By Jay Allred
Oak Valley Golf Club in Advance as well as the six other golf courses owned by Carolinas Golf Group of Raleigh was purchased by the Cobblestone Golf Group. Bill "Goose" Munguia is the Managing Director of Cobblestone's Carolina and Virginia regions.
Munguia was most recently Cobblestone's senior operations director: transitions. He is a PGA Master Professional and was the recipient of the 1994 Bill Strausbaugh award as well as the 1986 PGA merchandiser of the year for "Daily Fee Facilities".
The Cobblestone Golf Group manages 42 private and daily-fee golf facilities throughout the United States. Its goal is to establish region-by-region clusters of courses marketed together to create golf's best known brands. The acquisition of the Carolinas Golf Group combines similar goals with the larger company.
Cobblestone is a division of Meditrust Companies (New York Stock Exchange: MT). Meditrust consists of over $7 billion in real estate assets, including 800 healthcare-, lodging-, and golf/entertainment-related facilities and employs more than 12,000 people.
New owners have purchased Lake Winds Golf Course in Rougemont, north of Durham. Don Mason sold the course to six area investors.
Area women golfers fared well in the U.S. Women's Amateur until they played eventual winner Grace Park. Brenda Corrie-Kuehn of Fletcher, N.C., held the lead in the match until Park threw up three birdies in the third round of match play and lost 1-up. In the semifinals High Point resident and UNC golfer Marcie Newton led Park and was once 3-up until the rains started. Newton held onto the lead after the turn; however, Park won five straight holes and beat Newton 2-and-1. Duke's Jenny Chuasiriporn was a bridesmaid in her second USGA event of the year when she met Park in the finals and lost 7 and 6. The 1999 U.S. Women's Amateur will be held at Biltmore Forest Country Club in Asheville.
Finley Golf Course closed in August for reconstruction. The venerable George Cobb layout served the Tar Heels for decades; however, times have changed and the course needed to change along with them. The new course will be rerouted and designed by Tom Fazio. One of the places you will find the Tar Heel golf team practicing will be at The Challenge in Graham. Also, that course serves as a practice course for Elon College. The course was selected this year as the third best public course in the state in 1998.
In June, Jennifer Sawyer and Paula Southwell purchased Ladies Day in Greensboro. The new owners were accountants by trade, however they longed to be in the retail business and being golfers made Ladies Day the perfect fit. Their grand opening was Aug. 8. The shop features golf and tennis attire for women. The shop has been restocked after the clearance sale by the Hunts in June. Neil and Kim Hunt, founders, decided to sell the store when Neil was offered a job at the prestigious Royal Oak Country Club in Titusville, Fla.
Stoney Creek Golf Club will begin offering individual, family and corporate memberships for 1999. The club is making the transition to a semi-private facility. Membership will include unlimited greens fees, advanced tee times, access to the member-only locker room in the new clubhouse and reduced cart fees. The course will continue to be open to public play, keeping the memberships at an affordable level.
Anne Marie Goslak of Cedar Pointe Golf Center placed in the money at the $70,000 Betty Puskar Morganton Futures Classic with a 3-day total of 224. Another former Wake Forest golfer, Laura Philo, is in fifth place in earnings on the Futures tour with $19,798.
Bill Thorpe of Roxboro, a member of the infamous Thorpe brothers, won the a Sunbelt Senior Professional Golf Tour event at Deer Track Golf Resort in Surfside, S.C. Harold Thomas of Danville continues his success on the tour, placing in the money at nearly every event.
Kent Shelton has taken the first-assistant position at Hound Ears Golf Club. For Shelton it is a return to the Boone area where he attended college and played on the golf team. Shelton leaves his position as tournament director at Tanglewood Park.
For people involved in the golf industry, Hotel and Club Associates will host a seminar for course owners, professionals, developers, investors and banking lenders. The seminar will be held at Pine Needles Resort in Southern Pines on Oct. 26. Two of the confirmed speakers are golf marketer Robert Schulman and architect Bill Amick. For more information on attending the conference call Gayle Price at 336-379-1400.
