Overcoming segregation and bigotry, he opened the fairways for black golfers at Augusta. But 33 years later, even with the rise of Tiger Woods, racial tension can still rattle the game

In 1975 Elder walked Augusta like no other black man before him -- as a competitor. At 73, he's still keeping it in the fairway. Robert Beck/SI

By Damon Hack

Through the mist he appeared in a doorway of the Augusta National clubhouse, his forehead creased, his eyes heavy from haunted sleep. Out stepped Lee Elder, dressed in shades of green, carrying his thoughts into the moist Georgia morning. For months the hate mail had said he would never make it to this day in April 1975. Watch your step when you get to Augusta, other letter writers warned him. There will be blood.

To be safe, he had rented two houses in town and kept moving between them, the former golf-course hustler playing the odds. He made sure he had people around him when he ate his meals. He was as inconspicuous as a man whose face was all over the evening news could be.

Elder made his way to the 1st tee, where no black man had ever gone during Masters week without carrying a 50-pound bag and wearing a white coverall. Elder was there with a golf ball and a few tees. In front of thousands of eyes he reached down, stuck a peg in the soft soil and placed his ball on top of it. He took a deep breath. He told himself to relax. And then he prayed silently in front of his hushed audience: O Lord, please don't let me embarrass myself.

Thirty-three years later there is great anticipation focused on another black man teeing it up at Augusta, but it's less about race and sociology and more about winning the Grand Slam. Winner of seven of his last eight events worldwide, Tiger Woods arrives next week as the overwhelming favorite to win his fifth Masters and continue a run at immortality.

But even as Woods thrives as the No. 1 golfer and most popular athlete in the world, an entire sport riding his red shirttails, old racial tensions occasionally reverberate through the game. In the unique case of Augusta National, with its Old South heritage seemingly frozen in time -- a patrician and male white membership, aging blacks on the service staff and plantation-style buildings -- a sense of the segregated past still lingers beneath the din of back-nine Sunday roars.

When Elder's left-to-right tee shot touched down on Augusta National's 1st fairway, it broke one of the last racial barriers in sports. Yet it did not free him from his memories of black children blown up in church, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., cities set on fire. America was still grappling with integration, and Elder was in the middle of it.

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