As the world turns its attention to the Augusta National Golf Club for this year’s Masters Tournament, a museum in Augusta once again is turning attention to keeping the memory of a historic Masters tradition alive.  

For nearly the first half century of the tournament, the tournament required all golfers to use their corps of caddies.  All of them were Black.  It’s a tradition that ended in 1982 when golfers were allowed to bring in their own caddies, and all the Black caddies were routinely dismissed. 

With that change, a role that had been historically one of service provided predominately by African Americans, turned into a profession dominated by White males.  

Each spring, the staff of the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History in downtown Augusta, sets up an annual exhibit and golf fundraiser that brings recognition to the black caddie corps and the sport of golf.

“We wanted to use it as a vehicle to tell the African American story of golf, particularly for our young people and for our community at large because many, even older, generations don’t know about the African American story of golf and people think that the African American story started with Tiger Woods,” told Leon Maben, vice president of the board of directors of Delta House Inc. at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, to a reporter with the North Augusta Post and Courier. “Blacks have been involved in golf way before Tiger Woods. It goes all the way back to the 1800s, even slavery.”

Each year the organization uses the exhibit, timed to occur around during or near the Masters, to honor a history maker in the game of golf.  This year, Ben Bussey, caddie for Craig Stadler in the 1982 Masters tournament, was honored alongside other Black caddie legends.

“I think we do it here at the Laney Museum because these guys from talking to them, they really feel that they were never given the recognition at Augusta National that they should have,” Maben said. “They just feel that when the rule changed, it was all of a sudden and that was their way of life. That was their income.

Among the Best

“They developed a niche as the best caddie corps in the world working at one of the most famous golf courses. They became celebrities within their own neighborhood,” Ward Clayton, a former Augusta Chronicle sports editor and author of the book “Men on the Bag: Caddies of Augusta National.”

To this day, the top three winningest caddies in the Masters history were members of the Augusta caddies corps.    

Five victories

Willie ‘Pappy’ Stokes

1938 (Henry Picard); 1948 (Claude Harmon); 1951, 1953 (Ben Hogan); 1956 (Jack Burke Jnr)

Willie Peterson

1963, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975 (Jack Nicklaus)

Four victories

Nathaniel ‘Iron Man’ Avery

1958, 1960, 1962, 1964 (Arnold Palmer)

Steve Williams

2001, 2002, 2005 (Tiger Woods); 2013 (Adam Scott)

Pappy the Godfather

Pappy  Stokes was the Godfather of the group.  He tutored the young Black males who mostly came from surrounding neighborhoods.  Many learned the trade as an income source to support their families as pre-teenagers at Augusta Country Club, which borders Augusta National’s Amen Corner, and ‘graduated’ to Augusta National as the club became more prominent in the 1950s.

The success of an all-Black group was a point of pride in Augusta’s predominately black inner-city neighborhoods and the players were celebrities in Augusta’s Black community.  

It was a sore point when outside caddies who were players’ regular PGA Tour caddies, most of them White, were allowed to carry in the tournament from 1983 on.

“If you look at the things the caddies went through, I refer to the caddies as the first generation of Black golf, because they are and because I have done research and interviewed individuals who were slaves who were caddies and the history goes back to the 1800s,” author and research historian of African American golf Ramona Harriet said. “The things that they went through, like you say, you never give up. And when you talk about hope, perseverance and passion and survival, I mean who else? Caddies of Augusta and all of a sudden, it’s gone.

“I think sooner or later we need to stand up and realize what happened to these great individuals because they are human beings like we are,” Harriett added. “We all want to go to work everyday. We all want to put food on the table. We all want to provide for our families. But just like that it’s gone.”

Harriet, who has worked within the golf industry for decades for the likes of the U.S. Golf Association and First Tee, believes it is important to be educated about the history of golf.

Harriet, with her traveling exhibit, wants to give the caddie corps their recognition.

“I want to promise people like Jariah (Beard, Fuzzy Zoeller’s caddie when he won in 1979), people like Lee Elder … They said tell our story. Tell the facts. Don’t sugar coat it to make it sound good, tell the facts. Promise me that you will tell our story and that’s what I am doing and that is to tell their story,” Harriet said.

“I just hope that when I am doing it, I am honoring and respecting those who really need it and to those who didn’t get the accolades that they should have gotten when they were alive,” she said. “That is one of the things I want to do, to give them tribute and give them their accolades that they so much deserve because they didn’t get it.”

Harriet, with her traveling exhibit, wants to give the caddie corps their recognition.

“I just hope that when I am doing it, I am honoring and respecting those who really need it and to those who didn’t get the accolades that they should have gotten when they were alive,” she said. “That is one of the things I want to do, to give them tribute and give them their accolades that they so much deserve because they didn’t get it.”