Just Let Me Play: The Story Of Charlie Sifford, The First Black Pga Golfer

Just Let Me Play: The Story of Charlie Sifford, the First Black Pga Golfer

The first black golfer on the PGA tells of the consistent battles he has waged against bigotry in the exclusive world of golf and tells how his courage has opened the sport to a new generation of blacks.From Publishers Weekly"Bitter, ornery, angry" Sifford, writing with freelancer Gallo, here provides an unrelievedly depressing autobiography that, one hopes, will cause shame in certain quarters and inspiration in others. While the man who has been called--inaccurately, he says--the Jackie Robinson of pro golf was the first African American to be accepted into the PGA (in 1960), Sifford encountered as much racism after joining the tour as he had before: not from fellow players, who simply treated him as a challenging opponent, but from organizers of the tour and especially from sponsors of various events. Sifford notes that playing on the Senior and Super Senior Tours he has made more money than before, but he is extremely pessimistic about the future of blacks in the game. Yet there's a lesson to be learned from this model of justified righteousness: "anybody . . . who decided that I wasn't good enough or marketable enough to enter their golf tournament . . . I don't stay down. I fight back." Photos.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.