ELDER’S BIG MOMENT
First Black man to play in the Masters returns to Augusta 46 years later to act as an honorary starter
“One of the most emotional experiences that I have ever witnessed or been involved in.” Lee Elder • On being an honorary starter at Thursday’s first round of the Masters
Arthur Johnson accompanied Lee Elder to Augusta National Golf Club in 1975 when Elder became the first Black man to play in the Masters tournament.
They turned off Washington Road, drove down Magnolia Lane, toured the fabled clubhouse and sat down for lunch. The maître d’, Johnson recounts, walked up to their table and whispered: “You guys are the first two Blacks to eat here outside of the help.”
Later that week, Elder and some White friends went across the street from the course for a late afternoon meal at a place called The Green Jacket. Elder used the bathroom while his friends seated themselves in the empty restaurant.
“He comes out,” longtime Augusta resident David Rachels said, “goes to sit down with everybody else, and the manager walks out and says, ‘We can’t serve you.’ They all had to get up and leave, 15 or 20 people.”
The restaurant is no longer around. But Elder was Thursday morning, on the first tee at Augusta National, serving as an honorary Masters starter alongside Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, 46 years after he broke one of American sport’s last remaining color barriers.
Player helped lift him from a chair after club Chairman Fred Ridley made the introductions, supplementary oxygen tubes snaking from his nose, a driver pressed into the ground to steady himself, acknowledging the applause echoing off the Georgia pines with a smile nearly a halfcentury in the making.
“One of the most emotional experiences that I have ever witnessed or been involved in,” said Elder, who has hunkered down during the pandemic in San Diego County but also resides in Florida. “It is certainly something that I will cherish for the rest of my life because I have loved coming to Augusta National. … My heart is very soft this morning, not heavy — soft because of the wonderful things that I have encountered since arriving here on Monday.”
Nicklaus and Player stepped forward on the tee and hit drives into the green expanse of the first fairway. Elder did not, succumbing to an arthritic knee and a blind left eye and an 86-year-old body ravaged by diabetes.
“He wanted to get out there,” said longtime friend Roosevelt Walden, who helps organize Elder’s visits when he comes to Augusta. “If was up to him, he’d be out there swinging that club. But his family suggested that he just take it easy, that he use some logic and common sense. We said, ‘Let’s take a back seat on this one.’ ”
It didn’t matter. “Today,” Ridley said, “Lee Elder will inspire us and make history once more. Not with a drive, but with his presence, strength and character.”
Former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, one of the club’s few Black members, was there. So were more than 50 friends and family of Elder’s who came from San Diego, Washington, Florida, Texas, Tennessee and as far away as India. So were representatives of Paine College, a historically black college in town that will have two golf scholarships endowed in his name by Augusta National.
So were several members of the current Masters field. Bubba Watson interrupted his warm-up session to watch. Phil Mickelson didn’t tee off until 1:12 p.m. ET but was there, too, at 7:40 a.m. Both wore their green jackets as past Masters champions.
Elder’s group lining the first tee wore green hats with “1975” emblazoned across the front and his favorite quote stitched on the side: “Stay the course.” They were sponsored by Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, himself an avid golfer.
Curry posted a video message on Twitter wearing the hat and saying, “Mr. Lee Elder, I want to say thank you so much for your life’s work, for your legacy, your inspiration and blazing a path and overcoming so many obstacles to open up the game of golf for those that deserve to play and for the underrepresented. … This is an amazing moment.”
Elder was born in Dallas and orphaned at 9 after his father died in Germany in World War II and his mother passed away a few months later. At 12, he was sent to live with an aunt in Los Angeles
and learned to play golf there on rough-and-tumble public courses.
“If you played around a lot of the places that I played,” Elder said, “you had better be a good golfer, especially if you were trying to hustle a buck or two because there were so many bandits that were out there. And when I talk about bandits, I’m talking about guys that were real good players that always sat around and waited for somebody to come along.
“When they found out that I was a pretty good player, all of them wanted to be
partners with me.”
He dominated the United Golf Association tour for Black players in the 1960s with its $500 purses, once winning 21 of 23 events. He finally got a PGA Tour card in 1968. Then Player invited him on a goodwill tour of Africa that included a tournament in his native South Africa during the height of apartheid rule.
There was talk of granting Elder an at-large invitation to the Masters; he declined, saying he wanted to earn it. He did in 1974 with a tour victory in Pensacola, Fla., that reportedly drew
death threats and forced the trophy ceremony to be moved inside.
“I’ll tell you, I was so nervous as we began play that it took me a few holes to kind of calm down,” Elder said of his first of what would be six Masters appearances. “On several occasions, as I thought about where I was at and where I had come from, (it) was a reminder that, ‘Hey, you’ve worked for this, you have now achieved it. Just relax and enjoy and enjoy the moment. Your life is not going to depend on how well you play.’ ”
He shot 74 in the first
round and missed the cut.
“There was tension in the air,” said Johnson, his travel partner to Augusta that spring. “The patrons weren’t overly friendly like they are today. Under their breath, some things were being said. We knew what to expect when we got here, but we were here to do a job and represent ourselves the best we could.”
Not long after that, Elder was invited by a member to a casual round. Also in the foursome was the 1975 U.S. Amateur champion, a kid from Florida named Fred Ridley.
Ridley would become president of the U.S. Golf Association in 2004 and chairman of Augusta National in 2017. Last November, he invited Elder to be an honorary starter this spring.
Standing next to Watson and Mickelson on Thursday morning was Cameron Champ, a 25-year-old from Sacramento and the only member of the 88-man field this week with AfricanAmerican heritage. He was introduced to the game by his grandfather, who idolized Elder and other Black golfers of that era.
“If it wasn’t for my grandfather — my dad was a professional baseball player — I probably would have played baseball or some other sport,” Champ said after shooting even-par 72 that put him in a tie for 13th. “If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be standing here.”
Walden, Elder’s close friend, was on the opposite site of the tee wearing a customized green mask that said: “A date with the Masters, 1975-2021.”
“It’s kind of hard to put into words, when you think about the opportunity that Lee created,” Walden said. “It’s almost like Archimedes, the mathematician who said: ‘Give me a lever that’s long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.’ So, this is Lee’s fulcrum. Golf has been his life, and this is his platform.”
The lever, he was holding Thursday morning. As applause echoed off the Georgia pines, Elder lifted the driver that was supporting him and triumphantly waved it in the air.