Welcome again, pals, to one more version of Historical past’s Mysteries. Occasionally, MyGolfSpy takes a glance again in time on the gear, folks and occasions that mattered and made a distinction.
This has been an thrilling week in golf, with Nelly Korda and Scottie Scheffler battling it out to see who the most effective golfer on the earth is. However with all of the hubbub, an important anniversary got here and went this previous Sunday, and it’s an occasion that ought to all the time be remembered.
On April 21, 1974, Lee Elder received the Monsanto Open in Pensacola, Fla. That victory was the primary in Elder’s PGA Tour profession. Extra importantly, the win earned Elder a spot within the 1975 Masters, making him the primary African American to play at Augusta.
For those who’re a scholar of historical past, significantly of the Sixties and ’70s, that’s no small milestone.
Historical past’s Mysteries: Who Was Lee Elder?
Lee Elder was born in Dallas in 1934, the youngest of eight youngsters. When he was seven, his father was killed in World Battle II and his mom died three months later. Elder’s first job in golf was amassing stray balls at a neighborhood muni (he was too small to hold a bag) and he wouldn’t play his first full 18-hole spherical till he was 16.
Elder honed his recreation and have become a little bit of a hustler. He finally joined up with Alvin Thomas, higher often known as the legendary golf hustler Titanic Thompson. Thompson made a dwelling hustling cash from wealthy nation membership members across the nation and Elder would play a job in his favourite hustle. After beating a member soundly, Thompson would berate the participant, saying his caddie may beat him. The participant, incensed, would take Thompson up on that problem. The caddie, after all, was Elder.
After a stint within the military, Elder joined the United Golf Affiliation Tour in 1961. It was a tour for black golfers as a result of the PGA Tour nonetheless formally held its “Caucasians solely” clause. Elder was dominant on that tour, at one stretch profitable 18 of twenty-two tournaments. The prize cash, nonetheless, wasn’t nice, usually within the $500 vary.
The PGA Tour formally lifted its shade barrier within the early ‘60s but it surely took Elder till 1967 to earn sufficient cash to attend Q-Faculty. He completed ninth out of 122 golfers, incomes his Tour card for 1968. His rookie season noticed him place fortieth on the cash checklist, highlighted by shedding on the fifth playoff gap to Jack Nicklaus on the American Golf Traditional at Firestone on nationwide tv.
The 1974 Monsanto Open
By April of 1974, Elder had 5 second-place finishes in his profession, together with one other playoff loss in Hartford to Lee Trevino. However he had but to win on the PGA Tour.
Elder’s earlier experiences on the Monsanto Open weren’t nice. As a rookie in 1968, Elder and different black gamers on Tour have been compelled to alter garments within the parking zone. Members on the Pensacola Nation Membership refused to permit Blacks of their clubhouse.
However the ’74 Monsanto can be fairly completely different. Elder went 67-69-71 within the first three rounds. That put him within the ultimate pairing, two pictures behind chief Peter Oosterhuis. Elder would tie for the lead twice in the course of the ultimate spherical however, by 16, Oosterhuis was again up by two.
Elder birdied 17 to tug inside one. However he badly pulled his tee shot into the timber on 18. Newspaper accounts say Elder then “hooked a miraculous strategy across the timber,” to inside 5 toes of the outlet. Whereas Oosterhuis scrambled for his par, Elder drained his birdie putt to pressure a playoff.
Oosterhuis missed a three-footer on the primary playoff gap that may have received the occasion. He additionally missed a four-foot birdie putt on the second gap. After routine pars, Oosterhuis positioned his strategy on the fourth playoff gap to inside 20 toes. Elder adopted, taking part in his strategy two toes nearer, on the identical line.
Oosterhuis missed however Elder drained his 18-footer for the win.
Officers instantly hustled Elder into the clubhouse for the trophy presentation. The ceremony was moved inside after police acquired discover of demise threats towards Elder earlier within the day.
It was the identical clubhouse Elder was barred from getting into six years earlier.
The Masters Invitation
The follow is customary now: win a PGA Tour occasion and also you’re mechanically invited to the Masters.
That coverage, nonetheless, hasn’t all the time been official. African-American gamers Pete Brown and Charlie Sifford have been a number of winners on the PGA Tour within the ‘60s however have been by no means invited. Within the early ‘70s, a bunch of Congressmen lobbied Masters chairman Clifford Roberts to ask an African-American to play. Roberts, nonetheless, remained unfazed.
“We’re somewhat stunned in addition to flattered that 18 Congressmen ought to take day trip to assist us function a golf event,” Roberts is quoted as saying on the time. “We really feel sure somebody has misinformed the distinguished lawmakers as a result of there may be not and by no means has been participant discrimination, refined or in any other case.”
This was the identical Clifford Roberts who, in 1933, reportedly declared that “all of the golfers shall be white and all of the caddies shall be black,” for so long as he may affect the state of affairs.
