Lee Elder, the first African-American to play in the Masters, a four-time PGA Tour winner and a Ryder Cup player, has passed away at the age of 87, according to the PGA Tour.
No immediate details were available about the cause or place of death. Elder had a home in West Palm Beach.
Elder grew up near Dallas, moved to Los Angeles after both of his parents died, and learned to play golf from legendary player and teacher Ted Rhodes. He also was befriended by world heavyweight boxing champion and avid golfer Joe Louis and went on to dominate the United Golf Association Tour — the only professional avenue at the time for Black golfers — and won 18 of 22 tournaments during one stretch.
Elder also toured with noted golf hustler Titanic Thompson and worked other side gigs on his own, such as playing an entire round standing on one leg when he hit.
Elder qualified for the PGA Tour in 1967 at the age of 33, lost to Jack NIcklaus in a playoff at Firestone and finished 45th on the money list as a rookie. But it took him eight more years to play at Augusta, qualifying by winning the 1974 Monsanto Open in Pensacola on an 18-foot birdie putt on the fourth playoff hole to beat Peter Oosterhuis.
A few years before that victory, Elder was not allowed to use the clubhouse at that tournament and changed his shoes each day in the parking lot.
“When I first qualified for the Tour, in 1967, I said I wanted to get that one thing that had not been accomplished out of the way. The Masters was the one tournament that hadn’t been integrated,” Elder once told Golfweek.
Elder played the Masters five times, making three cuts and tying for 17th in 1979. After his PGA Tour career, he carved out a solid second career on PGA Tour Champions, winning nine times.
His journey came full circle last April when Elder was invited to be an honorary starter for the 2021 Masters with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.
“Today Lee Elder will inspire us and make history once more,” Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said on the first tee. “Lee, you have the honors.”
Elder, who used oxygen to assist his breathing, had a full set of golf clubs at his disposal at the first tee box and used a driver for balance, but he was unfit to hit a shot. When he took a seat to another round of applause, he said, “That feels good.”
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said Elder’s accomplishments were “remarkable,” considering all he had to endure: discrimination at tournament sites, fans picking up his balls in the fairway and throwing it in the woods before he could get to it and more than 100 death threats the week of his first appearance in the Masters.
“To have the success he had, while paving the way for others to dream big and achieve, is a testament to the type of man he was and how much talent he possessed,” Monahan said in a statement. “The Tour is profoundly grateful for the career of Lee Elder, and we extend our sincere sympathies to his family.”
There has been a movement for Elder to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, primarily for his groundbreaking achievement of qualifying for the Masters. Elder was a frequent visitor to the Hall of Fame and played its courses often with his long-time friend Arthur Johnson, a Jacksonville resident who once caddied at Hyde Park at a time when African-Americans were allowed to play it only one day a week.
Elder became a mentor to Tiger Woods and got a speeding ticket for driving 85 mph on I-20 speeding from Atlanta to Augusta to be there for the final round of the 1997 Masters when Woods became the first African-American winner of the tournament.
“Things have gotten better,” Elder told the Tampa Bay Times in 2005 of watching Woods win that historic Masters, the first of his 15 major championships. “There is still a long way to go. But with Tiger doing what he’s doing, he will open a lot more doors. A lot more barriers will come down.”
golfweek.com contributed to this report.
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