How Charlie Sifford broke the PGA’s color barrier and changed the course of golf

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• John Yang:

  On this weekend of the Masters Golf tournament, a look at the man Tiger Woods is called the Jackie Robinson of our sport. Charlie Sifford was the first black player to get a PGA card qualifying him for the Professional Golf Tour. It came in 1961, a full decade after the color barrier had fallen in professional football, baseball and basketball.

• John Yang:

  Charlie Sifford could a distinctive figure on the fairways that cigar jam between his teeth was more than just a trademark. He said it helped him with his swing and putting. For most of his professional career, he played not on the PGA tour but on the UGA, The United Golfers Association. Black players called it the Chitlin Tour forum for those not unwelcome in the all-white PGA.

  In 1961 the PGA finally dropped its Caucasian only by law, which had been in place since 1934. Prompted by a chance meeting with Sifford, the California Attorney General had threatened to sue the group. Sifford was 42 his prime playing days behind him. Still he went on to win two PGA tournaments, the 1967 Greater Hartford Open and the 1969 Los Angeles Open.

  In 2006, his achievements in golf were recognized with an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, home to what's considered to be the world's oldest golf course.

  Just months before Sifford died in 2015 at the age of 92, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.

  Barack Obama, Former U.S. president: On the tour Charlie was sometimes banned from clubhouse restaurants. Folks threatened him shouted slurs from the gallery, kicked his ball into the rough. Charlie laughing but that my balls always in the rough.

  Then because golf can be a solitary sport, Charlie didn't have teammates to lean on. But he did have his lovely wife Rose, and he had plenty of guts and grit and that trademark cigar and Charlie won on the tour twice, both after the age of 45. But it was never just about the wins. As Charlie says, I wasn't just trying to do this for me. I was trying to do it for the world.

• John Yang:

  Sifford played in 12 U.S. opens, six PGA championships and was the first black player inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. But he never played at the Masters which he once called the most redneck tournament in the country.

  Sports writer Peter May has written a new book about Sifford and the California Attorney General who pressed the PGA to act. It's called "Changing the Course: How Charlie Sifford and Stanley Mosk Integrated the PGA." and Charles Sifford Jr. is Charlie Sifford elder son.

  Mr. Sifford, I'd like to start with you. Your father, of course, is a legend in golf. But he was also your father. He was your dad. What are your memories of him as a man and as your dad?

  Charles Sifford Jr., Son of Charles Sifford: You know, my father was gone a lot playing golf, but I knew why he wasn't at home. You know, he was doing what he loved to do. And that was play golf. That was his dream. That's the thing that, you know, he wanted to do ever since he was 11 years old.

• John Yang:

  And when he was home, did he talk about the frustrations and what he was going through trying to get into the PGA.

• Charles Sifford Jr.:

  When he first started all he wants, you know, he was just a game. He wanted to be able to play his best and play against the best. But he wasn't allowed to do that. You know, he had death threats. A lot of other things going on and people called him and told him not to come to the golf course. He called him names. It just showed me, you know, he was a special person, you know, because everybody just couldn't play as good a golfer as they did. And being in that kind of pressure.

• John Yang:

  And Peter in the book you detail some of that, some of the hardships that. He went through but also despite those hardships the performance on the course.

  Peter May, Author, "Changing the Course": Yeah, I mean he would go to tournaments and he'd be forced to change clothes in the parking lot, eat in the parking lot. There were things that were thrown in his way. Virtually every tournament he played in south of the Mason Dixon Line.

  And Charles is right about that. It had to take a certain type of individual to be able to put up with it, but not to overreact. And he was that guy. He was the perfect guy for that moment. He got death threats, as he said, he was called the N word. That's what he had to go through.

• John Yang:

  I remember you're talking about the writing about the Greensboro Open one year.

• Peter May:

  Right.

• John Yang:

  Where he got a lot of heckling from the galleries. But he's still shot. Really good round.

• Peter May:

  Yes, he did. The great, greater Greensboro Open was the first — really the first tournament south of the Mason Dixon Line that a black player played in and he played extremely well. The first day he got a threat death, threat call at the house he was staying at the second day. And he finally had to move. He ended up I think tied for sixth or fifth. It was as good a performance I think that he could have ever delivered given all the other stuff that was going on.

