Charlie Sifford

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Charlie Sifford
Nation: United StatesUnited States United States
Career data
Professional since: 1948
Current tour: PGA Tour , Champions Tour
Tournament wins: 22nd
Awards: * Admission to the World Golf Hall of Fame (2004)

Charles "Charlie" Luther Sifford (born June 2, 1922 in Charlotte , North Carolina , † February 3, 2015 in Cleveland , Ohio ) was an American professional golfer . He was the first African American to take part in the PGA Tour and the first African American to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame . After he received the Old Tom Morris Award in 2007 , he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Barack Obama in 2014 .

life and career

Charlie Sifford was born in 1922 in Charlotte, the largest city in the US state of North Carolina, the son of a factory worker. This is also where his golf career began. The then 13-year-old initially worked as a caddy in a golf club licensed exclusively for whites . On Mondays he was also allowed to play golf as a caddy. He proved to be talented: he often played rounds under par. At that time he earned 60 cents, of which he gave 50 cents to his mother and of the remaining 10 cents bought a stogie , a cigar, which later became his trademark has been.

At the age of 17, Sifford came to Philadelphia in 1939 , where he himself played on various golf courses. Among them was the Cobb's Creek Golf Course , where he often competed against Howard "Butch" Wheeler , another black golfer from Atlanta , who was eleven years his senior . At the same time, he worked for the US confectionery and snack manufacturer Nabisco .

In the time after that, Sifford began his military service. He took part in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II . After starting his professional career in 1946, Sifford met baseball player Jackie Robinson , who had only recently become the first black player on a Major League team since 1888, and told him about his dream of playing once to participate in the PGA Tour . At the time, participation in the segregated PGA Tour was reserved for whites only. Robinson said that he shouldn't give up fighting for his dream.

In the years that followed, Sifford mainly competed in the National Negro Open, organized by the United Golf Association ( UGA for short ), and for many years was a consultant, helper and personal golf teacher for the African-American singer and band leader Billy Eckstine . At the National Negro Open he was able to advance to a top player and won the tournament five times in a row between 1952 and 1956. In 1952 he was first allowed to take part in a PGA tournament. At the Phoenix Open , he competed against three black competitors, including boxer Joe Louis , who later campaigned with Billy Eckstine for Sifford's career and Sifford's participation in a PGA tour as the first black player. In 1956, Sifford won the Rhode Island Open in addition to the black championships . After he had won the Long Beach Open in 1957 , which was not an official PGA Tour event but had many professional players, Charlie Sifford, who Eckstine only called Little Horse , was already quite close to his breakthrough. After his sixth victory of the UGA National Negro Open, he was also able to win the Almaden Open in the same year , but this was an unofficial victory, as the tournament was only played as part of the PGA Tour from the following year. From the end of the 1950s onwards he played in an average of 15 different PGA golf tournaments and also completed numerous other tournaments to which he was invited or where he was allowed to qualify as a black player.

1959 met Sifford finally to Stanley Mosk , the former attorney general of California who knew Sifford was excluded in his state of PGA tournaments. Mosk confronted the PGA Tour officials that Sifford's civil rights as a California citizen were being violated, and asked if there were any reasons other than his race why he had not been granted membership. It was not until the following year, 1960, that the PGA of America presented him with the "Approved Tournament Player Card", which allowed him to participate in games on the PGA Tour; however, he was still rated as a rookie at that time . After the admission clauses were relaxed in November 1961 and the "Caucasians-only" rule was repealed, Sifford had to wait another three years before he became an official PGA member with full status. At the Greater Greensboro Open , Sifford made his official debut in April 1961 as the first black player on the PGA Tour in the southern states . Sifford himself said that racism in golf was far from over. During his first game, he was guarded by armed law enforcement officers in front of the first hole and received a death threat that same evening. The almost 175 cm tall Sifford was not hindered by this and reached fourth place in the final ranking. Even in subsequent tournaments and years later, Charlie Sifford had to struggle with racism and ethnophaulism again and again . Furthermore, his game was often disrupted and the ball was often deliberately hit into the rough by his opponents .

Sifford won the Greater Hartford Open in 1967 and the Los Angeles Open in 1969; In 1975 he won the PGA Senior Championship. He was one of the first players on the Seniors Tour founded in 1980 and won the Suntree Classic tournament. He last appeared on the Champions Tour in 2011. He won more than $ 341,000 in prize money on the regular tour and more than $ 1 million as a professional golfer.

In 2004, Sifford became the first African-American player to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame . In 2014 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom .

successes

PGA Tour wins (2)

More victories (12)

Senior PGA Tour Victory (1)

More senior wins (7)

  • 1975 PGA Seniors Championship (five years before it became a Champions Tour event)
  • 1988 Liberty Mutual Insurance Legends of Golf - Legendary Division (with Roberto De Vicenzo )
  • 1989 Liberty Mutual Insurance Legends of Golf - Legendary Division (with Roberto De Vicenzo)
  • 1991 Liberty Mutual Insurance Legends of Golf - Legendary Division (with Roberto De Vicenzo)
  • 1998 Liberty Mutual Insurance Legends of Golf - Demaret Division (with Joe Jimenez )
  • 1999 Liberty Mutual Insurance Legends of Golf - Demaret Division (with Joe Jimenez)
  • 2000 Liberty Mutual Insurance Legends of Golf - Demaret Division (with Joe Jimenez)

Results in major championships

competition 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
US Open T32 T46 DNP T43 DNP 27 CUT DNP DNP T32 DNP
PGA Championship DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP T33 DNP DNP T59 CUT
competition 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
US Open DNP T49 T21 CUT 60 CUT DNP DNP CUT DNP DNP
PGA Championship DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP T48 DNP CUT DNP DNP CUT

Note: Sifford never took part in the Masters Tournament or the British Open during his active career .

DNP = did not take part
CUT = cut not made
"T" split placement
Green background for victory
Yellow background for top 10

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cobb's Creek Golf Club .... Past, Present, and Future , accessed February 5, 2015
  2. ↑ Charlie Sifford's profile on the official Cobb's Creek Golf Course website , accessed on February 5, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Sifford, Charlie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sifford, Charles Luther (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American golfer
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlotte , North Carolina, United States
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 2015
Place of death Cleveland , Ohio, United States