However by 1974, the Masters had modified its insurance policies to increase an invite to any Tour winner. Roberts contacted Elder after the Monsanto win to formally invite him however Elder advised Roberts he’d have to consider it.
“I simply needed to present Cliff a style of his personal drugs,” he’s quoted as saying.
The 1975 Masters
Jack Nicklaus received the ’75 Masters in an exciting final-round showdown with Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf. Elder, who was 40 on the time, missed the minimize after capturing 74 on Thursday and 78 on Friday.
“Once I arrived on the entrance gate and drove down Magnolia Lane, that’s when the shakes started,” Elder advised the BBC Information in 2015. “What if I hook or slice into the woods? I simply collected my ideas as I approached the primary drive and simply type of swung the membership.”
The week at Augusta was each thrilling and making an attempt. Elder acquired demise threats and hate mail main as much as the Masters, to the purpose the place he rented two completely different homes so nobody may make sure the place he was staying. Two bodyguards have been with him always and his meals have been ready by the kitchen at Paine College, a traditionally Black school in Augusta.
The Augusta patrons, nonetheless, have been a unique story.
“Each inexperienced I walked up on, the applause was super. I imply, everybody shouted ‘Go Lee! Good luck Lee!’”
After ending his first spherical, each workers member at Augusta greeted Elder on the trail resulting in the clubhouse, simply to say thanks.
And since life does come full circle, 22 years later Elder was on the 18th inexperienced to greet that yr’s champion, Tiger Woods.
The Elder Legacy
“I didn’t notice how vital (taking part in the Masters) was on the time,” Elder advised Golf Digest years later. “I don’t suppose I knew what a giant deal it was.”
From what we’ve realized from individuals who knew Elder, that’s not shocking. Michael Cooper, a Senior Regional Golf Engagement Advisor for the USGA, was a youngster when he met Elder in the summertime of 1974 on the Pipe O’ Peace golf course on Chicago’s South Facet.
“The top professional was a gentleman named Bobby Milton, who had performed for the Harlem Globetrotters,” Cooper tells MyGolfSpy. “Bobby arrange a Lee Elder Day. It was a giant celebration and Lee performed a nine-hole exhibition. I bought to play with him and Bobby.”
Cooper says he knew the tales of what Elder went via however provides Lee by no means spoke of it.
“By no means as soon as can I recall him speaking about all of the dangerous stuff and racism. He talked about all the great folks he met and talked about Gary Participant fairly a bit. Participant invited him to play in South Africa in the course of the apartheid period.”
Jim Beatty, govt editor of African American Golfer’s Digest, met Elder at a event in St. Louis.
“Once I discovered he was going to be a visitor, I bought giddy. He was fairly reserved, given all that he completed. However I didn’t see in him nor did I detect any elements of bitterness, which was encouraging as a result of he actually had purpose to be. He was only a very variety individual.”
African American Golfer’s Digest writer Debert Prepare dinner met Elder on the 2005 PGA Present. “Lee was all the time variety and gracious, beholding of a optimistic disposition. His outlook was all the time that of hope and that issues would get higher.”
Historical past’s Mysteries: Elder Recollections
“I can’t recall the yr however I used to be on the Masters and there’s a giant memento store close to the doorway,” remembers Beatty. “Lee and his spouse have been simply standing there. He was older and never essentially recognizable, however I knew who he was. So, as persons are coming in, particularly Black folks, I’m going to them and saying, ‘Hey, are you aware who that’s? That’s Lee Elder. Please go shake his hand.’ I used to be simply happy and humbled to be his greatest cheerleader”
And the hate mail, demise threats and parking zone indignities in Pensacola? Beatty says that was simply the fact of the occasions.
“That’s a really robust a part of American historical past. However it’s what African American golfers – Ted Rhodes, Charlie Sifford, Bud Spiller and Lee – needed to endure. It was par for the course.
“However they dealt with it in such a magnanimous method. I hope folks generally, however actually African Individuals, can perceive, develop and study from it.”
“For us, his win reaffirms the notion that prejudice, racism and discrimination don’t mirror functionality and expertise,” says Greenwood Golf CEO Chris Phrase. “It’s vital for us to proceed to pursue our desires and targets to honor his legacy.”
In 2019, Elder was awarded the USGA’s Bob Jones Award for distinguished sportsmanship in golf. In 2021, a visibly ailing Elder joined Jack Nicklaus and Gary Participant as a ceremonial starter on the Masters. Membership Chairman Fred Ridley introduced Augusta would set up males’s and girls’s golf scholarships at Paine College in Lee’s identify, and would endow the ladies’s golf program.
Elder would die simply seven months later, on the age of 87.
“I imagine persons are good at coronary heart,” Elder stated in 2019. “For those who deal with folks the way you’d prefer to be handled, they’ll come round ultimately.”
The submit Historical past’s Mysteries: Lee Elder and the 1974 Monsanto Open appeared first on MyGolfSpy.