• John Yang:

  And Sifford, you say he didn't talk about that at all. Do you get the sense he was trying to shield you trying to protect you from that?

• Charles Sifford Jr.:

  Yeah, he did. I've heard him talking to my mom. And that's I found out about a lot of the things he never really talked to me one on one about what happened. Every now and then I was able to, you know, get a hold of a newspaper and read different things. It was a rough life, but he was strong and determined. And you know, he wasn't going to let anybody stop him from doing what he wanted to do.

• John Yang:

  Peter, I was surprised to read in the book that it was actually in the PGA bylaws —

• Peter May:

  Right.

• John Yang:

  — that it was for golfers of the Caucasian race. How did it get ended?

• Peter May:

  It got into thanks to the other partner in this story Stanley Mosk, the Attorney General of California. He heard about it from Charlie. He was introduced to Charlie at a country club in Los Angeles by Billy Eckstein, the great singer and bandleader who championed Charlie's cause for a number of years.

  When Charlie Sifford told Stanley Mosk about this, Stanley Mosk was incredulous. And he didn't know anything about golf. He didn't know anything about Charlie Sifford other than he did — he was a golfer. But he went to work. And it took him about a year and a half to two years to finally, you know, beat the PGA over the head enough times that they figured out that they better change it.

• John Yang:

  Threatened with lawsuits.

• Peter May:

  Threatened with lawsuits, threatened to stop the tournaments. And in California from happening. So yeah, he was a big, big part of all this.

• John Yang:

  And this just different of all the honors that your father got. One of them was the first black man inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Peter describes that induction ceremony in the book, it sounds like an incredibly emotional event. What do you remember from that night?

• Charles Sifford Jr.:

  The first thing I remember, you know, my wife and I, we stayed up for about a week writing and rewriting his speech. And we had it done. And so in big print, he got his he was having trouble with his eyes at that time. But when he got up on stage, he was so emotional. That is, I started watering. And he never — he couldn't see the pages of the speech. So he didn't start talking, you know, from his heart.

  I think the biggest laugh he got was when he was telling everybody that when he got the phone call, he made sure he was going to get there to hall for the induction, he slowed down in his driving. And he was careful crossing the street. So because he didn't want to — he didn't want to take a chance of missing the opportunity to go into the Hall of Fame.

• John Yang:

  One thing you do note in the book is that after Charlie Sifford broke down this barrier that he did not — there was not an influx of black golfers into the PGA. Today, I think there were only probably about four black professional golfers. Why do you think that is?

• Peter May:

  It's still a white players game. It's a country club game. That's where all the golfers go to get lessons and play on good courses. And it's just — it's not a game that has really embraced blacks as much as they should. There hasn't been the movement that Charlie and Tiger both hoped would happen. It just — it hasn't happened.

• John Yang:

  Mr. Sifford, your were amateur golfer. Are you frustrated by that that there aren't more in the game?

• Charles Sifford Jr.:

  Yes. I'm sure my father would be too he was still alive. One of the main reasons, you know, is this an expensive sport. You had to buy clubs, you have to pay it to go play the game. A lot of the blacks that got into the game back in the time when my father was playing started off caddying, so they, you know they were able to learn the game by watching other people play with the invention and the cart and eliminated the caddy positions for the most part.

  So that eliminated the exposure that the young blacks had to play the game is starting to get a little bit better, you know, with HBCU schools having some strong golf teams, as tournaments are starting to develop where they can play in and get exposure. And they get good instructions now, which they never had when they, you know, back in the day.

• John Yang:

  Mr. Sifford, obviously, your father has this great legacy as the man who broke the color barrier. As his son, as other members of your family, your children, his grandchildren, what would you hope that his legacy would be?

• Charles Sifford Jr.:

  That they remember him being a strong willed individual who set a goal and were to achieve that goal. And you know, and did it in the right way. You know, he was a pioneer. He didn't consider yourself a civil rights leader. You know, he does — he didn't think of himself that way. He was just trying to make it easier for the people coming up behind him to be able to have a better opportunity to play the game.

• John Yang:

  Charles Sifford, Jr., Peter May, thank you both very much.

• Peter May:

  My pleasure.

• Charles Sifford Jr.:

  my pleasure.