The Lowes Foods Golf Tournament donated $140,000 in tournament proceeds to the Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina. Over 520 golfers participated in the tournament on Aug. 11.
Hickory Hill Country Club will host a Captain's Choice golf tournament with Senior PGA Tour caddies from the Vantage Championship, benefiting the Davie County Senior Center on Sept. 30. The format of the tournament will be made up of a Senior Tour caddie and five amateurs per team. Cost is $100 per person. Contact Joan Carter at the Mocksville Chamber of Commerce at 336-751-3304.
Joe Gay has taken the director of golf position at Tobacco Road G.C. in Sanford. Tobacco Road is the new Mike Stranz-designed golf course expected to open late this year or early 1999.
John Miller of Winston-Salem has been promoted to district manager for Carolina Custom Golf. He will be based in Charlotte.
A PGA TOUR store has opened at the Piedmont Triad International Airport. The stores are licensed by the PGA Tour and carry such items as shirts and hats from most of the PGA Tour stops. They have a wide variety of golf books and videos as well. The store is located on the upper level of the airport across from the airline ticket counters between the two concourses.
In Memoriam
PGA life member Harold Alderson of Chester, S.C, passed away on July 16 at the age of 78. From the late '60s to mid '70s he worked at Croasdaile Country Club in Durham. Afterward he worked at the Leroy Springs Company, which owned and operated Fort Mill G.C, Lancaster G.C. and Chester G.C. in South Carolina.
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By Howard Ward
Robert Kulp from Winston-Salem shot a final-round 70 for 54-hole 214 total to win the Open Division of the Men's North and South Senior Championship at Pinehurst Country Club.
Randy Reifers finished with a 73 and a 219 for second place, while Jerry Greenburn was third at 221 and Benny Dean fourth at 224. Finishing at 225 were Michael Garber and Deane Hundley III. Bick Long Jr. was at 229.
Richard Chenoweth shot 225 to win the Over-60 Division, while Jerry Smith was second with 226 and Bob McQueen third with 228. Billy Houck and Bill Holliday were at 232.
Sheila Hopkins won the Women's Division with 248, followed by Barbara Vandeweghe at 252, Linda Marsh 255, Erica Overholser 262 and Joan Lins 263.
Other area scores included Mabel McDuffie at 272, Joyce Koury and Sharon McCauley at 278, Joanne Ward 282, Jane White 288, Elaine Knerr 301 and Anne Amspoker 307.
Construction work has started on the troublesome Pinehurst traffic circle. With traffic constantly backing up at the historic circle where highways 2, 15-501 and 211 merge, it was evident something had to be done before the 1999 U.S. Open, which will be played at Pinehurst Country Club's No. 2 Course.
It will be several months before the work is completed, but it's scheduled to be done well before the Open crowd hits the area.
The dispute between ClubCorp and the Japanese owners of Pinewild Country Club continues to be a hot topic. Both sides claim to have been wronged and the courts are apparently going to have to decide who's right.
The latest move was by ClubCorp, which filed a libel suit and had a judge issue a gag order in the case.
Seven Lakes Country Club, which recently completed a $440,000 renovation of its dining area, has named the new private meeting room after course designer Peter Tufts.
Len Barnard, co-chairman of the House Committee, said the room had previously been called "the Meeting Room," but he felt it needed a formal name.
The committee held a contest among club members to choose the name and more than 100 were submitted, with Tufts appearing most.
Judy Eilert, who was the first to submit Tufts' name, won a gift certificate for two free meals in the new dining room.
Tufts, the great-grandson of Pinehurst founder James Tufts and a member of the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame, will be honored by a brass plaque placed at the entrance to the room.
The Resorts of Pinehurst Inc. has won a court ruling that says Pinehurst National and Pinehurst Plantation must stop using Pinehurst in their names.
Pinehurst Resorts registered federal service marks in 1990 on the word "Pinehurst" with respect to resorts, golfing and related services.
Pinehurst Plantation, designed by Arnold Palmer, and Pinehurst Plantation, designed by Jack Nicklaus, are neighboring facilities located between Highway 15-501 and Midland Road.
