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Speaker 1: requires a different technique. What you need to do is
Speaker 1: actually square the face so it'll dig down under now
Speaker 1: that bad lie and propel that ball right out onto
Speaker 1: the green.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing.
Speaker 3: Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely
Speaker 3: different than playing out of a night and clean lion
Speaker 3: of Greenside Bunker.
Speaker 4: You need to be.
Speaker 5: Aggressive on any show. Weather it's sitting cleanly for its
Speaker 5: Friday egg.
Speaker 1: Well, we've all faced it, the dreaded Frida egg. Not
Speaker 1: to be feared though, it's actually a pretty easy shot
Speaker 1: to hit.
Speaker 3: Today, my guest will be Tommy Armour, the Silver Scott,
Speaker 3: one of the finest playing golf prolls of all times.
Speaker 1: That's the voice of Jackie Robinson.
Speaker 3: Tommy Armour and I will begin our conversation right after
Speaker 3: this important message.
Speaker 1: It's about nineteen fifty eight nineteen fifty nine, a couple
Speaker 1: of years after Robinson retired from Major League Baseball, and
Speaker 1: he has a radio show called Jackie Robinson's Sports Shots.
Speaker 6: He interviewed famous sporting personalities and that included Tommy Armour everyone.
Speaker 1: Rosemary Marrivet's is the one who told me about these clips.
Speaker 6: My name is Rosemary Maraboth. I'm the curator of collections
Speaker 6: with the usg Golf Museum.
Speaker 1: The audio from Jackie Robinson's Sports Shops is in the
Speaker 1: United States Golf Association's archives.
Speaker 3: But my son is twelve years of age now and
Speaker 3: he is beginning to take an interest in the game
Speaker 3: now My question to you is, should I, as a
Speaker 3: average golf for eighty high seventies, go out and tell
Speaker 3: my son how to hit the ball or should he
Speaker 3: go to a pro for lessons to start out?
Speaker 6: You know, it was a very conversational kind of a segment,
Speaker 6: very reminiscent of podcasts. The format was very accessible.
Speaker 4: Don't try, Jack, it's not the deal. You're a terrific
Speaker 4: baseball player, remember that.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: Now you're in the golf gate, all right. You know
Speaker 4: a little about golf, just a little. You play well,
Speaker 4: But when you get there and try to teach children
Speaker 4: the simple thing of golf, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: know them when you're.
Speaker 1: In many ways, the conversation between Robinson and Armor is unremarkable.
Speaker 1: Robinson asks about Armor's career, about swing technique, and about
Speaker 1: what makes a golf champion.
Speaker 4: Quite a question, Jack, But in a.
Speaker 1: Few unspoken ways, it is remarkable. For one thing, this
Speaker 1: is the late fifties and here are two men, one
Speaker 1: of them black, the other white, speaking in the friendliest
Speaker 1: and most natural way.
Speaker 6: And it was really fun to sort of hear this
Speaker 6: mutual admiration.
Speaker 1: And for another, you can just tell how much of
Speaker 1: a golf tragic, Jackie Robinson really.
Speaker 4: Is You didn't know that, did you?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Gay Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, to give it up, jack Oh, I love it
Speaker 3: too much. It's a great game. And then you're telling
Speaker 3: me that.
Speaker 6: It just sounds like to people that are interested in
Speaker 6: golf having a very normal conversation. They happen to be
Speaker 6: incredible athletes. But what's bringing them together as kind of
Speaker 6: a very simple concept.
Speaker 1: This is Friday's Stories. I'm Garrett Morrison. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we explore Jackie Robinson's life in golf. Now you're probably
Speaker 1: familiar with how Robinson desegregated Major League Baseball, how in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven he became the first black man to
Speaker 1: play in the MLB in the twentieth century, and how
Speaker 1: he confronted racism with strength and grace. In American culture,
Speaker 1: his story has taken on the weight of a heroic myth,
Speaker 1: a myth that happens to be true. What's less known
Speaker 1: is that the baseball diamond is not the only playing
Speaker 1: field where Jackie Robinson advocated for equality. He also did
Speaker 1: so on the golf course, and in golf he saw
Speaker 1: a sport that was even more racially segregated than baseball,
Speaker 1: a sport where true integration seemed even more elusive. I'll
Speaker 1: admit it, before I started working on this episode, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that Jackie Robinson had such a passion for golf.
Speaker 1: Just doesn't tend to come up in the mainstream books
Speaker 1: and documentaries about him. And I think I have an
Speaker 1: idea why. You see, we're accustomed to thinking of Jackie
Speaker 1: Robinson as a triumphant figure, as we should, but the
Speaker 1: story of his efforts to change golf is complicated in
Speaker 1: some ways. It's sad, even inconvenient, And those are the
Speaker 1: exact reasons I think it's important to tell this story today.
Speaker 5: Robinson grew up in Pasadena, in southern California, where golf
Speaker 5: was popular. There were there are a number of golf courses.
Speaker 5: This is Lane DMUs all right, tryg and Garrett.
Speaker 1: Hey, can you hear me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can hear it?
Speaker 1: Perfect, Okay, excellent. He's a history professor at Central Michigan University.
Speaker 5: I'm the author of the book Game of Privilege and
Speaker 5: African American History of Golf.
Speaker 1: In researching his book, Lane came across a number of
Speaker 1: tidbits about Jackie Robinson's early experiences in golf.
Speaker 5: There's a story that he used to sneak on to
Speaker 5: the local private courses and find balls and sell golf
Speaker 5: balls back to the golfers.
Speaker 1: Later, around the time Robinson arrived at UCLA in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties, he took up the game properly.
Speaker 5: There's a story that he basically borrowed a friends clubs
Speaker 5: and played for the first time on borrowed clubs and
Speaker 5: broke a hundred shot ninety nine.
Speaker 1: That just doesn't seem fair, does it.
Speaker 5: And then it's clear that he got a chance to
Speaker 5: play more in college and eventually he's apparently shooting in
Speaker 5: the mid eighties, winning sort of Pacific Coast League golf tournaments.
Speaker 5: That's not too surprising in the sense of if anybody
Speaker 5: knows Jackie Robinson's college career, I mean, it's arguably the
Speaker 5: most well rounded, incredible college athlete of all time. I
Speaker 5: mean almost every sport he got involved in.
Speaker 1: He excelled at football, basketball, track.
Speaker 5: And arguably baseball was probably his worst sport in college.
Speaker 1: But baseball turned out to be his future. In nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, Robinson was called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers
Speaker 1: and wearing number forty two on his back, he broke
Speaker 1: the MLB's sixty three year color line. Meanwhile, his love
Speaker 1: for golf continued to grow.
Speaker 5: When he integrates Major League Baseball, he says that golf
Speaker 5: is his favorite hobby. He tells the press that he
Speaker 5: plays sometimes with other Brooklyn Dodgers and in fact that
Speaker 5: this was a nice way to sort of overcome sort
Speaker 5: of the tension amongst white baseball players of having a
Speaker 5: black teammate and all these things that they apparently played
Speaker 5: some golf on the side.
Speaker 1: Robinson also plays with fellow African American celebrities, including Joe Lewis,
Speaker 1: the famous boxer and former heavyweight champion of the World
Speaker 1: and an avid golfer. Like Joe Lewis, Robinson takes an
Speaker 1: interest in the professional game, specifically in the efforts of
Speaker 1: black pro golfers to break their sports color line, golfers
Speaker 1: like Bill Spiller. In nineteen fifty two, the PDA of
Speaker 1: America bars Bill Spiller from the San Diego Open, and Robinson,
Speaker 1: at the height of his baseball career, goes to bat.
Speaker 5: For him, Robinson saying, you know, golf is the most
Speaker 5: racist of the sports that's left out there. We've got
Speaker 5: to get more black golfers into these events.
Speaker 1: And after he retires from the MLB in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: he goes on NBC's Meet the Press.
Speaker 5: And talks about golf again and says, golf is the
Speaker 5: last sport. You know, every other sport black people have
Speaker 5: broken into, not golf.
Speaker 1: So golf is not only a passion for Jackie Robinson,
Speaker 1: but also a cause.
Speaker 4: Sometimes we don't.
Speaker 3: Well, what's the first thing then that a kid should know?
Speaker 4: Principle, Take your boy, Yeah, right, twelve years of age.
Speaker 4: Stock your boy like you. Yes he is. You're not
Speaker 4: a boy? No, no, no, get him a good set
Speaker 4: of clapse.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back a few steps here. Segregation in
Speaker 1: American golf was there from the beginning. After all, the
Speaker 1: game became popular in the US in the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: which historians now see as the start of what's called
Speaker 1: the Jim Crow Era.
