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Charlie Sifford, now 75, was the Jackie Robinson of golf Web posted Jul. 21 at 01:18 AM
By Greg Garber Technically, it is only a 4-foot putt for par. But it
is the final stroke of a searing 64 - the final step of a 45-year odyssey. And
around the cigar-clenched teeth of Charlie Sifford, a smile blooms.
Aug. 20, 1967.
Sifford has just won the Greater Hartford Open by one
stroke over Steve Oppermann and a field featuring Arnold Palmer, Gary Player,
Lee Trevino, Tom Weiskopf and Raymond Floyd. Sifford grabs history and squeezes
it by the throat, for this is the first victory for a black golfer in a regular
Professional Golfers Association Tour event.
Never has a man of his race received a check as large
as $20,000 for winning a golf tournament. Never, ever in this sport that had
been the exclusive province of the privileged and powerful. In a word, white.
Thirty years have passed since that simmering summer.
The headlines described Charlie Sifford as a Negro. The
United States was at war in Vietnam. There was conflict in the Middle East. And
while it was a time of growing opportunity for some black Americans, tension
between blacks and whites was rising to dangerous levels. The poet Langston
Hughes, who had seen it coming, died that year.
In his 1951 work, ``Harlem,'' Hughes posed this
volatile question:
``What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun? ...
Or does it explode?''
For Charlie Sifford, almost incredibly in retrospect,
the answer was neither. He never quit, he never quite exploded.
At the age of 45, when professionals today are already
contemplating the Senior PGA Tour, Sifford was a first-time, big-time winner.
After 14 years on tour, he had finally risen above the blunt ignorance he
encountered daily.
In a Phoenix tournament, leading off with three other
black pros, he found human excrement in the cup at the first hole. Sometimes,
spectators kicked his ball out of bounds. He learned with time not to be
surprised when he found black cats in his hotel bed.
Often, he was forced to eat his meals in the locker
room, while the white pros dined with members in the country club grill room.
There were death threats. And there were tournaments he couldn't play in, hotels
in which he couldn't sleep. In 1960 and '61, even when he was among the top 60
money winners on tour, he wasn't allowed to be an official PGA member because of
a Caucasian-only clause in the by-laws.
Is it any wonder tough, gruff Charlie Sifford broke
down and cried when they gave him the silver GHO trophy and that enormous check?
``If you try hard enough,'' he told the crowd, fighting
his emotions, ``anything can happen. Thank you.''
That was it. A lifetime captured in 10 words.
The crowd stood for a five-minute ovation. They were
happy for Sifford, happy for themselves, because his victory in Wethersfield
meant that the American Dream wasn't just a cliche. Indeed, it proved that all
things were possible - for all people.
``I never will forget Hartford, because that's when my
dreams came true,'' Sifford wrote in his 1992 autobiography, ``Just Let Me
Play.''
``It had been my goal to be a winner, and I had gone
through heaven and earth to find a way to do it. I thanked God for my victory,
and for giving me the strength to hang in there all of those years when winning
a golf tournament seemed like the unlikeliest thing that would ever happen to
me.
``When it finally did happen, it was the sweetest thing
I've ever known.'' Angry old man
Twenty miles north of Houston, in Kingwood, Texas, the
phone rings.
``Hello? Is this Charlie Sifford, the golfer Charlie
Sifford?''
There is a pregnant, painful pause.
``Yeah, been Charlie Sifford for 75 years,'' he says.
``What do you want?''
Charlie Sifford does not suffer fools - sports writers,
more often than not - easily. He is considered one of the toughest interviews in
sports.
Thirty years after winning the GHO, the sweetness isn't
evident.
Did the GHO gallery around the 18th hole know what was
at stake, the history that was about to take place?
``Of course they knew,'' Sifford says. ``They knew.''
And what, exactly, was he thinking when he took the
trophy from the Jaycees' tournament co-chairmen?
``I'm thinking I've got me 20 thousand dollars - what
do you think I was thinking?'' he says. ``Man, the hell with the first this or
the first that. I can't worry about what people are thinking.''
Yes, Charlie Sifford sounds angry. Can you blame him,
really?
``When I was 25 years old and at the height of my game
and those doors were shut tight, I was the maddest that I've ever been in my
life,'' he wrote in ``Just Let Me Play.''
