R.I.P. Bill Wright, Pioneering U.S. Amateur Pub Links Champion, Instructor
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A couple of superbly handled stories are with your time on the life and times of Bill Wright, the first Black golfer to win a USGA championship when he captured the 1959 U.S. Amateur Public Links.
From David Shefter’s USGA.org remembrance:
“He felt so thrilled to be the best golfer that day, not the best Black golfer,” said Ceta Wright, who was married to Bill for 60 years, in an interview with the Seattle Times. “And, of course, afterward he realized that he was a barrier breaker and that was important to him. It was important to everyone, really, and especially in the Black community.”
Shortly after the trophy presentation, a Seattle journalist called Wright and asked what it was like to be the first African American to win a national championship. Wright, who was about to enter his senior year at Western Washington College, slammed the phone down.
Wright later told golf.com, “I wasn’t mad. I wanted to be Black. I wanted to be the winner. I wanted to be all those things. It just hit me that other people were thinking [about race]. I was just playing golf.”
Wright competed that week with only 12 clubs: two woods, nine irons and a putter. His opponent from Jacksonville, Fla., had been a professional for four years before regaining his amateur status and returning to the insurance business.
And from Richard Sandomir of the New York Times:
Winning the public links title earned Wright an exemption to play in the U.S. Amateur Championship later that year at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs. When the white golfers who were to join him for a practice round refused to play with him, Chick Evans, who had won the Open in 1920, invited him to join his group. That group included Jack Nicklaus, then 19 years old, who would win the event.
“I have never forgotten it,” Wright once said of Evans’s gesture in an interview for usga.com. “He came over and made it so I could enjoy the most aristocratic hotel. It was just amazing.”
And this…
Because he could not afford to play golf professionally full time, Wright taught sixth grade in Los Angeles for nine years, then owned a car dealership in Pasadena and was the teaching pro at the Lakes at El Segundo, a nine-hole municipal golf course, from 1995 to 2017.
The USGA put together this wonderful video tribute to Wright:
