What brought the Super Bowl IX MVP all the way to Korea? It turned out Harris had taken up golf five years earlier.
I had swallowed my last bite of cake and was making my exit from the opening ceremonies of the 2015 Presidents Cup in Korea when I ran into a familiar face.
No, not President George W. Bush, who addressed the audience, nor Kenny G., the saxophonist, who performed amid a cloud of selfie-snapping Korean fans, but rather NFL Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris.
Best-known for catching “The Immaculate Reception,” considered the most iconic play in NFL history, Harris won four Super Bowl rings with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s.
What brought the then-65-year-old Super Bowl IX MVP all the way to Korea? It turned out Harris had taken up golf five years earlier and he’d fallen hard. He attended the 2015 British Open at St. Andrews with his wife, Dana, as the guest of good friend and former LPGA pro Renee Powell. His love of the game continued to grow and he attended the World Golf Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in March as a guest of Powell, who was being honored, and posted a photo on social media of meeting Tiger Woods there.
That Harris wasn’t too big to have his own celebrity crush makes me feel a little better that I essentially did the same at the 2015 Presidents Cup dinner in Korea when I saw Harris, one of my childhood heroes, and bordered on going all fan boy on him. It was an odd place for us to meet – I like to refer to it as the Immaculate Dinner Reception – but when I approached him he was nothing but a gentleman and we talked a combination of football and golf for a good 10-15 minutes until the rest of his party was anxious to catch a shuttle back to the host hotel. It was the one and only time I met somebody who meant a lot to me and I’m glad I got the opportunity to tell him so in person.
His love for golf undoubtedly grew that week in Korea. Seeing the 12-man squads for the Presidents Cup be announced to great fanfare reminded the gridiron great of his Super Bowl days.
“I have to admit I got all pumped up,” Harris said. “It’s crazy. First the British and now to come to the Presidents Cup, it’s been a great year.”
And a great life for one of football’s all-time greats.
The award’s inaugural recipient will be Renee Powell, the second Black woman to compete on the LPGA in 1967.
It was on this day in 2004 that Charlie Sifford was inducted in the World Golf Hall of Fame. As a way to honor the first Black player on the PGA Tour, on Monday the Hall of Fame announced the creation of the Charlie Sifford Award presented by Southern Company for those who advance diversity in golf.
The award’s inaugural recipient will be Renee Powell, who became the second Black woman to compete on the LPGA in 1967 after Althea Gibson in 1964. Powell will be honored as part of the Hall of Fame’s 2022 induction ceremony on Wednesday, March 9, during the Players Championship. Tiger Woods, Susie Maxwell Berning, Tim Finchem and the late Marion Hollins comprise the 2022 class, and will bring the number of Hall of Fame members to 164.
“As a youngster my parents fought to get me into tournaments when I was not welcomed because of the color of my skin, which instilled in me how important it is to get young people into the game to help build their self-confidence,” said Powell via a release. “I’m honored to be the first recipient of this award and to see Charlie Sifford be recognized for breaking down barriers that never should have been put in front of him and all others of color who strived to play this game. I was taught early on by my parents that golf should be a sport for everyone, and we can all diversify this game in so many ways.”
During her professional career Powell played in more than 250 tournaments. Since 1995 she has been the head PGA/LPGA professional at Clearview Golf Club in Ohio, established by her father, William Powell, in 1946 as the first golf course in the country designed, built, owned and operated by a Black person.
“The creation of this award will establish a platform for celebrating the significance of Charlie Sifford’s contributions to golf in the face of adversity,” said World Golf Hall of Fame CEO Greg McLaughlin. “In partnership with Southern Company, the Hall of Fame is committed to ensuring his legacy endures for future generations by recognizing others – like Renee Powell – who are devoted to making the sport a welcome environment for all.”
“On behalf of the Sifford family, we are immensely proud and honored to have this award established in my father’s name,” said Charles Sifford Jr. “My father, my number one hero, simply wanted to play the game he loved so much and – in this pursuit – endured enormous challenges as an African American golfer. His skills, perseverance, grit, and determination propelled him to continue his dream. He was successful despite having to overcome multiple barriers of discrimination. His hard-fought efforts paved the way for other minority golfers to pursue their career. This award is honorably illuminated by having a longtime family friend and successful African American female golfer, Renee Powell, as the first recipient. This really is something special.”