Speaker 2: The starting point that is commonly used for the Jim
Speaker 2: Crow Era is the Supreme Court's ruling in the eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety six case of Plessy versus Ferguson.
Speaker 1: That's Marvin Dawkins, a professor of history at the University
Speaker 1: of Miami and the author of the book African American
Speaker 1: Golfers during the Jim Crow era and.
Speaker 2: When Pless Versus Ferguson was passed, which essentially legalized segregation.
Speaker 2: That is often used as a marker or the rise
Speaker 2: of Jim Croism.
Speaker 1: Jim Crow laws were essentially updated versions of the old
Speaker 1: slave codes.
Speaker 2: And the slave codes regulated every aspect of life for slaves,
Speaker 2: prevented them from marriage, prevented them from being taught, that
Speaker 2: is literacy.
Speaker 1: Scratch out slaves, scribbling black people, and you have this new,
Speaker 1: yet familiar system.
Speaker 2: It was really designed to make it clear that these
Speaker 2: people are not to be respected, these people are second class,
Speaker 2: these people are to be regulated. And there were laws
Speaker 2: that clearly provided advantages privileges for whites at these basive blacks.
Speaker 1: So how did this system manifest itself in the golf world.
Speaker 2: Well, that's where you get me at, Joe.
Speaker 1: Basically, Jim Crow structured golf from top to bottom. Courses
Speaker 1: were segregated, tournaments were segregated, and the various professions of
Speaker 1: golf firmly segregated.
Speaker 2: Clearly, the understanding when the PGA was founded in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixteen was that black people were not welcome.
Speaker 5: It's sort of an unspoken racial barrier that's very common
Speaker 5: in society, but basically it's real. It's codified, but not
Speaker 5: in the writing.
Speaker 1: This unwritten prohibition was put to the test in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight when a black man applied for membership in
Speaker 1: the Professional Golf Association of America.
Speaker 2: The guy that tried to join his faskin he was
Speaker 2: someone who may have been able to pass for whites.
Speaker 2: His name was Dewey Brown. Dewey Brown just sent in
Speaker 2: his membership fees. They sent him a membership back. Dewey
Speaker 2: Brown actually had a membership in the PGA, and someone
Speaker 2: took the PGA office say, you know, this guy's black.
Speaker 1: The PGA revoked Dewey Brown's eligibility, and in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: four it officially amended its constitution to limit membership to
Speaker 1: quote professional golfers of the Caucasian race. That was the
Speaker 1: actual written phrase, and it came to be known as
Speaker 1: the Caucasian only clause.
Speaker 5: The Caucasian clause that the PGA has.
Speaker 2: The Professional Golf Association's Caucasian only clause.
Speaker 5: What had already been there, the sort of racial all
Speaker 5: white notion of PGA players is now codified in a
Speaker 5: written constitution of this organization that has huge implications for
Speaker 5: a range.
Speaker 1: Of individuals, including African American competitive golfers, because increasingly, by
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, top professional events are requiring PGA membership for.
Speaker 5: Entry, and so you can get tournament organizers who consider
Speaker 5: themselves quite progressive on this the Southern issue of race
Speaker 5: and segregation, but their golf tournament is going to be
Speaker 5: a golf tournament for members of the PGA, and that
Speaker 5: means black people. Black players are out.
Speaker 1: But African Americans didn't withdraw from the game. Instead, they
Speaker 1: created what Marvin Dawkins calls parallel institutions.
Speaker 2: Blacks formed their own organization in nineteen twenty six and
Speaker 2: was called the United Golfers Association, and the UGA was very, very,
Speaker 2: very significant in promoting the organization of black goffers, primarily
Speaker 2: in the Northeast and the Midwest.
Speaker 1: UGA events attracted great players in the nineteen thirties and forties.
Speaker 1: Ted Rhoades, Howard Wheeler, and Bill Spiller were the Black
Speaker 1: Tours answer to Jean Sarazen, Byron Nelson and Sam Snead,
Speaker 1: in the same way that Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and
Speaker 1: Satchel Paige were Negro League Baseball's answer to Lou Garrigg,
Speaker 1: Ted Williams and Bob Feller. Still, many UGA golfers yearned
Speaker 1: to compete against the best integrated fields, and so after
Speaker 1: World War Two, black players began to challenge the Caucasian
Speaker 1: only class.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty eight there was an effort led by
Speaker 2: black coffers for them sue the PGA. The PGA said
Speaker 2: through which leaders, look, look, look, we would tick up
Speaker 2: the Caucasian only clause in our next meeting if you
Speaker 2: withdraw the suit. The suit was withdrawn. They did nothing,
Speaker 2: and there were some people who were involved in that
Speaker 2: who were enrage.
