At the 1961 Greater Greensboro Open, Charlie Sifford‘s appearance marked the first time a black man had ever been in the field of a PGA Tour event in the South. Playing at Sedgefield Country Club, he held the lead after a first-round 68.
Sifford had made his name in the predominantly black United Golf Association, but now he was the leading figure in the effort spurred by an emerging civil rights movement to end the PGA’s Caucasians-only policy, which had stood formally since 1934.
In 1960, the 38-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina, native had played 20 tournaments on the PGA Tour with an Approved Tournament Player status, the first black golfer to be granted that rank.
Jim Crow laws forbade him from getting a room at most of the city’s hotels, so he stayed first in a dorm room at the all-black North Carolina A&T and then at the home of a local black family.
On the night before the second round, Sifford received a threatening phone call.
“You’d better not bring your black ass out to no golf course tomorrow if you know what’s good for you, n—–,” said the white man with the Southern accent. “We don’t allow no n—–s on our golf course.”
Sifford did arrive for his 10:15 a.m. tee time the next day, despite fears that his life was in danger. For the first 14 holes, he was taunted by a pack of 12 white men who were shouting racial obscenities.
“Go back to the cotton fields,” they said. “Hey, boy, carry my bag.”
Eventually, police would haul the men off the golf course.
Sifford, who shot a 1-over 72 in that tumultuous second round, would ultimately finish in a tie for fourth in the tournament.
“I knew that if I blew up, it would all be over,” Sifford recalled years later in his autobiography, “Just Let Me Play.” “I couldn’t solve anything by violence. It would just ensure that all blacks, beginning with me, would be permanently barred from the tour.
“I just had to learn to handle it, because for all I knew, this would happen wherever I went to play golf in the South. They rattled me, for sure, but I survived.”
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