Memorial Day, 2012 update: Charlie Sifford was the first African-American on the PGA Tour. Did you know he honed his game at Cobb’s Creek? This from James W. Finegan’s wonderful book “A Centennial Tribute To Golf in Philadelphia”:
“Charlie Sifford was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1922. He grew up caddying and learning to play the game there, then came to Philadelphia in 1940 to live with an uncle, James Sifford, near 18th and Norris. The 17-year old landed a job as a shipping clerk at the Nabisco plant on Roosevelt Boulevard, and soon got wind of the municipal course at Cobb’s Creek.”
“Young Sifford was surprised and delighted to find both blacks and whites playing at Cobb’s Creek. “I’d never seen anything like that in North Carolina,” he writes. “But in Philadelphia, on the public courses at least, things were different…here was a place where I could play without having to worry about some groundskeeper coming by to run me off the course.” After a number of hours on the practice tee, he felt he was hitting the ball well enough to take on anybody who might show up at the Philadelphia muni.”