find the time to call Roberts back. Roberts reached him the next morn- ing. “Lee, this is Cliff Roberts,” he said. “I’m just calling to extend an invitation to you, and I’d like to know if you’ll be coming.” Elder, following the advice of Reu- ben Payne, his attorney, swallowed the surge in his chest. “Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t say for sure right now,” Elder said. “It really depends on what I’m involved in.” Each man hung up. In 2019, Elder remembered the satisfaction he felt in that moment, the faint chime of the phone fading away as though he’d found the cure for tinnitus, the sense of reversal that came with his making the late man wait. “I just wanted to give Cliff a taste of his own medicine,” Elder said. F IFTY YEARS AGO THIS April, Lee Elder arrived in Augusta. He and Harper had rented two houses, one on Washington Road and another on Wheeler. For years, Elder claimed that keeping the two houses was a safety measure, meaning no one knew where, exactly, he and Harper were on any given evening. “It was a different time,” Elder said. Harper, who divorced Elder in the 1990s, disputed his account in a recent interview. “The town was in a good mood,” she said. They had two houses only because they had so many guests. Harper – the first woman to be recognised as an agent by the PGA Tour, a ground breaker in her own right – had asked for and received more than 20 badges from Augusta National, an un- usual amount. “Everything I requested, they provided,” she said. On the course itself, Elder was ac- companied by two bodyguards in plain clothes. “Security was excellent,” Elder said. He remembered feeling less safe off-site, especially in the car, especially in traffic. In Pensacola he had avoided passing through the small panhandle towns where Black people had some- times disappeared, careful to travel in numbers and never at night. Augusta had a better reputation, but it was still in, and of, the South. Thirteen days before Elder won the Monsanto Open, he watched Hank Aaron hit home run No 715 of his
“SECURITY WAS EXCELLENT,” ELDER SAID. HE REMEMBERED FEELING LESS SAFE OFF-SITE,
ESPECIALLY IN THE CAR, ESPECIALLY IN TRAFFIC.
automatically receive invitations. “That’s certainly what I’m going to try to do,” Elder said at the time. He lat- er confided that, already deep into his abbreviated career – he didn’t play his first full round of golf until he was 16 – he’d put too much pressure on himself to win. Wanting so badly to be the first had seen him too often finish second.
ment traditionally did. Roberts said the standing invite was good only for non- American winners of the event. In March 1973 a cadre of US Congress- men had asked Roberts to invite Elder to that year’s tournament, citing his 10 combined appearances in the US Open and PGA Championship and 32nd-
place finish on the money list in 1972. (Neither Elder nor Harper knew about the Congressional effort until after the fact.) Rob- erts had refused, arguing that to invite Elder would be to practice discrimina-
NOT GELLING? Elder privately considered switching out Augusta caddie Henry Brown.
Now Elder had won the Monsanto Open, and Rob- erts called him to extend his belated invitation. Elder was busy hugging his trophy and didn’t take
the call. “It was my first PGA Tour vic- tory,” Elder, who died in 2021, told Golf Digest’s Guy Yocom in 2019. “I really wanted to celebrate.” His champion’s dinner at the club went late. He did not
tion “in reverse.” The chairman had held fast to Augusta National’s new and unambiguous bar-setting from the previous year: The winners of every PGA Tour event would, from now on,
50 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MARCH/APRIL 2025
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