Three prominent black members of the golf community have written letters to USGA executive director Mike Davis in hopes to move 2017 U.S. Women’s Open from Donald Trump’s Trump National at Bedminster in New Jersey.
Martha Burk isn’t the only who would like to see the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open moved from Trump National Bedminster in New Jersey. New York University historian Jeffrey Sammons and two other prominent black golfers with ties to the U.S. Golf Association have written letters to its executive director, Mike Davis, renouncing their relationship with golf’s governing body for the U.S. and Mexico.
Pictured left, Martha Burke
Burk made her case in a blog for The Huffington Post on Friday, which coincides with Round 2 of this year’s Women’s Open at CordeValle, citing opposition to business magnate Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
Pictured left, Jeffrey Sammons, Ph.D.
Those in golf will recognize Burk from her 2002 protest of Augusta National, in which she called on the club to end its discrimination against women. In her piece, Burk highlighted the protest of Sammons, who resigned from his volunteer role with the USGA, but he is not alone.
Calvin Sinnette, regarded as one of the leading historians of black golfers and author of Forbidden Fairways: African Americans and the Game of Golf, served on the USGA’s African-American golf history task force that created a centralized repository for artifacts and documents related to the history of blacks in golf, which is located at the USGA Museum in Far Hills, N.J. He donated much of his extensive collection of files and memorabilia to the USGA museum.
Pictured left, Calvin Sinnette, MD.
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“The organization’s decision seems to be governed by a warped notion of fiduciary rectitude rather than a sense of moral probity. Pious pronouncements about ‘inclusion,’ ‘broader access,’ and ‘disparities,’ ring hollow when the USGA is forced to confront vexing challenges,” Sinnette wrote to Davis. “Unless the USGA changes the venue for the 2017 event and severs its relationship with a blatant racist and misogynist, I have no alternative but to relinquish my association with the organization.”
In a telephone interview, Sinnette added, “I have no faith that the USGA will do anything more than try to evade the issue.”
The third individual to write Davis was Cedrick Smith, who graduated from Hampton University in 1992 as a two-time National Minority Collegiate Golf Association All-America golfer, and was selected as a Howard Creel fellow with the USGA in 1991. Smith writes in his letter to Davis that he will be boycotting subsequent U.S. Opens (he skipped Oakmont in June after attending the previous 10 with his brother) as long as there is an affiliation with Trump.
“When racism rears its head, it has to be challenged and rebuked even when one is not a part of the group to be marginalized,” Smith wrote.
Sammons, a member of the USGA Museum and Library committee and its African-American Golf Archive dating to 2009, began expressing his concerns about the relationship between the USGA and Trump in 2011, but his efforts fell on deaf ears.
Read more by Adam Schupak at GolfWeek.com
