![]() It was a grand day! Upon arrival we were met by Dr. Last week with Steve Jurick, Executive Director, Miami Valley Golf Association we took 14 young adults to the Historic Clearview Golf Club and learned about the Strength of a Legacy. Our Sponsor 2K Foundations https:foundations.2k.com helped us to remember the day by taking many photos, many of which you will see below. And she exchanged leads with Cudone throughout the round, Gregory kept pace until she began to spray her tee shots over the final few holes, losing the match, 2 and 1.There are times in life you sit back, take it in and realize you are fortunate to witness and experience history I’ve been fortunate in that way. Quite a likable person with a fine sense of humor and compassion, Gregory had an iron will too. I was shocked by the crowd’s size because in those days, first-round matches didn’t often draw so many people.”īut over 40 years later she also recalled the words of a club parking attendant telling her father before the match: “Your daughter better win today or you’d better not come back to this parking lot.”īeing the only black player in this tournament, at the same time, Gregory disappointed some folks in the black golfing community because she eschewed participating in a UGA competition being held on the same weekend. In a 1988 story for Golf Journal she remembered: “There was a mob at the first tee. ![]() I want to play the big course.” Nobody stopped her.Ĭarolyn Cudone has never forgotten her first-round match with Gregory in that 1956 tournament. My money’s as good and as green as anybody else’s. “I’m a resident of Gary,” she firmly told the man in the pro shop, “I pay my taxes. But no Black golfer had ever played the big course. Ann didn’t want to play the little course, the nine-holer to which Black golfers were relegated. One day in 1947, husband and wife went out to play golf. She joined the nearby Chicago Women’s Golf Association, an all-black organization that played at several regional public courses. Gregory defeated him along with all his Par-Breaker buddies as well, even when they made her play from the men’s tees. ![]() Gregory returned from the war and started playing with his wife. She started playing Gary’s city-owned hardscrabble nine-hole course and when Mr. In just three years, Gregory crafted a high level game – an impressive accomplishment for someone who had not played golf until her early 30s. Taking lessons from Calvin Ingram, a terrific player and a veteran of the United Golfers Association, the black golf circuit, she discovered a natural touch from tee to green. In 1943, with her husband serving in the Navy during WWII, Ann took up golf herself. Although she was one of the LPGA’s top 50 money winners for five years, and won a car at a Dinah Shore tournament, according to “Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson,” she could only make financial ends meet with a few sponsorship deals and the support of her husband. While she broke course records during individual rounds in several tournaments, Gibson’s highest ranking was 27th in 1966, and her best tournament finish was a tie for second after a three-way playoff at the 1970 at the Len Immke Buick Open, Althea’s short game and putting came up short. Her strength was as a really long hitter with a rather low ball fight that would often run. “But it was never completely out of hearing, and soon it was to grow so loud that I would not be able to resist its seductiveness.”Īt 36, Gibson changed course and found herself making history again after earning status to play on the LPGA Tour. “The siren song of golf was barely audible to me when I retired from amateur tennis,” Gibson wrote in “So Much to Live For,” her 1968 autobiography. The program was so successful, the PGA Foundation used it as a model for other youth golf programs, including The First Tee, a program dedicated to creating three-hole playing facilities for junior golfers in Louisville, Kentucky. Powell’s goals with the clinic were to give inner-city junior high school students an opportunity to learn to play the game. In 1995 the Renee Powell Youth Gold Camp Cadre Program was launched. ![]() In 2011, she launched Clearview H.O.P.E (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere) a cost-free, year-round therapeutic and recreational golf programs specifically for women veterans. In 2015, Powell was among the first class of women to gain membership into the most exclusive club in the world, the 267-year-old Royal and Ancient Golf Club.īut Powell has also worked hard here in America in her commitment to expanding golf to more youth, women, seniors, minorities, and military veterans. In 2008, Powell received an honorary degree from the University of St. Powell’s contributions have gained her recognition at the birthplace of golf: St. For decades, she taught golf in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. ![]()
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