Lee Elder

Robert Lee Elder was born on the fourteenth of July 1934 in Dallas, Texas, one of ten children of Charles and Almeta Elder. When Lee was nine years old, his father, a soldier, was killed in Germany during the Second World War; his mother died roughly three months later. Orphaned young, he was taken in by an aunt and moved to Los Angeles, where he left Manual Arts High School to caddie and haunt the pro shops and locker rooms in which he quietly taught himself the game.

Barred from the whites-only Professional Golfers' Association, Elder sharpened his craft on the United Golf Association tour for Black players, at one stretch winning eighteen of twenty-two events. He earned his PGA Tour card in 1967 and, in 1974, captured the Monsanto Open in a playoff — a victory that carried with it an invitation no Black man had ever received.

On the tenth of April 1975, amid death threats and immense pressure, Elder walked the fairways of Augusta National as the first African American to compete in the Masters Tournament. Though he missed the cut that week, the barrier was broken for all who followed. He would return to the Masters six times and, in 1979, became the first Black golfer to represent the United States in the Ryder Cup.

Across the PGA Tour and its senior circuit he claimed a dozen professional victories, and in 2019 he received the Bob Jones Award for sportsmanship. In 2021, the year of his passing on the twenty-eighth of November, Augusta honored him as an honorary starter. May the quiet courage of Lee Elder, who opened a door long held shut, be remembered with the dignity it earned.