``I hear these things said about me these days when I'm
nearly 70 years old. I read them in the newspaper: `Bitter Charlie Sifford,'
`ornery Charlie Sifford,' `still angry about what happened to him 35 years ago.'
``Well, you tell me how you'd feel if the best years of
your life were spent waiting on the sidelines when you knew - YOU KNEW - that
you had the God-given talent for something, but weren't allowed to do it because
of the color of your skin? Tell me it wouldn't have an effect on your whole
life.''
Lee Elder understands Sifford's anger. In 1975, at the
age of 40, he became the first black golfer to compete in the Masters.
``Without Charlie Sifford,'' Elder said a few years
ago, ``there would have been no one to fight the system for the blacks that
followed. It took a special person to take the things he took. Myself, I don't
think I could have taken it, because I'm a little too thin-skinned.
``Charlie was tough and hard. That's the reason you
still see that hardness.''
This spring, Jackie Robinson was widely celebrated for
breaking baseball's color barrier 50 years ago. The major leagues dedicated the
All-Star Game to his memory and each player wears a commemorative patch on his
sleeve. President Clinton participated in a ceremony honoring Robinson in New
York.
Sifford knows he will never receive that kind of
acknowledgement. Yet, in some respects his task - a decade or two later - was
more difficult.
While Robinson had the support of Brooklyn Dodgers
President Branch Rickey, Sifford was on his own. Robinson played baseball in
public parks, but Sifford toiled in the private arena of the country clubs,
where racism was more insidious.
Sifford vehemently rejects comparisons to Robinson. Not
because he had a harder road, but because his presence did not open the same
doors. He bitterly points out that the rate of black golfers entering the
professional ranks has actually diminished since the 1960s.
Sifford started, as almost all black golfers did, as a
caddie. At the age of 10, he was hustling bags at the Carolina Country Club in
Charlotte, N.C. If he worked two rounds, he could make $1.50 a day, including
tips.
He played in his first National Negro Open in 1946.
Although he didn't win, he met singer Billy Eckstine. For the next decade - the
prime of his golfing career - Sifford was Eckstine's golf teacher, driver,
personal valet and friend.
In 1952, Sifford won his first of six National Negro
Open titles. Sifford became a fixture on the United Golf Association tour, which
sponsored modest events across the country. One of his UGA victories came at
Keney Park Golf Course in Hartford and was worth $200.
Three PGA-sponsored tournaments - the Los Angeles Open,
Chicago's Tam O'Shanter and the Canadian Open - allowed black golfers to
compete. In 1955, Sifford won $1,500 playing in those tournaments and a handful
of other more minor events.
In 1957, he won the Long Beach Open, becoming the first
black golfer to win a PGA co-sponsored tournament. In the 54-hole event, Sifford
collected the $1,500 first prize, ahead of, among others, Billy Casper.
His applications were accepted by most tournaments by
1961, but none of the Southern tournaments allowed him to play. When the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People intervened, Sifford
was accepted grudgingly by the Greater Greensboro Open, making him the first
black golfer to play in a PGA event in the South.
A group of 12 young white men followed him through his
first round.
``Don't miss it, Darkie,'' one said during his
backswing.
``Hey, boy, carry my bag,'' another said.
Somehow, he finished fourth, winning $1,300 and more
than a few friends for his courage.
Sifford won the Los Angeles Open in 1969, his only
other PGA Tour victory besides the Greater Hartford Open win in 1967. Sifford
won two more tournaments and nearly $1 million on the Senior Tour. ``Hartford
was the only one that meant anything,'' Sifford says. ``Because it was the
first. You win against that field and it means something.''
Today, he plays in a handful of events and appears at
corporate outings. In the past few months - for the first time in his life - the
phone is ringing off the hook. He has been to Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago
on someone else's nickel. He's 75 years old and, suddenly, people want to get
close to Charlie Sifford.
Tiger Woods is slow-motion walking down a dreamy
fairway, flanked by Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder.
``Thank you, Mr. Sifford,'' Woods intones.
``Thank you, Mr. Elder.
``I won't forget.
``You were the first. I refuse to be the last.''
This is the new Nike commercial, the third in a series
featuring golf's phenom. It acknowledges Woods' debt to the black golfers who
preceded him.
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