This is the first of three parts on Renee Powell and her efforts to continue the legacy of her family.
Editor’s note: In the global golfing community, Renee Powell is a well-known pioneer and advocate for the game and inclusion. Her hard work continues to be honored, with the Charlie Bartlett Award (presented in April at the Masters any other year) being the latest recognition for her “unselfish contributions to the betterment of society.” This is the first in a three-part series from the Canton Repository of the USA Today Network on Powell and her efforts to continue the legacy of her family.
As 2020 runs out with no British Open for the first time since World War II, and as fresh waves of golf-world love pour onto her home course in Ohio, Renee Powell keeps Scotland with her.
“You see your name on a building at St. Andrews … a university that is more than 600 years old … in the home of golf?” she said, searching for words. “What does that mean? I’m still trying to figure out even who I am.”
Who is Renee Powell?
For many, she’s a pioneer in golf as a player who now serves as one of the game’s great advocates for inclusion. Countless awards and honors have been bestowed upon the one-time golf prodigy from East Canton.
In 2015, Royal and Ancient Golf Club welcomed Powell and six others as its first female members. In 2018, the University of St. Andrews (founded in 1413) opened Renee Powell Hall as a sequel to presenting her an honorary doctor of laws degree 10 years earlier.
“The Powell name is there in St. Andrews,” she said. “Without my mom and dad and my whole family making sacrifices …
“My life has seemed to me … normal. When I go outside, I know it’s not normal. To have my name connected to the place where golf all started? People don’t even know me here.”
“Here” is Clearview Golf Club, which is in East Canton, Ohio, if you are going by mailing address and is two miles southeast of the center of town, where the land opens up in Osnaburg Township, if you get technical.
Golf icons know her
The American Society of Golf Course Architects recently found its way to Clearview to present Powell with the Donald Ross Award. Ross is Mount Rushmore material in golf course architecture, his hundreds of creations include Brookside and Congress Lake in Stark County.
Themes of awards tie together Powell’s life story. Golfer. Historic figure. Ambassador. Crusader. At 74, working hard and getting better.
Jan Bel Jan, representing the Society, said, “Renee is on the leading edge of inclusivity in everything, not just golf. As a human being, she is out there for humanity to be together.
“More people need to know her story.”
Golf icons such as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus know her story, and the story of her family, pretty well. So do many others at the upper levels of golf around the world.
It’s a story, though, that resonates beyond golf and continues to impact any who come in contact with Powell.
Powell is the PGA pro at Clearview, which her father, William J. (Bill) Powell, converted from a dairy farm into the first U.S. course designed, built and owned by an African American.
“I didn’t build this course for recognition,” Bill Powell said in his 2000 autobiography, “Clearview: America’s Course.” “It was a labor of love. Golf is a part of society and I wanted to be included. I want you to be included, too.”
It was tough love, full of toil on every level. In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, he said, “I wouldn’t do it again. It took a toll on my family, that’s all. It isn’t worth it. I could have done anything to take care of my family. I chose this, and I stuck with it, that was all. I’m not a quitter.”
A decade after Bill Powell died, Renee Powell’s eyes say, “It was worth it, daddy. Thank you.”
Renee Powell (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Deepening roots
As Clearview nears its 75th year, one person might suppose the course looks the same passersby as it ever did. Another might assert that it grows ever-deepening roots in the soil of America.
Bill lived long enough to join Renee in Scotland for the presentation of her honorary doctorate in 2008. Unable to play (he was 91 then), he was able to hit some putts at “The Royal and Ancient.” He rode in a cart to watch his daughter play St. Andrews’ Old Course.
Bill helped turn Renee into a tremendous golfer in the first part of her life. She has spent recent decades turning attention to Bill’s broader legacy.
There is joy in her face when she interacts with disabled women’s military veterans who use Clearview as a therapeutic tool. She has taught golf to innumerable people from all walks of life.
