from some players and discriminatory practices, particularly in the American south. Everything he did to forge a career was calculated through a lens of self-preservation and fear. When he bought a new Buick Wildcat, he would travel between tour- naments with a white player as his passenger. That way, if a cop gave him trouble, he could say he was just the hired driver. What Sifford endured paved the way for other black golfers, including the most famous of all, Tiger Woods, who became a global superstar and arguably the greatest player in the game’s history. Tiger understood what Sifford had done for him and named his only son “Charlie.” The other black player from North Carolina, Harold Varner, grew up in Gastonia. In superficial ways, his story seems like the logical end point of the progress that Sifford initiated, and Tiger per- fected. Varner, too, came from a poor family – his parents sometimes didn’t have enough to pay the electricity bill in their home – but because of a $100 summer package at a local municipal course, he had access to golf, and, like Sifford, beat the odds to become a PGA Tour professional. He never won, but he earned more than $10 million. Then progress threw a wrinkle: In August 2022, at 32, Varner signed with a rival league called LIV Golf for $15 million. The windfall from Saudi Ara- bia’s Public Investment Fund came as part of a campaign that created a major schism that contin- ues to damage the popularity of professional golf. “It’s all about the damn money,” Varner said at the time, showing more honesty than many of his fellow defectors. Yet as gaudier sums are thrown at players from all sides and the very structure of the sport is altered to reflect a game at war with itself, the uplifting individual part of Varner’s story became hard to disentangle from the larger disruption. You could argue that Charlie Sifford paved the way for Harold Varner, who now plays a small role in paving the way for professional golf’s upheaval. Progress doesn’t stop where we’re most comfortable. Take the story of an Ohio pharmacist’s son. In the early 1960s, with Golf Digest still in its rela- tive infancy, Jack Nicklaus intended to remain a lifelong amateur like his hero Bobby Jones. Mark McCormack, founder of IMG and Arnold Palmer’s agent, brought him to his senses with visions of how much money he could make, and as the ama- teur idealist gave way to the entrepreneur, one of the greatest professional careers in golf history began. By 1968 his tune had changed so com- pletely that he teamed up with Palmer and other top pros to break away from the PGA of America, which stubbornly refused to pay them what they deserved, to form the precursor to the PGA Tour. In 1983 his capitalist instincts led him to insti-
TOUGH FIRST STEPS Without Charlie Sifford, there is no Tiger Woods.
Let’s talk first about two black men from North Carolina. The late Charlie Sifford came from Char- lotte, the son of a labourer who found a job as a caddie making 60 cents a day and became a world class golfer. In 1950, the year William H Davis launched the publication you’re reading today, Sif- ford was 28 years old and couldn’t play with tour- ing pros of the PGA. Instead, he won tournaments like the Negro National Open and made his living as a teacher. Baseball and football had already been integrated, and the NBA was integrated that same year, but it took until 1961 before the PGA got rid of its Caucasian-only clause. Once Sifford finally joined his white colleagues, his reward was going through hell – racist fans, a cold reception
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