Blacks on the Greens

The record books of the Professional Golfers' Association will never show it, but the 1969 Los Angeles Open last month was a milestone. Short, stubby Charlie Sifford, jumping off to a first-round lead with five birdies and an eagle in one six-hole spree, won the season's opening tournament on the first hole of a sudden-death play-off against, ironically, South Africa's Harold Henning. Thus Sifford, long the victim of the apartheid in pro golf, picked up $20,000 and became, however briefly, the first Negro to lead the money winners on the pro tour.

The P.G.A. has good reason to ignore this aspect of Sifford's victory. Golf, owing in large part to the hidebound P.G.A., was for years one of the most segregated major sports in the U.S. The P.G.A. waited until 1961, a full ten years after most other pro sports were fully integrated, before it removed the Caucasian-only clause from its membership requirements. Even now, the majority of blacks seen on the pro circuit are still the caddies. Of the 300 pros on last year's tour, only six were Negro. This season there are eleven, and though such experienced competitors as Sifford and Lee Elder, 33, who finished seventh in the recent Bing Crosby National, are capable of winning any tournament, they agree that it will probably be five years or more before any Negro golfer can hope to join the ranks of the top ten moneymakers over a full season.

Moonlighting Players. It is not that they lack the talent to play golf, just the opportunity. As Sifford says: "White people have been playing golf for a hundred goddam years, man. Negroes have had a tough enough time just getting into school, let alone playing golf."

"In Mississippi," explains Pete Brown, 34, who earned $8,356 on the tour last season, "we weren't allowed to play golf, but me and some of the other Negro caddies used to scrape up a few clubs and sneak onto the course at dawn or even late at night." If nothing else, adds George Thorpe, 26, a second-year pro from Roxboro, N.C., "playing by moonlight sure teaches you how to keep the ball on the fairway."

Another problem is sponsorship. "You need about $15,000 a year for expenses to play the tour," says Lee Elder, who finished 54th in the rankings last year with earnings of $31,690, "and it is rare for a Negro to have a sponsor." As a result, says Ray Botts, 32, who won only $3,431 last season, many young black golfers cannot afford to sharpen their game with consistent tournament play and "they get disillusioned very quickly." Some are reduced to hustling duffers, while others who stick it out often do so at the expense of their prime playing years. Howard ("Lefty")

Brown, for example, after six years of hacking around the pocket-money tournaments organized by Negro businessmen, finally found a sponsor and joined the P.G.A. circuit for the first time this season. He is 32, or about ten years older than the white rookies on the tour.

Fortunately, says Brown, a 6-ft. 3-in., 285-lb. long-ball hitter, golf has shed many of its old discriminatory practices --or at least the most obvious ones. Six years ago, says Brown, when he was playing in a lefthanded tournament in Florida, he was not only banned from the clubhouse dining room but, he says, from winning. "I finished third," he explains, "but I would have won it had this white lady not stolen my ball on the 16th hole. I finally had to play it as a lost ball and lost two strokes."

Late Bloomer. Charlie Sifford remembers the segregated days all too clearly, but he refuses to talk about them lest they "make me bitter all over again." Though he won $33,180 last year, he feels shortchanged by golf. When he answers the phone in his four-room apartment in Los Angeles, he likes to crack: "Arnold Palmer's residence," an oblique dig at the uppity country-club set, who, he feels, regard him as a Rochester rather than a Jackie Robinson. Referring to the cigar he chomps on while playing, he says, "Yeah, that's the only way people can recognize me. I've been smoking them for 20 years, but no cigar company's come along to sponsor me."

The son of a Charlotte, N.C., laborer, Sifford was a caddie who began playing golf with gnarled sticks at ten. By the time he was 15, he was breaking 70. "I started playing," he recalls, "because I realized one day that I could hit the ball just as easy as I could hand the club to somebody else." After serving as Negro Singer Billy Eckstine's valet, chauffeur and golf instructor for five years, Sifford began touring in 1953. Polishing his methodically accurate game, he finished first in such tournaments as the Gardena Valley and Aberdeen opens, won the National Negro Championship four years in a row. In 1957 he entered the Long Beach Open and became the first Negro to win a regularly scheduled--though unofficial--P.G.A. tournament.

Since gaming his P.G.A. membership card in 1964, Sifford has increased his yearly earnings from $17,182 to a high of $47,025 in 1967, when he finished 25th in the money rankings. Though he slipped to 50th last season, he feels that his victory in the Los Angeles Open has launched him on "my best year yet." At 45, Sifford may not have many best years left. Nevertheless, capitalizing on a coaching tip from a friend, 48-year-old Julius Boros, he figures he will be a late bloomer. Says Sifford happily: "It's just been the last year that I learned to play the game--after 25 years of trying. I don't hook any more."

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