Another honor
In February, before the COVID-19 floodgates opened, she was named the 2020 winner of the Charlie Bartlett Award, based on her “unselfish contributions to the betterment of society.” The award is acknowledged at The Masters. Woods and Nicklaus are past recipients. Powell was to have accepted it on April 8, in Augusta, a day before the Masters’ was originally scheduled to start.
Renee uses Clearview as her base for a schedule that normally includes frequent flying but this year is full of Zoom time.
Her brother Larry is Clearview’s longtime superintendent. Larry began mowing fairways when he was 8, and had become an expert at maintaining greens by 1978, when the course expanded from nine holes to 18.
Renee is the public figure. This traces to her emerging as a world-class golfer when Blacks waged private struggles amid national storms over race. She spent 13 years on the LPGA Tour and earned widespread respect for her ability to diagnose situations and talk to people.
This note from Nicklaus showed up at the ceremony in Scotland where she became a “Royal and Ancient” member:
“I know how honored and proud you must feel to not only to be the first female golfer and only the third American golfer (coincidentally all Buckeyes!) to do so. Renee, you are an inspiration to all who know you.”
The Tiger Woods Foundation endowed scholarships in the names of Renee’s parents, Bill and Marcella, that were presented to 20 youths across 10 years.
So, the golf world knows the Powells. Perhaps there is a little hyperbole in Renee saying, “People don’t even know me here.” There is some truth in those words, as well.
Renee Powell is the Head Pro at Clearview Golf Course in Canton, Ohio. (Canton Repository file photo).
Getting to know Renee
Is it fair to say Stark County knows her story, but not really? The question was among the reasons we requested an in-depth interview with Powell. She said yes and was more than gracious with her time, talking for three hours until the sun was going down and the last players had finished their rounds on the course.
The interview also coincided with the political and social unrest that has marked the year. It was conducted before the recent expiration of her 18-month term on the PGA’s board of directors. She was in the middle of a long discussion about how the PGA should participate in the national reaction to the George Floyd tragedy.
The PGA produced a statement, in advance of The PGA Championship that wound up launching the 2020 season, reflecting the eight minutes and 46 seconds prosecutors calculate as the time police pinned Floyd to the ground before he died.
An excerpt:
“As part of ongoing efforts to amplify the voices and efforts underway to end racial and social injustice, the TOUR has set aside an 8:46 a.m. tee time that will feature no players … as 8:46 has become a universal symbol for the racial injustice faced by the Black community.”
It was arranged for Powell to create a 60-second perspective to be spotted into telecasts of the 2020 PGA Championship tournament. For the record, she was deeply disturbed by the Floyd tragedy and talks at length about why. For the purposes of her 60-second national TV spot, she spent it all on Clearview.
Our interview began with no set time. A while in, seeming amused, Renee asked what we were up to. We replied that the Powell family story has been told by The Canton Repository more than a few times, but perhaps never in great detail. We were shooting for her “life story.”
We conversed from socially distanced golf carts while players finished afternoon rounds. At one point, we got to the obvious question of where she grew up.
“Right there,” she said, turning to a place in the middle of the golf course. “Right there in that house.”
Family legacy
She was born the year Bill Powell started building the course.
Bill was born in Alabama in 1916, the grandson of former Alabama slaves. His family relocated to Minerva when he was 3.
He began playing golf at age 9 at Minerva’s Edgewater Golf Course. He got a job at the course and learned things that would help him make Clearview.
Bill was a teenager when he organized and captained Minerva High School’s first golf team. Competitive and athletic, he played for an unbeaten Minerva football team, but golf was his game, and he took it with him to Wilberforce College.
He was well into his 20s when he served in Europe during World War II in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He earned the rank of technical sergeant in the U.S. 8th Air Force Truck Battalion. As circumstances allowed, he played some of the old courses when stationed in Scotland.
Home from the war, married and starting a family, Bill acted on his dream to build a golf course free from discrimination. He was dismayed to discover African Americans, even veterans, had trouble getting loans, even a GI loan.
