What Golf's Race Problem Looks Like From the Inside

What Golf's Race Problem Looks Like From the Inside

The PGA of America hired Wendell Haskins to make golf "a game for all." Instead, he says his efforts were cut off and undermined.
 Barack Obama leaned over and gently fastened the blue ribbon around the 92-year-old man’s neck. This was November 2014, and Charlie Sifford, who was once denied the opportunity to compete on the tour of the Professional Golfers’ Association because of his skin color, was at the White House.

Alongside the family members and dignitaries in the East Room that day was a man named Wendell J. Haskins. This was the moment Haskins had been intent on making happen since he was hired earlier that year as the PGA of America’s new senior director of diversity. It was not easy: He had worked a connection with Alonzo Mourning, who he knew occasionally golfed with the president, asking the former NBA All-Star to plant the seed during a round with Obama. Haskins then spent months collecting dozens letters of support for Sifford from the likes of Arnold Palmer; Jim Brown; Samuel L. Jackson; South Carolina Rep. James E. Clyburn and 63 other bipartisan members of Congress; and Tiger Woods, who wrote that Sifford “helped pave the way for players like me.”

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