The court ruled that Pinehurst Resorts had presented convincing evidence that the name Pinehurst has been used in connection with Donald Ross golf courses since the turn of the century, particularly the famed No. 2 Course, and that the name conveys more than a geographic designation.
Chuck Latham, a senior professional golfer on the Triangle and Sunbelt Tours, has founded the Sandhills Amateur Golf Tour. The concept offers better amateurs an arena in which they don't have to compete with golfers who show high handicaps and shoot low scores.
There will be no handicaps used and no flighting of the field in Latham's brave new world. Open players will play from the championship tees and seniors (60 and over) will play from the next forward tees. Entry fees range from $60 to $75 per event. Prizes will consist of gift certificates from the host golf shops. An optional skins contest for birdies and eagles will also be conducted.
The tournaments are one-day events and the first one was held at The Bayonet at Puppy Creek in Hoke County. Others were scheduled for King's Grant in Fayetteville and Woodlake in Vass.
For information, call Latham at 910-678-9039, or e-mail SAmGolfT@aol.com
Wynn Solle rolled in a 25-foot putt on the 20th hole to win the Moore County Amateur Championship over Steve Lassiter in a dramatic finals match played at Little River Golf Club Aug. 8.
Lassiter, a 34-year-old schoolteacher, had struggled early in the match, but he drew even with a par on No. 8. From there, neither player made a bogey over the final 12 holes.
Solle, a 41-year-old Maryland transplant who is semi-retired, played the 20 holes even-par. Lasssiter, who had an early double bogey, finished 3-over.
Solle took the lead with a 6-foot birdie putt on the 12th hole, but Lassiter leveled the match with a daring birdie on the par-5 17th. He went for the green in two on the 565-yard dogleg, hitting a 5-wood to within 16-feet of the cup. He two-putted for the birdie.
Solle's winning putt was unexpected. His tee shot on the second playoff hole, a 167-yard par-3, came to rest against the fringe. After Lassiter had rolled his putt close, Solle struck his 25-footer a little too firmly and watched as it hit the back of the cup, bounced up, then went in for the win.
"My only thought was that I had hit it too hard," Solle said. "If it hadn't gone in, it would have gone four or five feet past the hole."
By finishing second, Lassiter made it a family affair. His father, Glenn, was runner-up in the Senior Division, losing to Deane Hundley.
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By Mark Cartner
In The Beginning
The schematic rolled out on the hardwood table in front of us in Bob Whaling's dignified but cozy Reynolda Village suite was a copy-the original rested peacefully back in Richard Murdoch's office.
"Too old and fragile," says Whaling of the 88-year-old plans titled Golf Links, Road, and Water-Works for Mrs. R.J. Reynolds' Farm. "Afraid I couldn't get it here in one piece."
The 1910 plans drawn by a civil engineer named J. N. Ambler mapped out a six-hole golf course on Reynolda's front lawn.
"That's not right," says Stub Sapp. "There were nine holes."
Leaning over the table, our three heads draw closer together as Whaling points to various sketches that were obviously added to the original plans-added perhaps (no one knows for sure) by Robert C. Conrad, the estate's horticulturist at the time.
"Here's what I think are the actual holes," says Whaling, tracing the plan's faint lines with the tip of his 75-year-old index finger. "Yeah, I think you're right," says Stub.
And he should know.
The 70-year-old retired senior technical writer from AT&T grew up on the Reynolda estate and learned to play golf on the old front lawn course. His daddy was a landscape gardener for the Reynolds family.
The two old friends continue to trace the plans-and their considerable memories-until each is satisfied that the "old course" has been properly rediscovered. Stub leads the way, as Bob's recollections have faded. "I only caddied there a couple of times," remembers Whaling, himself a retired AON Insurance executive and the son of a former RJR executive.
Within minutes the three of us are seated snugly in the cab of Stub's white '98 Dodge pickup about to take an unauthorized tour of Reynolda's expansive front lawn which, until 1939, served as a golf course.
"Now right through there is where they parked their cars," says Stub pointing past Bob out the passenger side window. "They would walk out through that path and right here was the first tee."
