There wasn’t much opportunity for a young Black man in Tulsa, Okla., in the early 20th century. There wasn’t much peace, either. Tulsa, site of this week’s PGA Championship being played at Southern Hills Country Club, also happens to be the site of one of the more violent attacks on African Americans, the
Versalles' version of the Spiller story is ok in essence, and in crediting Bill with opening the fight to get Blacks on the PGA Tour, not Charlie Sifford, but so many details are skewed and outright wrong. Spiller did not win 100 tournaments on the Black Tour; he did not caddy for Stanley Mosk, he wrote Mosk, then the California Attorney General, about the situation for Blacks, and it was Mosk who then barred the PGA of America from holding any of its tournaments on California public and private golf courses. Good on for giving Bill the credit he didn't get in his lifetime, but Versalles might have done better after reading my material on Bill in my history of the PGA Tour, Golf's Golden Grind, and "Gettin' to the Dance Floor: An Oral History of American Golf. -- Al Barkow
Versalles' version of the Spiller story is ok in essence, and in crediting Bill with opening the fight to get Blacks on the PGA Tour, not Charlie Sifford, but so many details are skewed and outright wrong. Spiller did not win 100 tournaments on the Black Tour; he did not caddy for Stanley Mosk, he wrote Mosk, then the California Attorney General, about the situation for Blacks, and it was Mosk who then barred the PGA of America from holding any of its tournaments on California public and private golf courses. Good on for giving Bill the credit he didn't get in his lifetime, but Versalles might have done better after reading my material on Bill in my history of the PGA Tour, Golf's Golden Grind, and "Gettin' to the Dance Floor: An Oral History of American Golf. -- Al Barkow