Speaker 1: They carried this anger into the nineteen fifties, and marching
Speaker 1: right alongside them was Jackie Robinson.
Speaker 2: When Jackie Robinson retired in nineteen fifty six, he became
Speaker 2: a columnist for the New York Post, and he wrote
Speaker 2: article after article after article targeting the PGA and his
Speaker 2: failure to permit blacks to play.
Speaker 5: Robinson uses very strong language whenever he writes about golf.
Speaker 5: Robinson uses language like white supremacy, American apartheid is what
Speaker 5: he calls it.
Speaker 1: The public pressure is mounting, but the PGA remains stubborn
Speaker 1: on the Caucasian only class.
Speaker 5: Right up until the end. The national body of the
Speaker 5: PGA is voting overwhelmingly to.
Speaker 1: Keep it, and Robinson keeps firing back. By Aron in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty.
Speaker 5: Robinson's talking about golf segregation is segregation in New York.
Speaker 5: In New York City, there's PGA events, in San Diego,
Speaker 5: in Pebble Beach, in California, there's PGA events. So Robinson
Speaker 5: is very much hitting this sense of America. If you
Speaker 5: support this, you support segregation in the whole country.
Speaker 1: The outrage builds and eventually a key group of people
Speaker 1: gets involved, lawyers.
Speaker 5: And then they get legal support from the Attorney General
Speaker 5: in California.
Speaker 2: Mosque, the Attorney General of the state of California.
Speaker 5: The PGA is threatened with legal action from these key
Speaker 5: states where there's a lot of important tournaments, and that's
Speaker 5: really what breaks the camel's back.
Speaker 1: The PGA of America is spooped. So in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: the year when Arnold Palmer wins six tournaments, the year
Speaker 1: when Jack Nicholas turns pro the PGA votes to remove
Speaker 1: the Caucasian only class from its constitution. It was a victory,
Speaker 1: but a late one and a sad one. The clause
Speaker 1: had lasted for twenty seven years. But obviously it was
Speaker 1: a step forward and in part a testament to what
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson could do, and it.
Speaker 2: Showed the influence of not just celebrity status, but the
Speaker 2: accomplishments and regard in which Jackie Robinson was.
Speaker 3: Hell, tell me this about Tommy Armor. Where did you
Speaker 3: begin your career my golf career, golf career?
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: You have varied interests as far and in your career
Speaker 3: as a too.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, I have had some that have to be
Speaker 4: expaghaated before I co go did.
Speaker 5: What am I side of playing golf?
Speaker 1: But it's not like American golf instantly became a post
Speaker 1: racial utopia in nineteen sixty one. For one thing, black
Speaker 1: players had to meet a number of terms and conditions
Speaker 1: before becoming PGA members, terms and conditions that until that
Speaker 1: point they had not been allowed to work toward, and
Speaker 1: so they all had to go back to square one.
Speaker 1: Even Charlie Sifferd, a veteran pro with elite skills, didn't
Speaker 1: become a full PGA member until nineteen sixty four, he
Speaker 1: was forty two years old. As Marvin Dawkins explained it
Speaker 1: to me, this is one way that institutional racism works.
Speaker 2: Anti racism is not just an individual problem. So sometimes
Speaker 2: people think that we need to just focus on anti racists,
Speaker 2: and that's important, But when we talk about institutional racism,
Speaker 2: we're talking about the normal operations of society. There's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with how we do things and run in our
Speaker 2: organizations to be profitable. Yet what you're doing as a
Speaker 2: normal operation of how you structure what you do is exclusion. There.
Speaker 1: In other words, after the PGA struck the Caucasian only clause,
Speaker 1: its rules no longer mentioned explicitly, but in the everyday
Speaker 1: implementation of those rules, things were still more difficult for
Speaker 1: black golfers than for white golfers. This was post Jim.
