Soul Golf

The first tee is filled with foursomes; on the practice green, more players stand poised over putts. The game may be golf, but it bears scant resemblance to the pastime of the country-club set. The scene is Detroit's Palmer Park Municipal Golf Course, and among its players are some of the city's best--and best-known--black golfers. The aim is action, bankrolls are at the ready, and the style is straight soul. Indeed, to play Palmer Park is to take a lesson in lively ethnic semantics.

Golfers "stick it in the ground" rather than tee the ball up. Clubs are "hammers," a shanked shot is a "pitch-out," and breaking par is "ducking the card." The art of psyching your opponent is known as "woofing." And a player with a lethal putter is an "undertaker," because he can "bury" the ball.

Pierce ("Fat Daddy") Cofield, 48, a 340-lb. self-styled retiree, can bury them with the best. He is also a master woofer. "This is a golf course where a poor man can come and get wealthy," says one foe, trying to set up Fat Daddy for a fall. "Boy, you keep messing around with me," says Cofield, "and I'll make your pocket bigger than a rat hole."

The action is swift, and the stakes can reach several hundred dollars. Regulars bent on a killing will make apparently fatal concessions. Bus Driver Dave Brown, a Palmer Park legend, used to play hackers while standing on one foot, a trick he could perform and still come close to ducking the card.

Unwitting hackers take their lumps from other Palmer Park fixtures such as "Sugar Jim," "Hookin' Walker," the "Prime Minister" and "Clean" Hunkey Clay. Then there is "Stabbing" Eddie Suns, so named because his swing has no follow-through. Sims takes no divots, the experts say. "He digs foundations." Needing a birdie on the par-three ninth hole one day to salvage a tie, Sims boomed a pitchout toward Woodward Avenue. The ball hit the fence, ricocheted back and fell into the cup for a win. The Rev. Floyd Moore resorts to higher tactics. "You know I love the Lord," he sings at a critical juncture. "He heard my cry." That's enough for Opponent Jim Finley, who complains, "Rev, I can't beat you and Jesus."

Even the few black pros who have made the big-time tour have had their troubles with the regulars at Palmer. After the 1967 Buick Open, Charlie Sifford made tracks for the old park. "He came here and lost four days in a row," remembers one regular. "Then he went to Hartford and won the tournament."

Palmer Park became the most popular of Detroit's six city courses after Motown Recording Stars Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye took up the game in the mid-'60s. Today's players include a cross-section of teachers, policemen, doctors, auto workers and judges. There is no color barrier, however, and up to 40% of its players are white.

Rolling Bars. Palmer's parking lot looks like a funeral-home driveway with cars waiting to join the procession--Eldorados, Fleetwoods, Continentals, and an occasional Rolls-Royce or Mercedes. The only thing missing is a hearse. Sandwiched between those fat-cat cars are the modest sedans of blue-collar workers and the rattletraps that numbers men drive to lull the Man.

In fact, the parking lot is a surrogate clubhouse, with many of the big cars serving as elaborate rolling bars. On muggy nights, golfers replaying their wins will roll up their windows and relax with cocktails in air-conditioned comfort. The losers can console themselves with the old plaint of Dave Brown on one of his rare losing streaks: "I got a bad case of buzzard luck. Can't kill nothin', and won't nothin' die."

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