Charlie Sifford Award carries extra meaning for Renee Powell

Renee Powell is a student of history, and one of her favorite books is a biography of Harriet Tubman, the former slave who made 13 trips on the Underground Railroad, guiding dozens of other enslaved people to freedom.

Tubman, who also worked as a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War and later as a crusader for women’s rights, provides inspiration for Powell every day.

“You read stories about people like that who've done things to make the world a better place, so people don't have to go through the same things and the same indignities,” Powell explains. “And I say this, that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.”

The late Charlie Sifford, a long-time friend of Powell and her family, had some of those very strong shoulders.

He learned to play golf as a caddie and went on to become the first African American member of the PGA TOUR in 1961. Along the way, Sifford endured death threats and discrimination, but he never capitulated, winning twice on TOUR, as well as the 1975 PGA Seniors Championship and the National Negro Open six times.

Powell has followed a similar path, turning pro in 1967 and becoming just the second Black woman to play the LPGA Tour. She, too, was resilient in the face of bigotry, despite finding hate mail in her locker and being refused service at restaurants. She retired in 1981 and has spent the rest of her life teaching others to play the game she loves so much.

So, when the World Golf Hall of Fame decided to create the Charlie Sifford Award presented by Southern Company to honor his legacy and groundbreaking achievements, the choice for the first recipient was obvious: Renee Powell. And Sifford’s historical – and personal – impact is not lost on her.

“I just love reading about people that have broken down barriers because it has always given me a sense of not giving up and overcoming challenges and obstacles,” she says. “So, I look at Charlie and in one respect of that person who has done that to get out there, to play that game of golf and not give up and then to continue to give back after he left the TOUR.

“And then I look at it in another light, and I say, it's somebody that I knew personally and just respected him in both of those different areas. … So, to receive (this award) means a lot because of knowing him from the public Charlie and knowing the private Charlie, and a personal family friend, it's very touching.”

Sifford’s son, Charles Jr., says his father – who would have turned 100 in June – would be happy to see Powell receive the inaugural award March 9 during the induction ceremony for the World Golf Hall of Fame.

“He didn't consider himself a civil rights leader,” Charles Sifford says. “All he wanted to do was play the game and he wanted to have minorities to have an equal chance to play the game. And by the fact that Renee and the future winners of the award are working towards that equality in the game of golf, I'm definitely sure he would be proud of that.”

Renee Powell first met Sifford and his son when she was 13 years old, and they’ve been close ever since. The elder Sifford was a good friend of her father – they were both veterans and keen golfers, although Bill Powell didn’t have the game to play professionally.

“They could relate to what they had to go through, being black men and wanting to play golf back in those days,” Charles Sifford says. “It was a bond between our families based on what both our families had to go through.”

What Bill Powell wanted to do was build a golf course where everyone would be welcomed like he had been when he played overseas while stationed in England. When he returned to the United States, though, most of the courses were segregated so he took matters into his own hands.

Denied GI Bill benefits due to his race, the elder Powell worked as a security guard to help fund his vision, which became Clearview Golf Club. With financial support from two local black doctors and his brother, Powell purchased a 78-acre dairy farm in East Canton, Ohio.

Bill Powell began work on the course in 1946 – a year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball – and opened nine holes two years later, the first in the United States to be designed, constructed, owned and operated by a black man. The club was expanded to 18 holes in 1978 and in 2001 the club was put on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Turns out, Renee Powell’s father, who died in 2009, had strong shoulders just like Sifford did. Years later, Powell drew strength from his determination and “clear view” when she endured bigotry and racism while playing the LPGA Tour.

“For a black man to build a golf course in the 1940s when they were still lynching black people in the South, how could I get discouraged?” she asks. “My dad despised segregation and racism. … Whether you're a woman or if you had green eyes or blue hair or whatever your religion was, it didn't matter.

“If you wanted to play the game of golf and you loved golf, then that's why he built the golf course.”

Renee Powell was born the same year her father started work on Clearview and by the time she was 3 he had made her a steel-shafted club with a wooden head. She likes to say that she learned to walk and talk and play golf at about the same time.

“I’ve always had a club in my hand, so it was more of a second nature to me,” Powell says.

Her talent was evident almost from the start. She won her division in the first tournament she entered at the age of 12 and soon was amassing trophies on a regular basis. She was the first African American to play in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Amateur. She went on to play at Ohio University and Ohio State, captaining the golf team at both schools.

Powell’s parents wanted to make sure their daughter was exposed to a variety of cultural experiences. They took her to see Dr. Martin Luther King speak, and she saw mime artist Marcel Marceau perform. She took ballet, played basketball and took archery classes.

But golf was in her blood. Powell was 12 when her parents took her to her first LPGA event in Alliance, Ohio. It was the first time she realized women could play professional golf and something that guided the early part of her career.

“I saw their bags with their names on them and I'm like, ‘Oh, wow,’” Powell remembers.

Marilynn Smith, a founding member of the LPGA who was the organization’s president at the time, noticed Powell in the gallery and waved to her. Powell implored her parents to take her back the next day, and the next.

