Charles Sifford, the first African-American man to play on the PGA Tour, died Tuesday night from complications of a stroke at age 92.
His death came just three months after he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, the highest award any US non-military citizen can obtain.
A caddie in his youth, he was a dominant force in the all-black United Golfers Association, winning five straight national titles. He played against white players for the first time at the 1952 Phoenix Open, but met with resistance and hatred, including human feces in the cup at his first green.
He also met Jackie Robinson, himself having broken baseball’s color barrier in 1947.
“He asked me if I was a quitter,” Sifford wrote in his autobiography. “I told him no. He said, ‘If you’re not a quitter, you’re probably going to experience some things that will make you want to quit.'”
In 1961, he challenged the Caucasian-only clause in the by-laws, and the PGA rescinded it. He debuted at the 1961 Greater Greensboro Open, despite getting death threats over the phone and hearing racial slurs hurled at him as he walked hole to hole.
He finished fourth. In 1967, he won the Greater Hartford Open, and added the Los Angeles Open title in 1969. He was not able to gain access to The Masters during his playing days because of the private club’s ability to determine its own entry list until it caved to pressure in 1990. Sifford was there the day in 1997 when Tiger Woods won the tournament for the first time, utterly destroying the course record.
Woods was one of many to respond to Sifford’s passing via social media, tweeting out, “Terrible loss for golf and me personally. My grandfather is gone and we all lost a brave, decent, and honorable man. I’ll miss u Charlie.”
GolfBlogger.co.uk 