Stub (his given name is Oliver, but nobody calls him that) eases his Dodge Ram onto what was the first fairway, (but is now just a field parched by a midsummer heat wave) heads southeast, and begins a meticulous tour around the former nine-hole, sand-greens course that marks the beginning of the Reynoldses' long association with golf.
To the ignorant eye the field is just that-a field. But with Stub carefully retracing the steps of his childhood, the ghost of a golf course long since dead rises up in front of us. Though some of the holes are overgrown with scrub brush, most remain. In fact, there are more than a couple of suspiciously flat, round patches of ground which serve as physical evidence of the course that was.
By 10:45 am, our morning together is over. Stub drops me off at my truck as he and Bob head off to reminisce about younger golf swings and lower scores over an early lunch.
My erudition of the synchronous worlds of golf and the Reynoldses had just begun.
Early Involvement
In 1913 R.J.'s brother, William Neal Reynolds, became the first president of Forsyth Country Club. Mr. Will commissioned the construction of a nine-hole course (though the designer remains a mystery) and Winston-Salem's first golf and country club was up and running. That course survived all of eight years until 1921 when famed architect Donald Ross was brought in to build a new 18-hole course.
It should also be noted that when the club fell on hard times during the Depression, it was Dick Reynolds ("old" R.J.'s son) who pumped life-giving money back into his uncle's club.
Apparently the golfing lifestyle suited Mr. Will, because just a few years later he was at it again.
If you head northwest out of Winston-Salem on Highway 67 and make the appropriate turns along the way, in about an hour you'll arrive at a mountain retreat called Roaring Gap. It was here in 1925 that Mr. Will founded his second golf and country club named, appropriately, Roaring Gap.
And that course's designer? None other than Donald Ross.
By the late 1930s Forsyth Country Club was overcrowded and other Reynolds family members were testing positive for the golf bug that coursed through Mr. Will's veins.
In 1939 Mary Reynolds Babcock and her husband Charles donated the land and the money to start a new club named Old Town-adjacent to the Reynolda estate. They brought with them 100 members from Forsyth Country Club and charged Old Town's charter members the exorbitant fee of $1 per year. A few years later when Mary and Charles brought Wake Forest College to Winston-Salem, students and faculty at the school were offered the same privilege of playing the course for just $1. However, that offer (to Wake Forest) was rescinded after 10 years due to the inevitable congestion resulting from such a bargain rate-although the course remains open to this day for the Demon Deacon golf teams. Following the death of Mary Reynolds Babcock, the $1 club membership fee was also discontinued.
Reynolds Goes Public
Dick Reynolds was a Democrat-and a politician.
Among his political hats he wore the crowns of DNC treasurer and mayor of Winston-Salem. So it seems logical that when it came time for the face of Reynolds' golf interests to turn an eye toward the public sector-Dick led the way.
On Jan. 16, 1939, the RJ Reynolds Family (Dick) offered 185 acres southeast of downtown Winston-Salem to the city for the development of a public park and golf course. Funds for the park's construction were made available by the Reynolds family and the Works Progress Administration.
The architect chosen to build the golf course was Dr. Alister Mackenzie's design partner, Perry Maxwell, who counts among his work greens renovations at both Augusta National and Pine Valley. In fact, it was Maxwell who also built the Old Town course in '39. His 18-hole design at Reynolds Park opened a year later, in 1940.
The park was significant in that for the first time the public had access to facilities, i.e., a clubhouse, swimming pool, tennis courts and golf course that had previously only been available to members of private clubs.
A few years later the Reynolds name would again be linked to a municipal golf course.
In June of 1952 a city-owned watershed was transformed into a public park and Winston Lake was born. A nine-hole golf course was added in 1956 and on May 31, 1962, a contract was signed with Ellis Maples to design and supervise the construction of nine additional holes for the course. Development funds were given by a handful of local corporate leaders including the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, Inc.
But an even greater contribution to the community was Tanglewood Park.
Most are familiar with the story of Kate and Mr. Will's generous donation of their 1,100 acre country estate on the Yadkin River to Forsyth County to use as a public park-so that won't be rehashed here.
