Elder was “out-of-the-box bad,” shoot- ing 40 on the front nine. After the built- in triumph of his opening round, his second round felt almost anti-climac- tic, just another man on the moon, and he never felt the crackle that brought his best. He finished with a 78, missing the cut by four. After the round, Elder found some humour in the situation. “I got a chance
around the back of Elder’s neck. A pho- tographer caught the moment Littler became golf’s Pee Wee Reese, who had put his arm around Jackie Robinson in front of a jeering crowd 28 years before. “Good luck,” Littler said. Elder dug his tee into the ground. “It was such a strange pressure,” he said. “I made a silent wish that I wouldn’t embarrass myself.” Harper had forecaddied for her hus- band since an affronted observer had kicked Elder’s ball off the fairway at a tournament in Memphis, and she did again at Augusta, finding a quiet spot in the trees, praying she’d see his drive land where she thought it might. Wres- tling with more nerves than he had felt standing over any single shot in his life, Elder hit his drive long and straight. “Relief,” Harper said. It was the start of a serviceable, un- spectacular round, careful and mea- sured. Dave Anderson of The New York Times walked with Elder, along with a hundred Black supporters, including Jim Brown, the Hall of Fame football player. Elder remembered tipping his visor and basking in ovations at every green. Harper also remembered being carried along by nearly constant cheer- ing. Anderson, in contrast, expressed surprise at the restraint of Augusta National’s patrons, at least given the magnitude of the history they were witnessing. He counted 31 rounds of “polite applause” to go with Elder’s two-over 74. E LDER WORE LAVENDER on Friday, teeing off a little after lunch beside Miller Barber, a fidgety Texan with a funky swing. Barber did his best to be quiet and still, almost invisible, but
September, Clifford Roberts got a hair- cut, pulled on some fresh pajamas, walked down towards the manicured lip of Ike’s pond and shot himself. Thirteen years later, in 1990, the club admitted Ron Townsend, its first Black member. In 1997 Tiger Woods became the first person of colour to win the green jacket. Elder had picked up a speeding ticket racing to Augusta National in time to
to see some of the beauti- ful flowers and shrubbery around here,” he said. In truth he was disappointed by his showing, for which so many had waited so long. “Everything I did was incorrect,” he said.
see Woods begin his fi- nal round. Later, Woods noted that he’d been born the same year Elder de- segregated the Masters, as if a spiritual baton had passed between them in 1975. “I had often thought of that,” Woods said.
LAY OF THE LAND Elder being transported across the grounds by an official early in the week.
Brown, his caddie and an excellent cross-handed hitter, had even sug- gested at one point they trade outfits, white coveralls for lavender, to give themselves a shot at the weekend. Harper had believed Brown and Elder were a bad match from the start and had wanted to request a caddie change; she thought Brown didn’t have the nec- essary eye for detail for such a crucial assignment. She was overruled by Reuben Payne, the attorney, and Jack Pohanka, a Washington car dealer and one of Elder’s few sponsors. Neither wanted to risk anything that resembled a controversy. “Well, I told you to get rid of that guy,” Harper said to Elder before she and her husband made the quiet trip back home to DC. Her feelings about their Masters experience have since softened. “It was a memorable, very pleasurable week,” she said. Elder played the tournament five more times; he finished tied for 19th at his next appearance in 1977. That
Woods was not alone in his memo- ries. More were shared in 2021, when Elder was named an honorary starter alongside Nicklaus and Player, and again that November, when he died at 87. One stood out. Late that Friday afternoon, now 50 years gone, Elder was making his long, dejected finish- ing walk up No 18, “Holly,” when he looked up to see some of the club’s Black employees lining the fairway. The same crowds that thwarted Jim Murray had parted to let them to the front. They stood in tidy lines, many in their bleached-white uniforms, glow- ing like lanterns in the coming dusk: the caddies, the waiters, the cooks, the cleaners, the drivers and the grounds- keepers, now with a golfer in lavender also among their ranks. One of them, “in this booming voice,” Elder remembered, shouted above the cascade of otherwise unbroken applause: “Thank you for coming, Mr Elder!” Someone else shouted it, too, and someone else, until the same expres- sion of gratitude became a chorus, echoing against the pines. Elder, his gaze returned to the grass as he climbed the rise to the green, heard it again and again. Not so long before, at that tournament in Memphis, a racist had kicked his ball out of bounds. Now, at the Masters, a better audience was thanking him for being there, and only then did Lee Elder set free the tears he’d fought back for so much of that week, dropping like sash weights from his disbelieving eyes.
LATER, WOODS NOTED THAT HE’D BEEN BORN THE SAME YEAR ELDER DESEGREGATED THE MASTERS, AS IF A SPIRITUAL BATON HAD PASSED BETWEEN THEM IN 1975.
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