For Charlie Sifford Jr., the new Cobbs Creek will celebrate his father’s legacy and inspire the next generation
Charlie Sifford, Jr., never played at the Cobbs Creek golf course. He was still a child when his father, PGA-winning legend Charlie Sifford, moved their family across the country to California. But he remembers going there as a boy to watch his father, who considered West Philadelphia’s Cobbs Creek course his home base.
“I remember going out there with dad when he went out to play,” said Sifford. “Cobbs helped him develop that competitive edge he had, that resilience. He wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way of his goal of being a top golfer and playing on a PGA tour.”
Decades later, Sifford said it’s fitting that the Cobbs Creek Foundation’s mission – to restore a historic course, nurture young talent and open doors for local students to explore educational and golfing opportunities – will forever be connected to his father’s legacy.
“Cobbs Creek is a historic place,” Sifford said. “It was a place where people could gather, no matter what color you were, and you could meet, enjoy golf, and not worry about the outside world and all the problems that were going on then. To my father, Cobbs Creek is what made him who he was, which was someone who believed in himself and believed in what he could accomplish.”
Sifford Jr., who lives in Ohio, made golf his life’s work as well as his hobby. He spent much of his career operating a golf course with his father, until the elder Sifford came out of retirement to join a senior tour in the mid-1980s. Charlie Sifford passed away in 2015 at the age of 92.
By then, America had begun to recognize Sifford’s groundbreaking achievements. The first Black golfer to win a PGA Tour event, Sifford is now recognized as a pioneer in the sport. In 2004, Sifford became the first Black player inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. A decade later, then-president Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
But to the younger Sifford, his father was first and foremost a great dad, a loving protector, and a jokester who liked to play pranks and show off his dance moves. Sifford remembers waiting for his father to return home from tournaments, the family not yet knowing in those pre-Internet years if he’d lost or won.
Sifford now understands that his father faced immense discrimination when he became a champion in a historically all-white sport. But Sifford said his father never wanted his family to know how bad things were for him at times.
“The hardest thing for him was when he went back to his home state of North Carolina and got death threats. He was leading the tournament but getting death threats,” Sifford said. “But he would not let anything deter him from his ultimate goal. He had that resilience, and he just wanted to prove that a Black man could be competitive.
“He proved that if you’re given a fair chance to succeed, and you want it bad enough, you can achieve your goals.”
Charlie Sifford met Earl Woods on a golf tour, where the two bonded over their shared history as veterans. When Tiger was born, and then later as his reputation began to grow, the elder Sifford offered his guidance and counsel as Tiger got his career started.
Sifford, Jr. remembers meeting Woods at a tournament in Texas, when Woods was still a young teenager.
“Even then he was hitting shots you wouldn’t expect a kid of his age to be able to hit,” Sifford marveled. “Right then Dad said, ‘This kid is something special.’ He became a fan. He was following Tiger’s career like people were following my father’s career. It was like Tiger was his grandson who he was watching grow up and change the world.”
As Woods grew into adulthood and came into his own as a golf icon, he and Sifford found they shared a unique bond – the experience of having faced resistance, discrimination and hate in a sport that didn’t always welcome them.
“Tiger really appreciated what my father went through, and he realized what my father had to go through was much worse,” Sifford said. “Tiger realized that he was accepted mainly because of his golfing ability, and that my father paved the way.”
The admiration between the two grew so strong over the years that Tiger named his son Charlie – something that the elder Sifford was surprised and honored by.
The Cobbs Creek Foundation announced a partnership with Woods’s TGR Foundation in 2023, and construction of a 30,000-square-foot Learning Lab is underway on the campus. The state-of-the-art building will offer robust educational and college readiness programming for thousands of Philadelphia students each year – complementing Woods’ and TGR Foundation’s mission of empowering students to pursue their passions through education.
Sifford said the Cobbs Creek project will build on the legacies of both Sifford and Woods, and honor them as players and as leaders.
“To see my father recognized as one of the keystones in the advancement in golf for minorities, it’s an honor for us to be involved,” he said. “It shows us that people are recognizing those who fought through adversity to get where we are now.”
The Cobbs Creek project is also a way to carry Sifford’s legacy forward through to young people by introducing them to different career paths, networking, college preparation, jobs and other training.
“Outside of the game of golf, it’s about getting kids exposed to new worlds,” Sifford said. “And that would have made Dad proud.”
To learn more about our partnership with TGR Foundation use this link here.