There are 95 golfers scheduled to tee-off today in the opening round of the 89th Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. Over half of the field, 48, are golfers from the United States.
None are Black.
A year ago, 89 golfers approached the first tee at the Masters, with the singular Black man being Tiger Woods. Since Lee Elder became the first Black golfer to compete in the Masters in 1975, Woods is the only one to have worn the symbolic championship green jacket. Of his 15 victories in the sport’s four major tournaments — the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and Open Championship, also known as the British Open — five have come at the Masters, his last in 2019.
Woods will not be in this year’s event as he underwent surgery last month to repair a torn left Achilles tendon sustained while training at home. Neither will Harold Varner III., one of the few other notable Black golfers who competes on the LIV Tour. The 34-year-old Varner III., from Akron, Ohio, who finished tied for 29th at the 2023 Masters, did not qualify for this year’s staging of the tournament.
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Woods’ historic 1997 Masters title at the age of 21 made him the first Black and youngest player ever to win the venerable tournament. It elevated him to one of the world’s most famous and recognizable people, as his multi-ethnic background and magnetic aura appealed to a vast and diverse global demographic.
Woods proclaimed himself to be “cablinasian,” a term he coined representing a mix of caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian — as the son of a Black father, the late Earl Woods, and Asian mother, Kultilda Woods, who was born in Thailand and passed away at the age of 80 this past February. Nonetheless, Tiger Woods was embraced by a large swath of the African diaspora as a Black man.
Millions lauded him as a trailblazer in the lineage of boxer Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, and baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier and is celebrated annually in this country on April 15 on the eponymous Jackie Robinson Day. Comparable to Johnson and Robinson, Woods’ emergence in the late 1990s as the greatest golfer on the planet was expected to be the catalyst of succeeding generations of Black golfers that would become fixtures in a sport predominated by whites since it originated in Scotland during the 15th century.
There was a palpable discovery of golf by Black men and women in countless urban and suburban communities across the United States and beyond as Woods’ remarkable achievements continued. But the so-called “Tiger Effect” never actually manifested into a lasting momentum. A range of factors have resulted in the stagnation — and some would argue regression — of Black participation and ascendance on the amateur and professional levels in golf.
A few barriers that come to mind are culture, cost and location. Unlike AAU basketball and youth football, there are relatively few golf programs in inner-city communities. The cost for equipment, lessons and course fees can be exorbitant and prohibitive. And access to golf courses are limited. Encouragingly, there are uplifting organizations such as the United Black Golfers Association based in Laurelton, Queens that admirably promote the sport and offer opportunities to dozens of youth and adults to engage in golf.
Charles Sifford became the first Black person to integrate the Professional Golfers Association of America, earning P.G.A membership in 1964 by fighting through the legal system in California with the state’s then attorney general, Stanley Mosk, to, in theory, end the exclusionary practices of the organization.
It was a seminal act. But 61 years later, Blacks remain underrepresented.