Racism on the Golf Course?

I've talked about Jeffrey here several times. Ever since I began the process a few months ago to help him I've become more sensitive to possible racism issues. I attended the Undoing Racism Taskforce meeting here in Lufkin once and have just generally raised my antennae more on this issue. To say the process has been sobering is an under-statement.

A couple of incidents happened in the past month I wanted to share - both dealing with possible racism and both happened on a golf course, which is somewhat odd to me.

The first incident happened to me and a friend and I was ticked about it for several days. I'm not a great golfer - but I've played alot of golf - low-90's golfer - and this has never happened to me - not once.

I was playing with my friend James. James has only played a few rounds of golf, but he is picking it up fast - catching on very well. James is my friend who helped me with Jeffrey and James happens to be African American. I usually don't announce that, but it's needed information unfortunately.

I knew the golf on this day would be slow going because James is just catching on, but, due to rain, the course traffic was very light - so I knew was glad traffic would not be a problem. Plus, I'm overly sensitive to slow play because I hate getting held up - so I knew this could have been an issue with a newbie on the course that was packed. So, this was good. James started slowly, but was improving with each shot and we were actually doing fairly well on time. We teed off on hole 3, a par 3, and James found out he had lost a head cover, so we zipped back up no. 2 and found it in the fairway. We passed three guys moving to the 2nd green, one of which I knew to be a scratch golfer. So, I said -- we'll let those guys play through when they catch us.

Well lo' and behold James starts really striking the ball well. I continued to monitor the guys behind us and I saw the other two guys with the scratch golfer were both bad golfers - like pretty bad hackers. I noticed they weren't bumping up against us - and it was clear that was the reason - the other two golfers were about like James - maybe worse. On hole 7, a long par 4, James had a bad hole, and the guys behind us just started bumping up against us really pretty good for the first time. As we were putting out - they were waiting in the fairway - so we actually just picked up and went on to No. 8 - a long par 5. I said let's tee off and see where these guys are. We both smoked 225 yard tee shots right down the middle. I noticed they were just starting to putt - so I said let's keep trucking.

As we were driving down the fairway - a young employee in a cart zipped past us - u-turned and came back to us as we approached our balls in the fairway. He said --"hey, can you guys speed up or let the guys behind you play through". Sure I said, no prob. The three behind us walked up to the tee box - and I looked back, waived them through and then we pulled behind a tree. The employee was with us was looking kind of sheepish -- and that's when it hit me - and it hit James as well. Those guys had called the clubhouse and complained they couldn't play through us several minutes prior! It was at least a 4 or 5 minute drive from the clubhouse. I immediately got pissed off, and James said "man, that just is not right". I said "you are correct". The three guys came through - the scratch golfer - who is obviously the one that called, had outdriven me by about 15 yards. He approached my ball and I said "you're the one past me". He didn't say a word - no thanks, nothing. Well, this is a first for me in 25 years of golf. Unbelievable. What possessed this guy to call the clubhouse - and was it, could it have been racially motivated. I think it was. I think this guy was either a class A butthead, scared, or just downright didnt' like the fact that he was going to play golf behind an African American. I'm still ticked by this incident.

The second incident was relayed to me by Malcolm, another African American friend that works at a local bank. Malcolm called me into his office when I was making a delivery recently and we started chatting about golf. We started talking about various area courses and he said he was "finished" with one course in particular. I asked why. He said he and some friends arrived at the course to play at 5 pm one Sunday evening - and the gal working stated the green fee was $40/person. That immediately sounded high to me for this course - even for a weekend. I asked Malcolm if he inquired about a twilight rate. He said yes, he did ask about a later afternoon rate, but was re-buffed with "we did away with the twilight rate recently". Call me mis-directed, but I think this gal simply wanted to send a message to four African American men that they weren't welcomed on this course. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt she would have charged me $40 for the same round of golf at that time of the day.