History, Challenge Abundant at Gillespie Park

 By NAT WALKER

 After Gillespie Park Golf Course in Greensboro reopened in late 1962 it garnered this reputation, you see. Golfers from all over would show up – some with a few hundred dollars and others with a few thousand.

The hustlers came from places like the Washington/Baltimore area, Myrtle Beach and around the state. They knew they could get a game with some of the local golfers, mostly black, who frequented the municipal golf course bounded by Florida Street, Randolph Avenue and Asheboro Street (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive).

“Very few people came in here who didn’t get played,” is how Murphy Street put it. And quite often the C notes they brought ended up having a positive impact on Greensboro’s economy. 

Tricky greens and a scarcity of flat lies on the fairways – not to mention the ever-present danger posed by South Buffalo Creek that splits Gillespie Park – gave players with local knowledge an edge. Plus, as the cliché says, they had game. Murphy Street had more “game” than most, but more on that later.

What most of the Gillespie Park crowd didn’t have were fat wallets, but their entrepreneurial natures always saved the day. 

“We didn’t have much money so we would split up the bet,” Street said. Say, for example, if the game was for $1,000 it might mean that four of the Gillespie Park denizens would toss in $250 each. “That way, if we lost nobody would get hurt too bad. If we won, four guys would double their money and be real happy.”

Bill Harvey, one of the best amateurs ever to play the game with more than 350 tournament wins, including the North and South and the Carolinas Amateur three times, said some of the bigger games came during the two or three days following the Gate City Open in the 1980s.

Some of the pros, including Joe Johnson of Winston-Salem, R.C. Owens – who played cross-handed –  and Jim Black of Charlotte would take on the likes of Harvey, Jay Hoover and Bruce Pearson. “We would just pass the money (he wouldn’t say how much) back and forth so in the end nobody came out ahead. But we had some good games,” Harvey said. “I never won anything, but I loved the action,” he said, perhaps tongue in cheek.

Gone are the days when “big” money was won and lost at Gillespie Park. In the late 1980s city officials felt the need to change the image of the course, especially after Green Valley Golf Course in Greensboro closed in 1986 and Gillespie started to get more play from throughout the community. 

Today a friendly $5 Nassau is about as big as it gets. 

Those “private” enterprise episodes were spread by word of mouth and represented one side of Gillespie Park’s renown past. Its public fame stemmed from being the home of the Gate City Open – one of the tournaments on what was known as the Chitlin’ Circuit, a series of tournaments that included venues in Maryland, New Jersey, Florida, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta as well as Asheville and Winston Lake in Winston-Salem. 

Street was a mainstay on the circuit throughout most of the 1960s and ‘70s when African-Americans on the PGA Tour were a rarity. Street is a self-taught golfer who learned the finer points of the game as a kid caddying for pros at the then Greater Greensboro Open and at Starmount and Sedgefield Country clubs and Gillespie Park.

He competed in 15 Gate City Opens from 1963 to the late ‘70s, playing against the likes of Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Calvin Peete, the Thorpe brothers from around Roxboro (Jim, Chuck, Bill, Chester and Elbert), Teddy Rhodes, Nick Gordon and Joe Johnson of Winston-Salem.

One of Street’s greatest memories is winning the 1968 Gate City Open at Gillespie Park, becoming the only native of Greensboro to win the tournament. What made it even sweeter was that he beat Charlotte’s trash-talking Jim Black, whom he had earlier lost to in Atlanta by one stroke after bogeying the final two holes of the tournament. Black teased Street unmercifully for blowing a two-stroke lead.

Street had a four-stroke lead entering the final round of the 1968 Gate City Open. He carded a 40 on the front nine, allowing Black to catch up when he shot a 36. Black was one group ahead, talking trash to Street at every opportunity. Street edged to a one-stroke lead, only to see Black hit it stiff on No. 18 for an easy birdie putt.

“Now, I’ve got to make a three on 18 to win,” Street recalled. “After my drive I hit a cut 7 iron for an 8-to-12 footer. Black is waiting for me at the green, knowing he’s going to get into a playoff. I made the putt. I never was a trash talker, but I pointed to Jim and said, ‘I got you’.”

Street’s win at Gillespie Park was special for African- American golf fans in Greensboro, not only because a native son of quiet dignity had prevailed but also because it helped affirm the correctness of the struggle that allowed blacks to play at the once all-white facility.

Gillespie Park was built as a nine-hole golf course in the 1930s with funds mainly from the federal Works Progress Administration, a Franklin D. Roosevelt administration program launched to try to get the country out of economic depression. The city of Greensboro added another nine holes in the late '40s.

Through various artifices, blacks were prohibited from playing the municipal course. Greensboro civil rights leader and dentist Dr. George Simkins and five other blacks went to Gillespie Park on Dec. 7, 1955 – inspired by Rosa Parks’ refusal to go to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala., a few days earlier. They paid the greens fee and went out to play over the objections of the staff. 

The six were arrested and charged with trespassing on a “private” golf course. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and ultimately the right of African Americans to play on “public” golf courses was affirmed.

Two weeks before Gillespie would be integrated, the clubhouse mysteriously burned down and the city condemned the property and closed the golf course. Part of the abandoned golf course was developed to include Gillespie School on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and the Greensboro City Service Center on Randolph Street, as well as other businesses.

When Gillespie Park reopened in 1962 it was as a nine-hole course with two distinctive sets of tees on each hole.  Most of its clientele then were African-Americans.

Murphy Street remembers the old 18-hole golf course from his caddying days before Gillespie was shut down and development took away some of the property.  

Greensboro’s City Service Center on Randolph Street had a major impact on the original front side.  All of holes 2 and 3 and parts of holes 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 were lost.  Hole No. 1 remains today as No. 7/16. Original hole 9 today is No. 2/11.

On the original back nine, holes 10, 12, 13 and 14 are gone, except hole 14 is part of the current driving range. Two-thirds of original No. 1 is current hole 7/16.  Half of original hole 6 is current No. 8/17. Original hole 16 survives as current 5/14. Current No. 6/15 and No. 9/18 are entirely new holes.

Even though Gillespie Park is a nine-hole course today, it has the feel of 18 holes because a golfer has a different perspective of the fairways as he tees off during his second nine. No. 3 plays as a par-5 the first round and a par-4 the second round. No. 4 plays as a par-3 the first round and a par-4 the second round.

The golf course is no pushover, said Bob Brooks, head professional. It plays 6,492 yards using both sets of back tees and gives a golfer all he wants in length and shot making, he said.

“Nobody shoots the lights out here, not even when the Gate City open was played here,” Brooks added. “If you miss a shot to the green, you’d better miss it on the correct side or you’re looking at bogey or worse and you’ll find yourself ruining what might have been a good scoring round.”

Gillespie Park offers many challenges to golfers, and it has withstood many challenges during its long history. In addition to being a golf course you owe it to yourself to play, Gillespie Park stands as a reminder of both the good and bad of our society and gives hope for the future. It began as a segregated city-owned facility that was abandoned to keep blacks from playing. When it was rebuilt and opened to blacks it was shunned by most whites in the community. 

Now, with the passage of time and perhaps more enlightened attitudes, blacks and whites play golf in harmony at Gillespie Park in almost equal numbers. 

That’s a bet the hustlers from earlier times probably would have lost.