ... I take my hat off to him,” Player says. “The hypocrisy that Charlie had to put up with ... yet I don’t find Charlie bitter, I find him compassionate. I have a great love and empathy for Charlie. I’ve seen an improvement in golf’s stance toward blacks, and Charlie has played a significant role in that improvement.”
Maybe what golf needs is more Gary Players. And a lot more Charlie Siffords.
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