This document provides a history of golf and discusses the discrimination faced by black golfers. It describes how golf originated in Scotland in the 18th century as a popular leisure activity, but became an exclusive upper-class sport in the late 19th/early 20th century. Black people were excluded from golf clubs and mostly restricted to caddying roles. Figures like Joe Louis and Charlie Sifford helped advocate for inclusion, though discrimination persisted into the 1990s. Tiger Woods' success in the 1990s increased representation, but some clubs still exclude certain groups.

1. Kirk Rose
4/27/15
The History of Golf and the Black Golfer
From the time I was born sports have been a major influence and a big part of my life.
I’ve played all sports from football, baseball, hockey, etc. One sport that I really got interested in
when I was young was the game of golf. I really enjoyed the difficulty of the game and the
satisfaction of going out there and getting a birdie or par. golf is a hard sport to get into because
you fail so often at first that it drives people away from the game. You need to be able to accept
failure to enjoy being out there on the course. Golf is one of those games that everyone can enjoy
and it’s a great way to burn four or five hours and hang out with some friends. While it’s a game
everyone can enjoy it wasn’t always that way for some groups of people. In this paper I will give
a brief history of the game of golf and how it is played, and then talk about how it moved from a
sport everyone could play to an exclusive sport. I will also discuss the oppression blacks faced in
the game of golf and provide the struggles they went through to get to where we are today. I will
conclude with some places around the world who are now in the 21st century beginning to
change their ways and allow more diverse people into their clubs.
Golf is a game that started out in the 18th century back in Scotland. It is said the golf is a
creation of Scotland and not until about the 19th century was it an actual organized sport. Until
the 19th century I was more like people out there hitting a rock around with a stick. All the golf
courses had their own individual set of rules and things could change based on what course you
were at. In 1744 the first official rule of golf were created in a small town called Leith in
Scotland. Even though these rules were put in place people still did their own thing on the course
and didn’t really follow the rules. In 1783 was when the etiquette of golf was put into place and
golf became a more formal sport that was beginning to gain popularity. It wasn’t until the late

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2
19th century that clubs began to include codes of behavior on the course. The game of golf at this
point was on the rise and you began to see course popping up all over Scotland. Before 1870
there were only 40 courses, by 1910 there were up to 79 courses in Scotland. While golf started
out as a sport for everyone it quickly changed. Ceron-Anaya (2010) states “forces that fuelled the
transformation of golf from a popular leisure activity in 18th-century Scotland, to an upper-
middle and upper class sport associated with business communities in early 20th century United
Kingdom and United States” (pg.342). This statement shows that while golf may have started out
as a game for everyone, once business got involved it began to change who could play the game.
The game evolved into a sport for the wealthy white man. Once this began to happen the game
excluded everyone else from being members at their clubs.
One group of people that began to face this discrimination was black people. During the
time golf began to gain popularity in the early 20th century black people were still facing civil
rights disagreement and they were still trying to gain their equality in society. One way black
people were put down in the sport was having them be forced to caddie for white people. A
caddie is someone who carries the bag of the person playing and usually got paid a pretty low
sum of money. Many young blacks found their way to caddying on courses because they were
not allowed to work in the coal mines or mills with the white youth because those jobs paid
more. In his article Reed (2008) talks about how young black males were not protected by the
youth labor laws that the young white kids were protected by. These young black kids were
making $1 per round they caddied and they would caddie up to three 18-hole rounds of golf a
day (pg.62). Many of these young black kids started from a very young age. After 1960 a lot of
the young black caddies grew up to being caddies on the PGA Tour (the top tour for golf in the
US). During this time the most prestigious course in the US was Augusta National, home of the

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3
Masters tournament. During the early years of the tournament most if not all of the caddies they
provided for the professional golfers were African American. A lot of the golfer would continue
to you the same caddie each year they returned for the tournament. These caddies however didn’t
have it the easiest. Many caddies were considered black servants on the golf course. As Reed
(2008) explains “the 1950s and early 1960s, black caddies traveled from event to event across
the country on greyhound buses, segregated to the back of the bus, and changing their clothes in
the woods or in the parking lot” (pg.63). This shows while caddies got to enjoy themselves on
the course a little bit, their lives weren’t that much different than the average African American
living in the US during this time. It wasn’t until 1961 when the PGA Tour started to allow
African American golfers on the tour.
Two people during the 1940’s through the 1960’s who helped push for the end of
discrimination in the game of golf was heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis and the first
ever African American to compete on tour Charlie Sifford. In 1943 the PGA Tour put a rule in
place that allowed “Caucasian only” to partake in their tournaments. In their article Dawkins and
Farrell (2008) talk about “Charlie Sifford, the first African American to gain full PGA
membership, described the racist treatment he experienced as one of a few black professional
golfers attempting to play in segregated, all-white golf tournaments during the 1950s and 1960s”
(pg. 73). Here they are talking about how while there might have been an African American on
tour, he was not respected and he had to face the same thing that African Americans had to deal
with in everyday life during this time. Since African Americans were so highly discriminated
against in golf, they created their own tour called the United Golfers Association (UGA). This
tour was for the African Americans who were not allowed to play on the PGA Tour, and they
had their own National Championship called the Negro National Open. This was held every year