“And at the end, Marilynn gave me a golf ball and asked for my address and at Christmas time sent me a Christmas card,” Powell says.

Powell turned pro in 1967, a few semesters shy of her degree in sociology. As was the case for her father and Sifford before her, though, real life was quite the education for Powell, who says her parents had tried to shield her from racism as she was growing up.

“There were a lot of different things that happened,” Powell says. “I don't talk about them all the time, but it's just a lot of unpleasantries that the other people that you're playing with and competing against don't have to go through. All they're focusing on is how I'm going to birdie No. 3 tomorrow or the eighth hole or whatever.

“And so, as a person of color, as a black person, I had to deal with all those indignities too.”

Powell found the first death threat in her locker when she was playing in Florida early during her rookie year. The note, as she recalls it, said “Dear n*****, If you want to live, then you better get out of her.”

Powell, who acknowledges that most weeks the only people of color she’d see were the caddies, went to the LPGA’s tournament director, Lenny Wirtz. She was 21 and scared. But he told her there was nothing he could do.

“And I thought, there's nothing he can do?” Powell says. “So, somebody's going to jump out from behind a tree and they're going to shoot me and kill me. And even though I've asked for help, there's nothing anybody can do.

Powell paused as she thought back to the frightening time in her life. “And Lenny was a good guy,” she says.

Overall, though, Powell says the LPGA and its players – many of whom she knew from college and amateur golf -- were supportive and attempted to head off any problems. She remembers Donna Caponi once having to tell a security guard to let her in the locker room because she was a player. At the same time, though, she remembers being refused service when she and her frequent roommate on the road, Sandra Post, went out to dinner.

“So, the thing is that golf is this sport where it's an individual sport and you need to think positive all the time,” Powell says. “But (it’s hard) when you have to rely upon your white counterparts having to stand up for you because you're black and people want to question you.”

Sifford Jr. knows Powell went through a lot of the same things his dad did, but he says she rarely talks about it. He traces her determination to her parents.

“She knew what her father had to go through and what my father went through,” Charles Sifford says. “I guess she got the stubbornness genes from her father. He was determined he was going to build a golf course where no one could tell him he couldn't play.

“And I just think she just got that fight from him, and her mother was a strong person, as well. Just like my mother was.”

Powell played more than 250 professional events, winning once at the 1973 Kelly-Springfield Tournament in Queensland, Australia. She moved to England for a time and was the first woman to play in a British PGA event. She even tried her hand at designing women’s golf clothes, which were displayed in a front window at the luxury department store, Harrods.

Over the years, Powell has also made 25 trips to Africa as an ambassador of the game, giving lessons and playing golf with heads of state and other dignitaries. One of the most interesting rounds was with a president and his wives – both of them.

“I hope that people weren't watching my eyes, because I look and I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh. They both play golf. And which one does he treat the best? Is it the best golfer?’” Powell says with a laugh.

By far the most impactful trip Powell took, though, was in 1971 when she spent three weeks in Vietnam on a USO excurison with her good friend and LPGA pro, the late Mary Lou Crocker, and the late Jimmy Nichols, a one-armed trick shot artist. The trio conducted five clinics a day, stopping to eat c-rations with the soldiers before heading to the next firebase.

The other thing Powell says stands out the most in her life is not unrelated to that wartime trip to Southeast Asia. She started Clearview HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere), which is the only program of its kind to serve female veterans, many of whom are dealing with PTSD or are survivors of sexual assault.

Some have told Powell they were suicidal, and golf saved them – “How powerful is that?” she asks. Others gained the confidence to go back to college or decided to change jobs. The stories, she says, sometimes make her want to cry.

“I never asked them, but they ended up telling me and they said, ‘Well, you are part of us. You went to Vietnam, so you understand,’” Powell says. “And I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, there are some horrible, horrible stories of what these women have gone through.’

“But golf, I taught them golf. None of them ever played golf before. … When you have people coming up to you and say this game and this program, and you have saved my life. You get chills.

“But it's because of golf, it's because of the fact that I learned I had some talent, my dad developed that talent and I'm able to teach and save lives.”

Powell joined her dad in the PGA of America Hall of Fame in 2017, making them the only father-daughter inductees. She was a member of the first group of women invited to join the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in 2015. She owns an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Andrews, which also named a residence hall after her in 2018.

Those awards are extremely significant, recognizing Powell’s strong shoulders and a career in golf that has spanned more than five decades. But March 9 night in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, will be particularly special when she is honored alongside inductees Tiger Woods, Tim Finchem, Marion Hollins and Susie Maxwell Berning.

“It’s a pretty neat thing,” Powell says. “Knowing Charles, knowing Charlie, knowing the family, knowing Rose, Charlie's wife. … But I think it's a tribute, too, to the golf industry, as to how things have changed.

“It's a tribute to the golf industry that they have actually chosen a name and award for this man that did so much -- and didn't do it because he was trying to get publicity or anything. That's

what I look at him and I look at my dad, and I'm like, ‘They were just doing what they felt they had to do ,what they needed to do.’”