Golf confronts its racist past

National Post, 10 April 2021

Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to play in the Masters, received a historic honour at this year's tournament.

No place in sports does history better than Augusta National, home course of the Masters, the most prestigious tournament in golf. And this week’s Masters brought a touch of healing to that history.

The tournament begins with a ceremonial tee shot at the first hole by the game’s legendary players. For many years, it has been the champions of the sport’s most competitive era, the 1960s and ’70s — Jack Nicklaus, the most successful golfer of all time, Arnold Palmer, the most popular with the fans, and South Africa’s Gary Player, a three-time champion. Palmer died in 2016, but Nicklaus and Player continued on.

Last year, with racial strife roiling America, Augusta National announced that Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to play in the Masters, would join the other elders for the ceremony this year. Now needing a cane to walk and an oxygen tank to breathe, Elder, 86, was not able to take a ceremonial swing on Thursday morning. The movement was of the heart, instead.

Elder had a good experience on the course when he played in 1975. He received ovations from the fans — “patrons,” Augusta National calls them — and fondly remembers the warm reception he received.

Racism, though, was a clear and present danger. When he came to Augusta, he rented two houses for the week, a security precaution to make it harder for those who threatened harm to carry it out. A local college offered its catering staff to cook him meals because some restaurants wouldn’t serve him.

Augusta National is as perfect a collaboration of God and man as can be found anywhere. Every pine needle is in place, the sand (ground quartz, actually) is dirt-free and the grass really is greener on that side of the fence. Mobile phones are mercifully forbidden and transgressing patrons are genteelly escorted out. Best of all, running is prohibited, as it will be in heaven. When I was there for the final round in 2015, it seemed like heaven. Or at least Eden.

Continue reading at the National Post.