Speaker 2: Crow America, but it also wasn't We could talk about
Speaker 2: Jim Crowism as being forever from the time that black
Speaker 2: people were here in sixteen nineteen. So when people talk
Speaker 2: about the Jim Crow here, I make it clear that
Speaker 2: that's a historical period that was put in place. But
Speaker 2: certainly segregation and the oppression of black people has been continuous.
Speaker 1: Improvac that was.
Speaker 4: I think, without doubt the luckies golfer.
Speaker 3: I don't know about being so it was a good play. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you have to be a good player. That went all
Speaker 3: the top prizes of PGA, the British Open, the Euros Opened,
Speaker 3: every major professional golf term of Tommy Armor has won.
Speaker 5: But I still was lucky.
Speaker 1: Let's catch back up with Jackie Robinson nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: he retires from baseball.
Speaker 5: I mean, he is arguably the most recognizable athlete in
Speaker 5: the world. He has a tremendous amount of sort of
Speaker 5: social and cultural capital.
Speaker 1: But Robinson takes what seems like a relatively unglamorous job.
Speaker 1: He goes to work as an executive for the coffee
Speaker 1: company Chalk Full of Nuts.
Speaker 5: Robinson is leading this kind of Rockefeller Republican life, and
Speaker 5: he's commuting from Connecticut to New York City. He's serving
Speaker 5: on the board of on boards in corporate America, establishing
Speaker 5: banks in Harlem, all of these things.
Speaker 1: And in many ways he fits right in.
Speaker 5: You know, he had this bent where he was drawn
Speaker 5: to that world of you know, I don't know what
Speaker 5: you call Wall Street finance, corporate America. His politics sort
Speaker 5: of leaned that that way as well. So most of
Speaker 5: corporate America, most corporate boards, you know, they supported the
Speaker 5: Vietnam War and these anti communism. Robinson loved that stuff.
Speaker 1: But on racial issues, Robinson remained progressive and outspoken.
Speaker 5: Always on the issue of segregation, racism, and discrimination. He
Speaker 5: was a powerful voice for change.
Speaker 1: It was a delicate balance between corporate America and the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, but Jackie Robinson seemed capable of maintaining it.
Speaker 5: He was a very effective communicator in a range of
Speaker 5: social situations and public situations. He was very much adept
Speaker 5: in the world of whiteness.
Speaker 1: So in the mid nineteen sixties, this is where Jackie
Speaker 1: Robinson is commuting between Connecticut and New York, serving on
Speaker 1: corporate boards.
Speaker 5: He's living that sort of relatively republican kind of conservative
Speaker 5: capitalists you know dream, right, and part of that dream
Speaker 5: is golf.
Speaker 1: This is when golf is emerging as the favorite pastime
Speaker 1: of the business class. The suburbs of New York City
Speaker 1: have become crowded with country clubs, and Robinson starts to
Speaker 1: get invited to play at them, or at least some
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 5: Predominantly Jewish clubs would be the most likely clubs that
Speaker 5: might be open to having black visitors.
Speaker 1: There's a particular Jewish club where Robinson begins to play
Speaker 1: frequently as a guest, and.
Speaker 5: The members grumble. A few members actually left the club
Speaker 5: over the fact that other members of the club were saying,
Speaker 5: this guy spends too much time here.
Speaker 1: Eventually Robinson gets the message.
Speaker 5: He never becomes a member at any of these sort
Speaker 5: of all white clubs that he visits in that period.
Speaker 5: So even though he was famous and largely beloved, his
Speaker 5: race was keeping him out of country clubs.
Speaker 1: Of course, he keeps playing golf.
Speaker 5: He would, you know, wake up like anybody at any
Speaker 5: other normal shlub and go down at four am to
Speaker 5: try to get a tea time at the municipal and
Speaker 5: get thrown together with people. So here, it's just amazing
Speaker 5: to think of one of the most popular athletes in
Speaker 5: the history of the world. But that's that's what he
Speaker 5: needs to do to access golf in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: So Robinson starts writing editorials about this new, very specific
Speaker 1: form of racism he's encountering.
Speaker 5: He says, there's clubs that in the Northeast that pride
Speaker 5: themselves on being sort of progressive and open to Jewish members,
Speaker 5: and all of these things, and yet if I get
Speaker 5: invited there too many times people start to talk about it,
Speaker 5: and even though I'm this famous guy, they don't want
Speaker 5: me at their club.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty six, Jackie Robinson has another idea. He
Speaker 1: wants to establish a new country club, a truly race
Speaker 1: blind country club, and he gets the support of a
Speaker 1: bunch of his friends, from celebrities to businessmen, sort of.
