Barriers are broken one at a time - a thousand times over. Some may consider this one example small but I don't. Tiger Woods had it easy. Charlie Sifford was the truly the Jackie Robinson of golf.
He started out in golf as a caddy, earning handfuls of change as a boy. Decades later, Charlie Sifford was named to the World Golf Hall of Fame, after a career marked by talent, character and the drive to change his sport. Sifford, the first black golfer to hold a PGA Tour card, has died at age 92.
"I knew what I was getting into when I chose golf," Sifford told Golf Digest in 2006. "Hell, I knew I'd never get rich and famous. All the discrimination, the not being able to play where I deserved and wanted to play — in the end I didn't give a damn. I was made for a tough life, because I'm a tough man. And in the end I won; I got a lot of black people playing golf. That's good enough. If I had to do it over again, exactly the same way, I would."
http://www.npr.org/...
Sifford died in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived after retiring from playing golf. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says Sifford died of cardiac arrest last night, citing the golfer's son.
When he started playing golf professionally, the sport was divided: The PGA operated under a "Caucasians only" rule, leaving Sifford and other black golfers to compete in events like the National Negro Open — which he won five times in a row in the 1950s.
In 2013 President Obama awarded Charlie the Medal of Freedom -
More than 50 years after he broke the color barrier, Sifford received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony last November.
President Obama said:
"On the tour, Charlie was sometimes banned from clubhouse restaurants. Folks threatened him, shouted slurs from the gallery, kicked his ball into the rough. Charlie's laughing about that — my ball is always in the rough.
"And because golf can be a solitary sport, Charlie didn't have teammates to lean on. But he did have his lovely wife, Rose. And he had plenty of guts and grit and that trademark cigar. And Charlie won on the Tour twice, both after age 45. But it was never just about the wins. As Charlie says, 'I wasn't just trying to do this for me, I was trying to do it for the world.' "
Yes, I am a white golfer who lives in Georgia. But nationwide despite color Charlie will never get the recognition he deserves except from those of us who remember what a fine example of humanity and golf he was.
He was truly the Jackie Robinson of golf.