Instead, let's focus on golf at the park.
The original 18-hole course opened in 1957, (Robert Trent Jones, famous for his "doctoring up" of U.S. Open courses, was the architect) and not long thereafter the Tanglewood trustees, headed by Bill Lybrook, began to investigate ways of bringing a major golf event to the park. Lybrook, an RJR employee, and his staff tried for a tournament in 1965 but agonizing litigation over whether the park would be desegregated in violation of Mr. and Mrs. W. N. Reynolds' will aborted those plans.
By 1970 the matter of the will was settled and Tanglewood again set its sights on a major golf tournament. And the target was the PGA Championship.
In 1971 Lybrook and his team traveled to Miami and made their formal pitch to the PGA. Ten minutes later they were given the 1974 Championship.
Also in 1971, Tanglewood hosted and R.J. Reynolds sponsored the Sectional Championship for the Carolinas PGA. It marked the beginning of a 24-year partnership between RJR and the Carolinas PGA that ended in 1995 amid the swirling controversies that have engulfed the tobacco industry. But during their run together, RJR sponsored the association's Player of the Year awards, Skins Matches and the aforementioned Sectional Championship.
But back to Tanglewood and the PGA.
Almost immediately after the course was awarded the '74 Championship, the local business community mobilized to plan the staging of the event. Robert Trent Jones was summoned to "beef up" the original 18. A new clubhouse was built, park roads repaved, underground telephone wires were installed linking the tees to one another-plus numerous of other improvements which left Tanglewood capable of hosting major golf events in the future.
The final price tag for the renovations exceeded $1 million (which was more than significant in the early '70s), and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation was there with an open checkbook.
RJR/Nabisco, Sports Marketing, and the Future
When the PGA pulled out of town after the '74 tournament, Tanglewood was left with two Robert Trent Jones golf courses (thanks in no small part to R.J. Reynolds) and R.J. Reynolds was nurturing an infant sports marketing division.
By the early 1980s, although the Reynolds company had remained active in its support of golf, the company's burgeoning sports marketing division had yet to get involved.
That changed in 1981 when the PGA Tour commissioner, Deane Beman, approached RJR about becoming a sponsor. RJR took the bait and began dotting tournament courses with Vantage scoreboards. The following year touring pros Buddy Gardener and Clarence Rose toted golf bags bearing the Vantage emblem.
But that was just the start.
In 1986, T. Wayne Robertson and his sports marketing staff were given the guardianship of a PGA Tour event in San Antonio, Texas. The Vantage Championship was formed along with the Vantage Cup-a year-long competition among the players that paid $500,000 to the winner.
Also in '86, the Vantage program was being operated alongside the Nabisco program which had come aboard a year earlier when the Nabisco and RJR companies merged. So by the mid-'80s the LPGA's Nabisco Dinah Shore and Planters Pat Bradly tournaments along with the PGA Tour's Nabisco Championship, Vantage Championship and Vantage Cup now all fell under the RJR/Nabisco umbrella (although the Dinah Shore was run out of Nabisco's New Jersey offices).
The following year, with antismoking sentiment growing, the PGA Tour decided that a tobacco company was no longer an attractive sponsor for the regular tour-but would make a nice fit for their rapidly growing senior tour where smoking was more accepted.
The Tour approached RJR Tobacco chairman Ed Horrigan and in 1987 the Nabisco and Vantage programs split-Nabisco's marketing for the LPGA and regular PGA tours was operated by Olmeyer Communications, while RJR Sports Marketing handled the Senior PGA Tour's Vantage campaign.
That year the Senior Tour's Vantage Championship debuted at Tanglewood Park. The tournament quickly became a major player on the Senior Tour and led to several renovations at the course including remodeling of the pro shop, clubhouse and all 18 greens (twice). And R.J. Reynolds paid the bill for all the work except the most recent 1996 greens renovation.
However, the 1987 arrangement lasted just one year. In 1988, RJR Sports Marketing was once again running both the Nabisco and Vantage PGA Tour programs.