Speaker 5: High profile movers and shakers.
Speaker 1: Including George C. Scott. George C.
Speaker 5: Scott, who is a great actor.
Speaker 1: Played Patent, has a fantastic chin.
Speaker 5: And it's the Pheasant Valley Country Club, the.
Speaker 1: Pheasant Valley Country Club, and it becomes a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2: Seven.
Speaker 5: There was a lot going on in the world, obviously,
Speaker 5: but the New York Amsterdam News, which is the leading
Speaker 5: black newspaper of New York, has like five or six
Speaker 5: headline front page not sports pages, but front page stories
Speaker 5: on Peasant Valley Country Club Jackie Robinson's attempt to try
Speaker 5: and build this club.
Speaker 1: The main hurdle is finding a piece of land, and
Speaker 1: the Peasant Valley Group has its eye on two potential properties,
Speaker 1: both in upstate New York, both already golf courses and
Speaker 1: therefore already zoned as golf courses.
Speaker 5: But in both cases local residents and local zoning boards
Speaker 5: moved to block the sale or move to put in
Speaker 5: these new stringent regulations. Some of the newspaper articles have
Speaker 5: this list of extreme regulations to sort of rescind what
Speaker 5: you're allowed to do on that property and basically make
Speaker 5: it inhospitable. Local folks who block this are sort of
Speaker 5: insistent that race has nothing to do with it. We
Speaker 5: don't want too many big city folks coming up here, right,
Speaker 5: I don't want you know, too many people will come.
Speaker 1: And there's the noise factor.
Speaker 5: Noise in these things, and so they say, let's be
Speaker 5: too much noise. You know, they would use all these
Speaker 5: other reasons to block this once they found out that
Speaker 5: it was a black a group of black investors who
Speaker 5: are trying to purchase the property. It's really an example
Speaker 5: of de facto segregation, right where you could use all
Speaker 5: of these other ways to try and block integration without
Speaker 5: specifically talking about race.
Speaker 1: Robinson's group does try the legal route.
Speaker 5: The NAACP provides some support, so in both cases they
Speaker 5: try to file suits with the New York Commission on
Speaker 5: Human Rights. The state Commission on Human Rights.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, in nineteen sixty seven, Robinson's push for a
Speaker 1: race blind golfing country club just sort of peters out.
Speaker 5: Really, what begins to fail is that they begin to
Speaker 5: lose support. Investors who had been on board just sort
Speaker 5: of back outs and were no longer interested.
Speaker 1: And Robinson feels this as a kind of betrayal, so
Speaker 1: as he does, he writes an editorial where he says.
Speaker 5: Sort of bitterly that you know, people were fine and
Speaker 5: supportive and putting down money when I'm trying to integrate
Speaker 5: Major League Baseball. Why didn't they stick with me in
Speaker 5: this case? You know, why didn't they stick to stick
Speaker 5: this out fight this fight? And he says, you know,
Speaker 5: they weren't ready for that is what he writes, in
Speaker 5: the sense that you know, everyone was ready, including black Americans,
Speaker 5: were ready to support my fight in these other arenas,
Speaker 5: but this one people sort of abandoned me and reready.
Speaker 5: Does Robinson feel that way if you look at his biography,
Speaker 5: if you look at all of his op eds and
Speaker 5: his writings, rarely does he sort of say that that
Speaker 5: I really felt like my supporters actually didn't care enough
Speaker 5: or abandon me. He says that about the Pheasant Valley project,
Speaker 5: So I think it speaks a lot to just how
Speaker 5: big that barrier was in the world of country club golf.
Speaker 1: For once, Jackie Robinson finds himself without a team. Maybe
Speaker 1: one reason for that is that advocating for racial equality
Speaker 1: in country club golf puts him in a sort of
Speaker 1: no man's land. On the one hand, he's not going
Speaker 1: to get much support from the golf establishment. On the
Speaker 1: other the civil rights movement has bigger fish to fry.
