Robert Lee Elder celebrated his 85thbirthday this week. Known as Lee, he was born in Dallas Texas in 1934 and he was the youngest of ten children.
When America joined the Second World War his father joined up. He didn’t have to, but he did because with twelve mouths to feed at home he needed the money.
Just after Lee turned nine years of age his father lost his life in Germany. If that wasn’t a big enough blow his mother passed away three months later.
By the age of 11, Elder found himself moving from one ghetto to another before eventually moving to Los Angeles, to live with his aunt Sarah. She had come to visit the family and went home with Lee, leaving his siblings to fend for themselves.
He was not a grade A student and frequently cut classes to work as a caddie. He spent two years at Manual Arts High School, but after that he dropped out.
Apart from earning money as a caddie Elder would do whatever he could around the golf course. He took jobs in pro shops and in the changing rooms. All the time he was watching, listening and learning about the game of golf from his customers.
At the age of 16 he played his first full round of 18 holes.
By now he had developed into a handy player, and to supplement his income he began to hustle customers. “I once shot 38 playing on one leg. Another time I shot 41 playing on my knees.”
The turning point for Elder came when one day he played a match with heavyweight boxer Joe Louis. This meeting led to Louis’s golf instructor, Ted Rhodes, taking Elder under his wing. Under his tutelage Elder was able fine tune his game, and began playing in tournaments. He was 18 when he met Rhodes but his admiration for the man is still as strong today as it was then.
In an interview with Golf World to mark his 85th birthday he said “I learned a lot by just watching Teddy. Only two men I was to see later compared to Teddy as a ball-striker: Ben Hogan, and Tommy Bolt in his prime. Teddy was good with every club in the bag, and he hit it flush every time. Only Hogan controlled the really small area through impact as well.”
In the same interview he stated, “In the early 1950s, through Teddy, I got to meet the great Jackie Robinson. When the Brooklyn Dodgers came through a town where Teddy and I were, we always got together. When you talk about pioneers, he’s at the top.”
In 1959 Elder was drafted into the US Military. He was lucky that his commanding officer was a keen golfer who allowed him the time to play golf.
In 1961 he was discharged from the army, and joined the United Golf Association Tour (UGA) which was for black players. He immediately found his form and won 18 out of 22 consecutive tournaments. However the prize money on this tour was far less than on the PGA Tour.
As he told Golf World “I made the cut at the ’66 U.S. Open, and it changed my outlook. One thing that inspired me was playing the first two rounds with a young man from San Francisco named Johnny Miller. He was 19 years old and a little green, but man, could he hit it. What impressed me was his confidence. He didn’t know the other players any more than I did, but he gave off this air like he belonged. I thought, I need to be more like that kid.”
By1967 Elder had raised enough money to pay for himself to attend qualifying school for the PGA Tour. He finished 9th out of a class of 122 and gained his tour card for 1968.
In his rookie year he had a memorable play-off loss to Jack Nicklaus at the American Golf Classic. Elder lost to Nicklaus on the fifth hole of sudden death.
In 1971 he bravely accepted a personal invitation from Gary Player to play in the South African PGA Championship in Johannesburg,. The event marked the first integrated tournament in the country’s history. Following extensive negotiations by Player the South African government agreed not to subject him or spectators to the usual segregation requirements.. It was a landmark moment for sport in South Africa, but sadly Apartheid would not end for another two decades.
In 1974, Elder secured his first win on the PGA Tour at the Monsanto Open. There must have been some satisfaction in that victory as in 1968 Elder and other black players on tour were forced to change in the parking lot because members of the club would not allow “Negroes” into their clubhouse.
That win made him big news. By his own admission he spent a great deal of time attending banquets, giving speeches, and playing exhibition matches. Hoping to cash in on his new found fame. However his weight ballooned by 55lbs or 25kgs
Despite what many have written, this win did not gain him automatic entry to the Masters Tournament in Augusta, the following year. He hoped that having also won the Nigerian Open he would receive an invitation, but when a congressman asked if that would be the case he was told “we offer exemptions only to foreign winners of the Nigerian Open.”
The invitation did eventually come and Elder accepted it. His appearance marked the first time that an African American had qualified for the Masters since the tournament began forty-one years earlier in 1934, the year of his birth.
He did not perform as well as many hoped, he missed the cut on day two. He told Golf World it was the weight gain, but there were other factors at play too. Leading up to the tournament, he received threatening hate mail. Genuinely fearing for his safety, he rented two houses in town and kept moving between the two. He also made sure that he was never alone.
Yet there were good and bad memories from that history-making appearance as he told Golf World.
Before the tournament has started he went with a party of 12 to eat at a restaurant and even though it was empty they were turned away. The story made the news and as a result Dr. Julius Scott, president of Paine College contacted him and offered for him to eat there for free.
Yet a lasting memory he explained came from the staff at Augusta.
“The display from the employees of Augusta National was especially moving. Most of the staff was black, and on Friday, they left their duties to line the 18th fairway as I walked toward the green. The other patrons cleared the way for them to come to the front, and they were instantly recognizable by their uniforms. This took planning on the part of the employees and moved me very deeply. I couldn’t hold back the tears. One club employee shouted in this booming voice that rose above the applause, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Elder!” Other employees, taking his cue, shouted the same thing. Of all the acknowledgements of what I had accomplished by getting there, this one meant the most.”
In 1979 he became the first African American to play in the Ryder Cup.
In 1984 at the age of 50, Elder joined the Senior PGA Tour. He finished his caree with four PGA Tour wins and eight senior PGA Tour Wins and won the Ryder Cup in 1979.
Back in 1974 Elder and his first wife, Rose Harper, set up the Lee Elder Scholarship Fund. This was developed to offer monetary aid to low-income young men and women seeking money for college. The couple later divorced and the settlement left him almost penniless.
However with his second wife as his manager and a passion and a dedication to the sport he loved he bounced back.
Few could have predicted that an orphan boy at the age of nine would go on to achieve so much and have such an impact breaking down barriers for generations to come. But Lee Elder did, and still inspires today as he did in his heyday.
Maybe his parents knew something when they christened him Robert Lee as it was the famed Confederate Leader who fought for the South in the Civil War who said “Nothing can produce a revolution except systematic success on our part.” Words that encapsulate Elder’s impact on the golfing world.