The end of the '80s to the present has been a tumultuous time for the tobacco industry--and RJR in particular. The much-publicized leveraged buyout of RJR/Nabisco along with the public's continued distaste for tobacco has deposited an ominous cloud over the sports marketing department's continued relationship with golf.
In 1990 Robertson negotiated the buyout of RJR's sponsorship of the regular PGA Tour and in 1994 he did the same with the company's Senior PGA Tour contract-the only stipulation being that RJR would agree to continue sponsorship of the Senior Tour's Vantage Championship at Tanglewood through 2001.
When asked what would happen after the 2001 tournament, Vantage Tournament Director Rich Habegger said recently, "I don't know; I just don't know."
So, while it may be hard to imagine what RJR might be like without golf, it's even harder to imagine what golf would've been like without R.J. Reynolds.
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Reviewed by Alan Marshall
In The Holy Bible one generation begat another. As one generation arose, another passed away.
In the ancient game of golf it is the same, progenitor, offspring and the pattern then repeats. Allan Robertson then Tom Morris then Harry Vardon. Francis Ouimet followed by Bobby Jones. Ben Hogan then Jack Nicklaus. And now, Tiger Woods.
But before Tiger Woods there had to be Calvin Peete. And before Calvin Peete there was Lee Elder. And before Lee Elder there was Charlie Sifford.
And Teddy Rhodes and Bill Spiller, Howard Wheeler, Ann Gregory, Paris Brown, Althea Gibson and Renee Powell.
And before these and many others there were the first, the unknown unnamed black bound servants; slaves, who worked as caddies for the rich Scots-merchants who brought the ancient game with them more than 200 years ago to the shores of the New World, where it was first played at the South Carolina Golf Club in Charleston.
These caddies, without their masters' knowledge or permission, undoubtedly swung the clubs they carried, and with these forbidden swings became the first African American golfers.
Between them and today's superstar Tiger Woods, there is a history of a game and a people who were met with almost incomprehensible cruelty and resistance nearly every time they attempted to play. For black Americans, at almost every turn, America's fairways were forbidden places.
These "forbidden fairways" provide the title and the setting for Calvin Sinnette's first book, six years in the making, called Forbidden Fairways: African Americans and the Game of Golf.
The struggle to inhabit these forbidden fairways was enormous, and in it were the hopes and heartaches, joys and aspirations of a people who stood and fought and ultimately triumphed in their efforts to make golf a part of their lives and their lives a respectable part of the American experience.
The game of golf is best played in deep concentration, some would suggest, in a Zen-like state of poised relaxation with no distractions and without anger.
It is almost impossible to read Forbidden Fairways without stopping and closing the book from time to time to suppress the anger, the incredulity and, as in golf, to sigh with the frustration and pride that the experience elicits.
Forbidden Fairways is not just a historical account of the injustices and indignities heaped upon a race of people; it is also the story, played out in the face of almost overwhelming adversity, of their determination to play the game.
Open the book to nearly any page and you are almost invariably confronted with America's shameful treatment of a people. Then almost simultaneously you learn of the will of one man or woman who struggles with the shackles of the condition to prevail, in big and little ways, and move forward in life.
Few know, for instance, that the inventor of golf's first wooden tee was a black man. George Grant, a Harvard Dental School faculty member and practicing Boston dentist, received a patent for a wooden peg he invented to replace the tiny mound of pinched sand theretofore used to tee the ball.
Though Grant's approved patent application preceded by 25 years the white New Jersey golfer who gained recognition for his patented tee, the USGA did not acknowledge Grant's earlier invention until 1991.
Forbidden Fairways is also a history of the civil rights struggle as played out between aspiring black professional golfers and the USGA, the PGA, the LPGA and the various venues where tournaments for "Caucasian Only" were held.
Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1948. And World War II had seen the integration the U.S. Armed Forces. But big-time golf in America remained almost exclusively for "whites only."
A black tour emerged, and it spawned outstanding players like Eural Clark, Teddy Rhodes, Howard Wheeler and Bill Spiller. Celebrities like Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis, baseball star Jackie Robinson and singer and band leader Billy Eckstine, all avid golfers, offered financial support and enormous name recognition to the fledgling black tour.