Speaker 1: Remember this is the long hot summer of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: People are fighting and dying not only in Vietnam, but
Speaker 1: in the streets of American cities, and here's Jackie Robinson
Speaker 1: talking about golf. If he presses the issue too hard,
Speaker 1: he may seem out of touch, so he lets it
Speaker 1: go and the story disappears from the press. But looking back,
Speaker 1: I think we can see that the Pheasant Valley affair
Speaker 1: does represent part of what's going on in the mid
Speaker 1: to late sixties. By then, many of the official forms
Speaker 1: of segregation are gone, among them the color line in
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball and the Caucasian only clause in professional golf.
Speaker 1: But what remains is profound entrenched racial inequality, which manifests
Speaker 1: itself in many ways, even in sidelong glances at New
Speaker 1: York country clubs.
Speaker 5: It's now this new phase of are we accepted? Are
Speaker 5: we truly a part of the American community? Do we
Speaker 5: have full access? You know? Are there still these arenas
Speaker 5: in which socially, culturally, or otherwise, even if you sort
Speaker 5: of change the legal language, people are still exercising daily
Speaker 5: sort of prejudice against the black community.
Speaker 1: How do we fight that?
Speaker 5: How do we keep America focused on that that the
Speaker 5: change has to keep going. It's not enough to just stop.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: That's what Robinson's doing with Pheasant Valley, all these things
Speaker 5: he stands for. Many remember, many white Americans could look
Speaker 5: at that guy by the late sixties and says, well,
Speaker 5: we're all done. See Jackie Robinson, the great hero.
Speaker 2: I love him.
Speaker 5: I'll put a poster them on my wall, and I'm
Speaker 5: a white guy, and I'll tell my kids see the
Speaker 5: amazing things this nation accomplished. It's all done. The reality, right,
Speaker 5: as Robinson shows, is that it is not done. The
Speaker 5: fight goes on, and it might even be a tougher fight.
Speaker 1: Five years later, Jackie Robinson dies, he's only fifty three.
Speaker 1: I have to wonder what he would make of golf today.
Speaker 1: As of twenty ten, black people made up about thirteen
Speaker 1: percent of the US population, but only about five percent
Speaker 1: of US golfers. As of twenty eighteen, ninety one percent
Speaker 1: of the PGA of America's membership was white. As of today,
Speaker 1: there are fewer African American players on the PGA Tour
Speaker 1: than there were for much of the nineteen seventies. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's no shortage of good intentions in golf. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of youth programs and task forces that focus on
Speaker 1: getting minorities involved, but their effectiveness is debatable, and so,
Speaker 1: almost sixty years after the end of the Caucasian only clause,
Speaker 1: the integration of golf is still incomplete.
Speaker 4: That's what makes check.
Speaker 3: Why is golf the thinking man's game?
Speaker 4: Well, it's a different game than any other. I tell
Speaker 4: the funny thing about Jack, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: ever realize it. To hit one shot, you got to
Speaker 4: move that club twenty two feet. That is, from the
Speaker 4: moment it's on the ground to the top of a beckswing.
Speaker 4: When you hit right through it is twenty.
Speaker 2: Two feet.
Speaker 1: And could you tell me this is just a good
Speaker 1: detail because we're getting a little bit of the ambient
Speaker 1: noise around you. Where are you right now?
Speaker 6: Oh, of course I'm in the museum's collection storage area.
Speaker 6: So what you hear are probably a lot of other
Speaker 6: systems and our climate control that unfortunately or fortunately I
Speaker 6: can't turn off.
Speaker 1: Rosemary Marrivatt's at the USGA Museum. It's showing me what's
Speaker 1: left of Jackie Robinson's life in golf, his gear. So,
Speaker 1: and you've got and you've got the gloves on and everything.
Speaker 1: So you've ready to do. I'm ready to go first.
Speaker 1: She points her laptop camera at the golf bag.
Speaker 6: It's pretty pretty basic, sort of classic black leather golf bag.
Speaker 6: It has gold pipe into it. Wow, and it's a
Speaker 6: wonderful condition.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was gonna say that's like in flawless condition.
Speaker 1: Then the clubs, the clubs.
Speaker 6: Are also in beautiful condition. There, McGregor attorney.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're saying. Here is a per Simon driver. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm definitely not an expert on this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: McGregor attorney velocitized it says, and and yeah, it really
Speaker 1: is in kind of shining perfect condition.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 6: And if you can see there the grip that seems
Speaker 6: experience there, it's I'm not.
