ON APRIL 21, 1974, LEE ELDER STOOD OVER AN 18-FOOT PUTT FOR BIRDIE ON THE FOURTH PLAYOFF HOLE TO WIN THE MONSANTO OPEN.
T HE 39-YEAR-OLD HAD been two shots behind Peter Oosterhuis with two holes to play at a windswept Pen- sacola Country Club. Elder had birdied both, including a gorgeous approach under and around the trees on No 18, to force their playoff. Oosterhuis had missed a three-foot putt for par to win on the first hole, a four-foot putt for birdie on the second and another birdie putt, from 20 feet, on the fourth. Now Elder, who had pre- viously lost playoffs to Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino, could win his first PGA Tour event if he made his birdie putt, two feet shorter and on the same line. He drained it and raised his putter into the air like a sword. The tournament director was a for- mer FBI man with a nose for the omi- nous; almost immediately, he escorted Elder into a waiting police car. The tro- phy ceremony was moved inside, into the relative safety of a clubhouse that
“He’s automatically earned his invi- tation, and he will receive an invitation to play in the Masters,” Roberts said. “We’re very delighted he’s done so.” It’s hard to imagine Roberts was, in fact, delighted. While stories of the chairman’s overt, even cartoonish rac- ism are probably apocryphal, Augusta National’s history was obviously, indis- putably racist. Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s colour barrier in 1947. The PGA of America revoked its “Caucasian only” bylaw in 1961. The Masters, an invitational tournament, could have dismantled its own colour barrier whenever Roberts pleased, before or after 1961. It, and he, had not. Pete Brown won PGA Tour events in 1964 and 1970 and did not receive an invitation. Charlie Sifford won in 1967 and 1969 and likewise went uninvited. “To my mind, the Masters was the worst redneck tournament in the country, run by people who openly discriminat- ed against Blacks,” Sifford later wrote. Elder himself won the 1971 Nigerian Open and did not receive an invita- tion, though the winner of that tourna-
hadn’t always welcomed Black golfers; on that fate-turning Sunday, Elder was treated as a champion rather than an exile. Rose Harper, Elder’s wife as well as his manager and agent, was back home in Washington, DC, living and dying with every update relayed by friends on the clubhouse phone. At last, her husband took the receiver. “Baby, we did it,” he said. “We finally did it, Baby. We finally won.” Minutes later, over the state line in
Georgia, the phone rang in the office of Clifford Roberts, the bespectacled, 80-year-old chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club. The previous week, Gary Player had won his second Mas-
MULTIPLE WINS Elder’s victory in Pensacola set him up to make history in Augusta.
ters there. Oosterhuis had also played in Augusta. Elder had not. No Black player had, ever. Roberts was informed by a reporter that Elder had won in Pensacola, meeting one of the pre- sumed standards for entry to the 1975 Masters. The reporter waited for Roberts to digest the news.
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