DOES GOLF HAVE A PROBLEM WITH RACISM?
T game of golf has a chequered past when it comes to race relations and equality. But let’s be honest – for a very long time, and until uncomfortably recently, there was overt racism in many areas of the game.
Inequality was, sadly, engrained in many of the institutions, administrations, clubs and people at the very top.
A quick look at some of the records and quotes makes for pretty horrible reading. There was a ‘Caucasian only’ clause in the membership rules of the PGA of America until 1962, and it was just a year earlier that Charlie Sifford became the first black man to join the PGA Tour at the age of 38.
His late arrival on golf’s main stage wasn’t for any lack of talent. Sifford, along with the likes of Lee Elder, Pete Brown, Ted Rhodes, Bill Spiller and numerous others, didn’t get the same opportunities as white players because of the colour of their skin.
Many of them were part of the United Golf Association (UGA) – a tour set up in 1925 that enabled black golfers to compete, albeit for much smaller purses and at lower-quality courses than the PGA Tour.
Clifford Roberts, the cofounder of Augusta National, was reported to have said “as long as I’m alive, all the golfers will be white and all the caddies will be black”. Elder was the first African American to play in The Masters in 1975 – about 18 months before Roberts died – and it took another 15 years before businessman Ron Townsend became the first black member of Augusta
