SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. (AP) — A slice of golf history merges with a piece of American history whenever the U.S. Open returns to one of its most storied landscapes, Shinnecock Hills.
The golf course, a links-style masterpiece that was one of the USGA's five founding clubs in the 1890s, lies across ancient burial grounds that once belonged to the Shinnecock Nation, whose own people built the course.
On Thursday, 156 players from around the world will for the . Among those playing back in 1896 — the first time the USGA brought the Open to the outer reaches of Long Island — was John Shippen, the African-American golf teacher and club maker at the club who, as a 16-year-old, joined Shinnecock tribe member Oscar Bunn on the tee sheet.
Shippen was the first Black player to play in the U.S. Open; he and Bunn are believed to be the first two American-born players to play in America's national championship.
Before the tournament, pros from Britain told USGA management they refused to play against the Black and Native American players. The USGA president, Theodore Havemeyer, told those pros the tournament would go on with or without them.
Though the decision flew beneath the radar during a fledgling time for golf in the U.S. and for professional golf anywhere — in that era, the amateur game, not the pro game, drew the best players — the precedent Havemeyer set looks better as the years pass in a sport with a checkered record of inclusion.
“You think of the word ‘pioneer,’ and it's probably overused a little bit," USGA historian Mike Trostel said. “But I think in the case of Shippen, his pioneering spirit as the first African-American professional” stands out.
Shinnecock shares history with a tribal land and its people
While there's little debate about Shippen's role as a largely unheralded pioneer, the history between the Shinnecock people and their surroundings is more complicated, and it involves much more than golf.
As detailed in a documentary, “The Land We Share,” that came out in the weeks leading up to , New York's state legislature forced the Shinnecock to cede most of its territory to the village of Southampton in 1859. The nation's boundaries now consist of about 800 acres located south of Montauk Highway — a short drive from the entrypoint to one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the country.
But it was members of the Shinnecock tribe who were brought over by the landowners to build this course and who, for decades, maintained it. Tribal member Peter Smith was the third generation from his family to serve as head of the Shinnecock grounds crew. He was widely praised for his setup of the layout when the U.S. Open returned here in 1986, then again in 1995.
Smith's firing in 1999 — the reasons aren't well laid out in the documentary and contemporaneous media reports say it was simply because the club was looking to take things in a new direction — created a rift with the Shinnecock that only recently has started to heal.
Smith's nephew, Matthew, is an assistant on the grounds crew now and was a central figure in the documentary.
“My ancestors built that course, my ancestors died on that course,” Smith says in the movie. “There's blood, sweat and tears on that course.”
The president of Shinnecock Hills, Brian Pickett, acknowledged in the movie that and the Shinnecock Nation share “a part of American history that you can't hide from." Tribal council chair Lisa Goree spoke about the realities of a poor tribe situated in the middle of “all this wealth and opulence.”
“There are so many people who pass right through the golf club, they have no idea where that name came from,” Goree said.
As first Black player in the US Open, Shippen made history quietly
Pretty much every telling of Shippen's story acknowledges he wasn't focused on the history he made when he played Shinnecock in 1896. The short version is that once he started working at the club and took up golf, he quickly became Shinnecock's best player.
Members recognized that and paid his entry fee to the U.S. Open. He was part of a field of 35 and was tied for the lead after the first round of the two-round event. He got stuck in the sand on the 13th hole during the second round. He made an 11 there en route to a fifth-place finish and a $10 paycheck.
“I've wished 100 times I could've played that little par-4 again,” Shippen recounted in a 1969 interview with Tuesday magazine.
Were it not for that mishap, he might not only have been the first Black player in a U.S. Open but the first Black winner, as well.
It took 90 years for the USGA to return to Shinnecock — largely a product of its remote location on the south fork of Long Island. In between, the sport's struggle with diversity has been a well-documented part of its story.
Players like Charlie Sifford (first Black player to earn a PGA Tour card), Lee Elder (first Black player in the Masters) and Calvin Peete (12 wins on the PGA Tour) are on the short list of African-Americans who pierced golf's racial barrier.
Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997 to make the most pronounced breakthrough in the white-dominated culture of this country club sport.
Shippen's contribution 101 years earlier — much like Shinnecock's Native American heritage — still remains a footnote. Both, however, are revisited whenever golf returns to one of the more special and complex landscapes from its past.
“It's complicated,” Pickett said. “To us, having had those relationships and talking about the complications is far better than not having the conversation at all.”
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