Two Thursdays, 46 years apart, did not entirely define Lee Elder but they served as appropriate bookends to a life and a career that was built around golf but reached far beyond the game.
Elder, the first Black man to play in the Masters, died Sunday. He was 87 years old.
Long before he stepped to Augusta National’s first tee on Thursday, April 10, 1975, breaking the color barrier at the Masters, Elder had proven himself as a golfer. But his success, the tournament’s history and a changing society made Elder – 40 years old at the time – an enormous figure in the evolution of professional golf in the United States.
Last April, 46 years later, Elder sat in a golf cart on that same first tee, an oxygen tank nearby, joining Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as an honorary starter for the Masters.
It was a moment of immense significance, an acknowledgement of what Elder meant not just to the Masters which has grappled with discrimination challenges through the years but to the game itself.
In 1975, Elder stood on the first tee fighting his nerves as what felt like the world watched him swat a tee shot across the valley and up the hill on Augusta National’s opening hole. As Elder played the first hole, the sun came out from behind a deck of low clouds.
This past April, Elder sat quietly, holding a driver he would not swing, his dignity and grace glowing like a midday sun.
Nicklaus and Player were there as they have been for years, celebrating their victories and their outsized roles in the story of the Masters. Elder was there because of the color of his skin and because of what he represented and how he changed the Masters.
Elder belonged there.
He was an old man in declining health, an oxygen tube strapped around his face, but Elder was like royalty.
He fought his own doubts, having grown up outside the game’s mainstream but once he learned he was good enough to go head to head with the best … he won four times on the PGA Tour and nine times on the PGA Tour Champions.
“It is certainly something that I will cherish for the rest of my life because I have loved coming to Augusta National and playing here the times that I have played here with many of my friends that are members here, and at the request and invitation of Buzzy Johnson, who has also had me,” Elder said after opening ceremony.
“But to me, my heart is very soft this morning, not heavy soft, soft because of the wonderful things that I have encountered since arriving here on Monday and being able to see some of the great friends that I have made over the past years, especially like these two gentlemen that are here.
“We have competed against each other, and we have certainly enjoyed a lot of pleasant moments. I just want to say thank you so very much to have me here. It’s a great honor, and I cherish it very much, and I will always cherish it, and I want to thank the chairman for extending me this great privilege.”
Elder spent much of his prime playing away from the emerging glamor of the PGA Tour, honing his craft on the United Golfers Association, a professional tour for Black players who initially were denied access to PGA Tour events and later struggled to qualify.
In that way, he was hardly different than Teddy Rhodes, Charlie Sifford and Bill Spiller before him. It was Elder, though, who made it to the Masters.
Born near Dallas and raised in Los Angeles, Elder learned to play in money games like many of his contemporaries before professional golf became as lucrative as it eventually did. He told stories of teaming with the legendary Titanic Thompson, sometimes joining the maintenance crew where Thompson found his targets, posing as a course worker who was picked at random to team with the famous gambler.
It was one thing to dominate the UGA, winning 18 of 22 events in one stretch. It was something else to play his way onto the PGA Tour and find success there.
Elder did it, playing with a game that had more substance than style. He fought his own doubts, having grown up outside the game’s mainstream but once he learned he was good enough to go head to head with the best – he went five extra holes before losing a playoff to Jack Nicklaus in the 1968 American Golf Classic at Firestone – he won four times on the PGA Tour and nine times on the PGA Tour Champions.
After winning the 1974 Monsanto Open, Elder received a call the following morning from Augusta National chairman Clifford Roberts offering him an invitation to play in the Masters. He would be hounded by death threats – he was taken by police car rather than golf cart to the clubhouse immediately after winning the Monsanto Open – but Elder was resolute that he belonged.
When Elder was asked in April to reflect on his Augusta experience in 1975, he didn’t talk about the venom directed at him.
“What I remember so much about my first visit here was the fact that every tee and every green that I walked on, I got tremendous ovations. I think when you receive something like that, it helps to settle down, because I’ll tell you, I was so nervous as we began play that it took me a few holes to kind of calm down,” said Elder, who missed the Masters cut in 1975.
“I think that on several occasions, as I thought about where I was at and where I had come from, was certainly something that was a reminder, a reminder of, 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. You don’t have to be worrying about carrying anyone on your shoulder. You’re there just on your own. This was a goal that you had set for yourself. You have achieved it, so now relax and play some golf and just enjoy the moment.”
Elder said more than once that he didn’t want to be remembered just for being the first Black to play in the Masters and he won’t be. He had a smile that could warm a room and a personality that drew people to him.
But Elder knew what he had done and what he represented. He said he held no grudge against Augusta National and embraced the club the way the Masters came to embrace him.
It’s what led Elder back to the first tee there in 1997. When Tiger Woods walked to the tee to begin the final round, leading by nine strokes and 18 holes from becoming the first player of color to win the Masters, Elder stood on a gentle slope under a tree behind the Augusta National clubhouse.
“I made history here and I came here today to see more history made,” Elder said that Sunday.
His eyes glistened as he watched Woods set off to change the Masters forever.
Elder knew the path.
He had walked it before.