With the PGA Championship in Tulsa, it's time to remember the impact of African-American golfer Bill Spiller
Diversity remains a goal for many people in golf.
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TULSA, Okla. -- You probably never heard of him. Few outside the inner sanctum of golf and those unfamiliar with the unflattering side of the game's past know the name Bill Spiller. His legacy, however, resonates this week during the 89th PGA Championship at Southern Hills.
Spiller was a gangly basketball standout at Tulsa's Booker T. Washington High in the 1930s. He rose to fame -- or infamy, depending upon which side of the fairway you favored -- as one of the protagonists who forced the PGA of America to rescind its Caucasian-only clause in 1961, 27 years after it was instituted. Twenty-seven years of enforced exclusion of minorities from professional golf in this country.
The implied kind lasted two decades longer.
Spiller never played in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event, although he had enough game to dog the heels of the great Ben Hogan in the 1948 Los Angeles Open, one of the few events that welcomed minorities. He died before Tiger Woods came on the scene.
Like his great friend, boxing champ Joe Louis, Spiller was a fighter. The fruits of his successful battle for inclusion can be seen today in a sincere effort by the PGA to grow the game and expand its opportunities among minorities.
David Cook, an African-American entrepreneur from Charlotte, N.C., is the face of change and inclusion in what has become a $60 billion-a-year industry. He is an on-course concessions subcontractor with Levy Restaurants of Chicago and has worked with the PGA since 1999.
"They (the PGA) are committed to inclusion," said Cook, who is employing 45 minorities at three concession stands at Southern Hills. "We've developed a great relationship."
Diversity in the game is more than just posturing by the PGA, according to Earnie Ellison, its director of business and community relations and one of a handful of minorities at the higher echelon of golf.
"For that part of the economic development that we directly control -- the PGA Championship, Senior PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup -- we have a specific goal that we will have 25 percent participation of minorities in business services like food and beverage, construction and temporary labor," Ellison said. "For this event at Southern Hills, we currently have 27 percent participation of minorities -- the first time we've gotten above that target.
"We're pleased with that but we're not going to stop there because we have to understand that there are minority companies out there that can get into the bigger part of the business. The task is to find minority-owned businesses with goods and services that can transfer over from customer-based into the broader golf industry."
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- PGA Championship,
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