But it was Bill Spiller, the angry activist, the outspoken advocate for African American golf, who finally opened the door to America's professional golf tour.
Given the opportunity, Spiller could play. He tied Ben Hogan's 68 for second place in the opening round of the 1948 Los Angeles Open. But he "hated prejudice with a passion" and was not afraid to fight when he felt it.
According to Sinnette, "he got into an ugly staring match with...Fred Astaire when the entertainer snubbed him...at the Bel Aire Country Club....(and) he challenged PGA president Horton Smith to a fistfight over an alleged remark made by Smith."
Forbidden Fairways is also the story of black recreational golfers-many of them military veterans of World Wars I and II-and their efforts to play courses supported by their tax dollars which, nevertheless, kept them away because of existing segregation laws.
The case of six black Greensboro golfers who were arrested and sentenced to 30 days in jail for attempting to play at Gillespie Park Golf Course is mentioned.
Given the scarcity of written records of the African American golfing experience in the mainstream white press, Sinnette had to look elsewhere for his information.
His research took him to the black press, which thrived on newspaper accounts of its people and their accomplishments. Publishers like The Chicago Defender, The African American, New Amsterdam News, Michigan Chronicle and Black Sports led the fight to get the word out to the black community about black golfers and how they played the game.
Behind-the-scenes reporters and sportswriters and columnists like Dan Burley, Maggie Hathaway, Franklin Lett, John Glover and Russ Cowans reported on a range of topics of interest to the black golfer, from public links run-of-the-mill golfers to black women golfers to young blacks playing for the first time. All of them supported the game. And some were outspokenly critical of members of their own race for not encouraging more young blacks to take up golf.
With the arrival of Tiger Woods on the world golf stage, it is safe to say that growing numbers of minority youngsters will play the game. Some will doubtless come to experience the difficulty of excelling at golf, but few will know the bigotry, snobbery, humiliation and hypocrisy that their forebears encountered when playing golf for African Americans was done on forbidden fairways.
Thank you, Calvin Sinnette, for this unique and fascinating historical document.
End of Article
By Bill Sugg
As unofficially announced in a February issue of the Winston-Salem Journal and repeated in a recent Carolina Golf-a tabloid published by the Journal-Wake Forest University is planning to build a championship golf course on Brookberry Farm, an estate west of Winston-Salem. It would be known as the Wake Forest Golf Club. It was reported that this 18-hole, 7,000-yard course could be completed by fall 1999. It would probably be designed by former Wake golfer Arnold Palmer's design firm. It would be a private course with play open to members but also for the use of the men's and women's golf teams from WFU. The Wake golf teams presently use the Haddock Golf Center on campus, and the Old Town Club-a private facility adjacent to campus.
But presently, according to Ron Wellman, director of athletics at Wake Forest, plans for the course have been put on hold. "We are still looking at it, we're still investigating, we're still working hard on it," he said. "We think it's going to happen. We're not discouraged by it, at all. The time table has been pushed back," he continued, "because there were a lot of issues that need to be resolved before we could go out and start marketing it. We just want to make sure everything is in its final form when we do market the course. We are still working hard on it and are excited about it." Wellman offered no date when the course might be officially announced.
Wherever they play, Wellman is positive about the golf prospects at Wake Forest. "Look for two great teams from Wake Forest golf," in the coming season, he said.
Alumni reception to be held
During homecoming weekend at Wake Forest, a alumni reception will be held at the Bridger Field House at Groves Stadium, on Friday, Oct. 2, from 6 to 8 pm. The event will salute the storied golf tradition at Wake Forest and the presentation of the Distinguished Alumni Award will be made. The program will be hosted by Jennifer Mills Headley ('84), anchor and commentator for the Golf Channel. Many golfing legends from Wake are expected to attend, including Lanny Wadkins ('72). Arnold Palmer ('51) was expected to attend, but medical treatment will probably keep him at home. Wellman indicated that this will be an informal evening and "a lot of fun." Cost will be $20. Call the Alumni Activities office to reserve your place: 336-758-5264.
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