HIGH POINT

If you think Richard Watkins stood out on the campus of High Point College, where he was one of only a dozen or fewer African Americans in the entire student body in the 1970s, you should’ve seen him on the golf course.

Watkins, who was High Point College’s first Black golfer, arrived at the small, Methodist school in 1972, an African American integrating a sport played predominantly by whites at the collegiate and professional levels. Tiger Woods, the most successful and well-known Black golfer in history, hadn’t even been born yet.

So yes, on the golf course, Watkins stood out like a purple golf ball.

“I was keenly aware that when High Point would go play at tournaments, I would be the only Black there at the whole tournament,” remembers Watkins, a 70-year-old Oak Ridge native now living in Martinsville, Virginia. “When we played conference matches, I was it.”

Not surprisingly, then, opponents’ stares and whispers were, well, par for the course.

“They still stare sometimes, but I don’t care today,” Watkins acknowledges. “Back then, though, I thought I was a good player, and I was just cocky enough that when I saw people staring, I thought they were admiring my game. I’m sure that’s not the case, but that’s the way I felt at the time.”

Nearly half a century after leaving High Point College (now High Point University), Watkins is believed to still be the school’s only Black golfer. Today, though, he stands out for reasons other than the color of his skin.

The irony of Watkins’ story is that he never wanted to play golf. His first love was baseball, but when he was 12 or 13, he began caddying at the old Carlson Farms Golf Course in Greensboro — “just a way to make a few extra dollars on the weekend,” he says.

In his down time, he’d go out behind the caddy shack and practice chipping just for kicks, but he still didn’t care to take up the game. It wasn’t until a buddy twisted his arm to play a round with him that Watkins finally saw the light.

“That first day, I was hooked,” he says. “I was playing baseball at the time, but after I started playing golf, I didn’t want to do anything else. I was all in.”

Before long, his mom was dropping him off at the golf course in the morning, then returning to pick him up at sunset. And when he wasn’t on a golf course somewhere, Watkins was tearing up the grass in his front lawn as he fired shots toward a utility pole at the other end of the yard.

He played golf at Northwest Guilford High School — where he was the school’s second Black golfer — then came to High Point College in the fall of 1972 on a partial scholarship.

By that time, Watkins knew about fellow North Carolinian Charlie Sifford — the first African American to play on the PGA Tour — who opened the door for the likes of Lee Elder, Jim Dent and other Blacks to join the tour. He also lamented the fate of guys like Bill Spiller and Ted Rhodes, talented Black golfers who were denied the opportunity to play on the tour because of race.

“Golf is tough without the added influences of racism,” Watkins says. “Golf is hard enough as it is.”

At High Point, though, Watkins says, he was welcomed with open arms by his coaches — Marvin Sandifer and, later, Woody Gibson — and by his teammates. His brown skin and bushy Afro may stand out in old team photos, but on the golf course, he was just one of the guys.

Never was that more poignant than the time High Point backed out of a tournament because Watkins wasn’t going to be allowed to play.

“Marvin (Sandifer) got a phone call wanting to know if that … (n-word) was still on the team, because if he was, y’all can’t play here,” Watkins explains.

“At the time, as a player, I didn’t know that had gone on — Marvin didn’t tell me about it until 30 or 40 years later. But Marvin made the decision that we weren’t going. He wasn’t going to leave me behind — we just wouldn’t go. Even though I had a lot of respect for Marvin when I was in college, I had a great deal more after hearing that story.”

There were other incidents that happened away from High Point. For example, Watkins remembers driving to an out-of-state tournament where he encountered members of the Ku Klux Klan taking up donations at a roundabout near the golf course.

“Aw, I didn’t have any change,” he says in mock disappointment.

During his college years, Watkins gained respect for a couple of pillars of the city’s Black community — Dr. Otis Tillman and Dr. Perry Little, two well-respected African Americans who became his golfing buddies. Both were avid golfers, and Little was one of three Black golfers who helped integrate the city’s Blair Park course in 1954.

During those rounds of golf with Tillman, in particular, Watkins says, he learned a lot about life, and he saw firsthand how highly thought of Tillman was in High Point. He also was privy to one of Tillman’s secret dreams — he dearly wanted his alma mater, N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro, to start a golf team. The idea had been discussed for years but it was only some 40 years later, in 2015, that the dream finally became a reality and A&T named its first-ever men’s and women’s golf coach — Richard Watkins. He couldn’t wait to share the news with his old golfing buddy.

“Doc wasn’t playing much golf by then — his health was declining — but he still liked to hang out at Blair Park,” Watkins recalls. “So I met him out at Blair one day, and I gave him an A&T golf shirt and a couple dozen balls with the A&T logo. He was so excited. It was like, we finally did what you’ve been wanting to do for the last 40 years.”

Tillman died in 2019, just a few years after A&T’s golf team was established.

Watkins is retired now, you can still find him out on the golf course often in Martinsville. You’ll also occasionally see him at Oak Hollow Golf Course in High Point, where he worked during his college years and still enjoys playing from time to time.

Wherever he plays, though, he’s never forgotten the men who paved the way for him, whether it was professionals like Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder, or the men who integrated Blair Park or Greensboro’s Gillespie Golf Course.

“I have tremendous appreciation for them,” Watkins says.

“In my own little way, I’ve kind of carried what little torch I could carry into some different environments. … I have no idea how many places I’ve been or tournaments I’ve played in where I was the only African American there, whether it be my college years at High Point or some of the times after my college years. But wherever I was, I knew why I was there, and I knew that somebody had fought these battles somewhere else way before me.”

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