With February being Black History Month I think it’s perfect occasion to explore a book I’ve had my eye on for some time. This month’s pick is:
The book’s description reads as follows:
Golfers talk a lot about “love of the game,” but the phrase acquires a whole new level of meaning when it’s used in the context of the first African Americans who tried to make careers for themselves on the links. No mere coffee-table book, this attractively illustrated and designed volume by veteran golf writer McDaniel (one of the first blacks to achieve prominence as a golf journalist) tells the fascinating and inspirational story of the first black golf pros in riveting detail and with quiet eloquence. The stories of Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder, the first black pros to crack professional golf’s color line, are here, but it is the less-familiar sagas of such equally talented pros as Bill Spiller and Teddy Rhodes, who were denied a chance to succeed on the tour, that are the most revealing. Equally fascinating are the accounts of African Americans John Shippen, who played in the U. S. Open in 1896, and Dr. George Grant, who invented the golf tee. An essential addition to golf literature and to the history of race relations. -Bill Ott
I’m looking forward to this and hope you enjoy as well.