Speaker 1: Sure if you caught that. Rosemary said, the grip has
Speaker 1: seen some experience and has been loved, And that's the
Speaker 1: key detail for me. Oddly enough, I find myself so
Speaker 1: moved by that because it gives me the sudden sense
Speaker 1: of Jackie Robinson as a person. I'm accustomed to thinking
Speaker 1: of him as an icon, a legend larger than life,
Speaker 1: but now I'm seeing him as a man who played
Speaker 1: enough golf to wear down his grips, but took impeccable
Speaker 1: care of his clubs, took pride in them, a man
Speaker 1: who really loved golf and maybe loved it more than
Speaker 1: it loved him.
Speaker 6: While he had opportunities to play with celebrity friends or
Speaker 6: other people that he befriended that were members at certain clubs,
Speaker 6: he himself couldn't pursue membership. He wouldn't be considered. It
Speaker 6: didn't really matter. And if it didn't matter for someone
Speaker 6: like Jackie Robinson, it certainly wasn't going to matter for
Speaker 6: the typical African American golfer that was just trying to
Speaker 6: play a little golf, you know, and so how terrible
Speaker 6: that there was absolutely nothing that anyone could do to
Speaker 6: prove themselves worthy in certain cases. So to me, that's
Speaker 6: just the saddest thing, the lost opportunities.
Speaker 5: His life in golf is not nearly as sort of
Speaker 5: triumphal as his life in baseball and anything else. And
Speaker 5: so it's always fascinating people talk about the Jackie Robinson
Speaker 5: of God. You always get the Charlie Soffers, the Jackie
Speaker 5: Robinson of golf.
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods, when he wins the Masters in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: becomes the new Jackie Robinson of.
Speaker 5: Golf, says Nike and everybody else.
Speaker 1: Right in seven years before that, when Augusta National invites
Speaker 1: Ron Townsend to be its first black member, New.
Speaker 5: York Times says, he's the Jackie Robinson of country club golf.
Speaker 5: What's so interesting about all this is that there is
Speaker 5: no Jackie Robinson of golf other than Jackie Robinson. Right,
Speaker 5: he is the Jackie Robinson of golf because his story
Speaker 5: is so unique and nuanced and has sort of the
Speaker 5: struggle to fight some victories but also some defeats. That
Speaker 5: that's the real story of golf integration. Then you don't
Speaker 5: have to look at anyone else other than Robinson himself.
Speaker 3: Very true. Well, Tommy, I just want to say thank
Speaker 3: you ever so much.
Speaker 4: Jike, been a great pleasure to meet you.
Speaker 3: Well that just about does it for now, fans, see
Speaker 3: you soon.
Speaker 1: This was the ninth episode of Friday Stories. It was
Speaker 1: produced and hosted by me Garrett Morrison, with editing and
Speaker 1: engineering by Jay Eric and extra assistance from Jay Offishal
Speaker 1: many thanks to our guests Marvin Dawkins and Lane Dimas,
Speaker 1: and of course to Rosemary Erav's and the whole team
Speaker 1: at the USGA Museum. This episode was actually their idea.
Speaker 1: One more thing. If you stick around until after this
Speaker 1: music fades out, you'll hear about what Rosemary calls a
Speaker 1: history mystery, and maybe you'll be able to help her
Speaker 1: solve it. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: So what I wanted to show you bring news closer
Speaker 6: are the headcovers. So we have a one, two, three
Speaker 6: and four wood and if you can see that.
Speaker 2: So he had.
Speaker 6: Or someone had on his behalf embroidered a small two.
Speaker 6: Obviously the small two on the forewood head cover is
Speaker 6: a nod to number forty two. But we still don't
Speaker 6: know the two, and the three the seemingly twenty two
Speaker 6: and thirty two are supposed to mean.
Speaker 1: So basically, each head cover has the wood number one, two, three,
Speaker 1: and four, and then on the two, three, and four
Speaker 1: next to each number is a small two.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's been embroidered onto it as well. And you know,
Speaker 6: we've done some research on you know, past teams that
Speaker 6: he's played on in other sports, even to see if
Speaker 6: maybe there were some numbers that matched up and it
Speaker 6: was you know, a way of him paying tribute to
Speaker 6: these things. And we've been able to make any kind
Speaker 6: of connections. So this is a little bit of a
Speaker 6: history mystery and maybe some of your listeners will have
Speaker 6: some suggestions or some information for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, put it out to the hive mind exactly