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4
from 1926 to 1960 with the exception of the years during World War II. The ultimate hope for
African American golfers was that one day they would be able to gain status on the PGA Tour.
During the time between 1940 and 1950 the US began to see the color barrier lifted in
sports such as baseball, basketball, and football. This was due in large part to the overwhelming
success of heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis. Dawkins and Farrell (2008) discuss in their
article how Joe Louis was an ambassador for the game of golf to blacks and was considered a
golf hero. They go on to say that Louis created his own tournament in 1941 and promote
interracial competition between white and black golfers (pg. 75). This explains that while Louis
was famous for his boxing skills he had a true love for the game of golf and strived for equality
throughout the game. Louis, to support black professional golfers, would hire them to be his golf
tutor, and encouraged other blacks to take up this game golf. Once the Joe Louis tournament was
created it served as a 2nd championship for the African American golfers to go along with the
Negro National Open. During the inaugural Joe Louis tournament Louis stated ‘“I think this
tournament will prove conclusively to our white friends that we have some [Walter] Hagen’s and
[Gene] Sarazen's in our group” (pg. 76). This shows that Louis was confident that blacks could
play the sport of golf and compete with the whites. He put time in to make it so blacks could
compete against the white and this was a showcase for those black golfers to show off their skills
to the rest of the US. Joe Louis along with Charlie Sifford began the change that would help
African Americans become more involved in the game of golf on a more professional level.
During all this time when Louis and Sifford were trying to gain equality in the sport of
golf for blacks there were still white people trying to keep “their” sport segregated. Even though
those two worked so hard to get blacks into the sport there was still push back from many clubs
into the 1990’s and beyond. As stated by Dawkins (2003) “the Shoal Creek (Alabama) Country

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Club came under national scrutiny in 1990 when it was revealed that a championship tournament
of the Professional Golfers Association Tour was being sponsored by a golf club that openly
excluded blacks from holding membership” (pg. 233). Here it shows that while in the US by
1990 we had done away with segregation and discrimination, it was still being practiced by many
country clubs around the US and the world. This incident led to many people learning about the
history of discrimination and segregation that blacks had to go through in the game of golf. It
was all over the news in the sports world and this all happened right before Charlie Sifford
released his autobiography. In his autobiography he talks about all his past experiences with
discrimination while he was on the tour. In 1996 Tiger Woods became the next big thing in the
golf world and it just so happened to be that he was of African American descent. When Tiger
won the prestigious Masters title for the first time in 1997 he was the first player of African
descent to win the tournament. After Tiger won this event there began to be a raise in
professional player who came from African descent.
While there has been a raise in players of African descent and there is as much
discrimination in the sport there are still golf course who don’t allow black or even women to
join their clubs. The famed course of Augusta National used to be one of these courses. In his
article Nylund (2003) states “No sports story in 2002 produced more intense media coverage
than the controversy surrounding the Augusta National Golf Club, the host of the prestigious
Masters Golf Tournament and its all-male membership” (pg.195). From this you can see that
even as recently as 2003 there were still clubs who discriminated against groups of people from
being members at their clubs. While this example is about women there are many more clubs,
especially in England and Scotland, which still discriminated against non-white males being
members at their clubs. It wasn’t until about 2010 when Augusta National allowed their first

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African American female to be a member. While golf has worked hard through the years to keep
their sport as exclusive as they could, people like Charlie Sifford and Joe Louis worked to gain
membership into the sport for themselves and fellow African Americans that followed them. It is
still a work in progress but people like Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh who have been very
successful black golfers have given young blacks a hope to succeed in this great game of golf.

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References
Ceron-Anaya, H. (2010). An approach to the history of golf: Business, symbolic capital, and
technologies of the self. Journal Of Sport & Social Issues, 34(3), 339-358.
doi:10.1177/0193723510377317
Reed, W. (2008). The black golf caddy: A victim of labor market discrimination. Challenge
(1077193X), 14(1), 61-71.
Dawkins, M. P., & Farrell, W. C. (2008). Joe Louis and the struggle of african american golfers
for visibility and access. Challenge (1077193X), 14(1), 72-90.
Dawkins, M. P. (2003). Race relations and the sport of golf: The african american golf legacy.
Western Journal Of Black Studies, 27(4), 231-235.
Nylund, D. (2003). Taking a slice at sexism: The controversy over the exclusionary
membership practices of the augusta national golf club. Journal Of Sport & Social Issues,
27(2), 195-202.