He worked for The Timken Company, but wasn’t close to having the money to make a golf course. He formed an “investment group.” One area Black doctor put up a third of the needed funds. Another area Black doctor put up another third. Bill’s brother Berry mortgaged his house so Bill could cover the other third.
Bill Powell and his daughter Renee are seen on the 16th green of their historic Clearview Golf Club. (AP file photo)
The farmland he bought on Lincoln Street was seven miles west of Edgewater.
Renee talks of that time with a sense of wonder. The sunsets on that ground where Bill exercised body, mind and soul while hand-seeding the tilled dirt in the hilly solitude must have been powerful.
Clearview opened in 1948, 13 years before the PGA dropped its “Caucasion-only clause” and Charlie Sifford got a Tour card.
In 1948, the Powells were a long way from the PGA of America Hall of Fame (Bill and Renee both are in now). It would be another 27 years before Lee Elder became the first Black man to play in the Masters.
Renee’s backyard literally was the golf course.
“My first memories are standing out there on the No. 1 tee and hitting the ball toward the creek,” she said, gazing at the spot. “I didn’t know what it was about. I probably didn’t even appreciate what it was about when I grew up and was on Tour.”
She had a club in her hands not long after learning to walk.
“Daddy taught me how to play,” she said.
TOMORROW: Renee Powell came home crying one time too many and changed grade schools. Then she had a Rosa Parks moment on the bus at her next school.
Renee Powell is set to lead Team USA at the Junior Solheim Cup against Annika Sorenstam and Team Europe.
Two legends of the game will square off against each other as captains of next year’s Ping Junior Solheim Cup. Renee Powell will captain the 12-player U.S. team at Sylvania Country Club in Toledo, Ohio, the AJGA announced on Monday. The LET previously announced that Annika Sorenstam will lead the Europeans.
“I can’t wait to see the growth from when I first meet each player to when the last ball is picked up from the last hole in the PING Junior Solheim Cup,” Powell said. “I’m excited to be able to see the excitement on [the girls’] faces when they are doing what the love and representing the United States. I am proud that my state of Ohio is the host state for both the PING Junior Solheim Cup and the Solheim Cup.”
Powell, 74, learned the game at Clearview Golf Club in East Canton, Ohio, a course her father built with his own hands after he returned from World War II and found it difficult to find a place that would allow him to play.
Powell forged her own trail as well, captaining both the Ohio and Ohio State University golf teams. She fought through racial prejudice, even death threats, as the second Black player to compete on the LPGA.
After retiring from the tour, Powell continued to grow the game as an ambassador, traveling to Africa more than two dozen times.
She returned to Clearview to continue her father’s legacy, running the only golf course in America that was designed, constructed and owned by a Black man. Her focus as head professional places an emphasis on growing the game among veterans, women and juniors. She was the first woman of color elected to membership in the PGA of America and was later named the first At-Large Director of its Board. In 2002, she was named the PGA’s First Lady of Golf.
Earlier this year, Powell was awarded the Golf Writers Association of America’s Charlie Bartlett Award, given to a playing professional for their unselfish contributions for the betterment of society. Last month she received the Donald Ross Award from the American Society of Golf Course Architects.
In 2015, Powell was one of two American women bestowed honorary membership into the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.
“We’re honored Renee has accepted our offer to captain the U.S. PING Junior Solheim Cup team in 2021,” said John A. Solheim, PING Chairman & CEO. “She’s a true pioneer in the game of golf whose accomplishments speak for themselves and contributions to the sport around the world are long and ever-lasting. Her support of girl’s golf throughout her hall-of-fame career makes her the perfect choice for the captain’s role.”
Previous American Junior Solheim Cup players who have gone on to compete in the main event include Brittany Lang, Paula Creamer, Alison Lee, Brittany Lincicome, Morgan Pressel, Angel Yin and Lexi Thompson. Those from Team Europe include Carlota Ciganda, Georgia Hall, Caroline Hedwall, Charley Hull, Caroline Masson, Azahara Munoz, Anna Nordqvist, Florentyna Parker, Emily Kristine Pedersen, Beatriz Recari and Melissa Reid.
