An African-American Titanic Thompson (historical help needed)

[HoosBadg]

I am on a mission of historical discovery, and I am looking for some help in pinning down the details of an experience from decades ago.  In the last couple of years there has been a lot of deserved attention on golf and African-American participation; from Lee Elder being an honorary starter at the Masters, to the new Advocates Pro Golf Association, to Fred Perpal current president of the USGA.  These events and others triggered a recollection from nearly four decades ago, when sometime in the mid 80s I attended a golf event at the South Bend Country Club where an African American who played cross-handed and was reputed to be a golf hustler was paired with the talented son of a local business legend.  I think the event was a U.S. Open local qualifier but I am just not sure.  I don’t think I would have been playing hooky from work if this was a lesser event.  That said, it also could have been a qualifier for the U.S. Amateur, Western Open or Western Amateur.  SBCC had a prior relationship with the WGA and actually hosted the Western Open in 1935.  So, I’m looking for help in pinning down the event and this golfer.  Here are some recollections/details:

 

As a sales guy in the 80s it was pretty easy to skip out for an afternoon of golf or in this case, watching golf.  When I arrived at SBCC I learned that there was this interesting if unlikely pairing and decided to follow the group.  As I recall there were maybe 40-50 people following this pairing which seemed large for this kind of competition.  U.S. Open qualifying is not really an event with a winner, that might draw a larger crowd, and it seemed that most of the people attending were either family members of the players or just knowledgeable golfers.  There was a lot of speculation about this African-American golfer.  I don’t recall his name but I think it was rather ordinary like Henry Jones or Harold Brown. He was a pretty big man.  I am 6’3” and this guy was not quite as tall as me but he was physically imposing and had massive hands and forearms. He wasn’t a young guy, I would guess mid-forties and absolutely pounded the ball, which was remarkable since he did it cross-handed.  He was paired with an accomplished amateur named Terry Decio who was the son of Arthur Decio who created the manufactured housing/mobile home industry in nearby Elkhart Indiana.  In fact, Arthur was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1965.

 

According to the gallery chatter Henry/Harold wasn’t a local and no one had ever seen him until the summer before.  It was said that he met a local woman and was living with her.  He had come from the South, and someone thought he might have been a sharecropper or did other hard work, explaining his imposing frame. A racist stereotype to be sure, but that’s what was being said.  I hypothesized that he taught himself golf, and that maybe he was left-handed and didn’t have access to left-handed clubs when learning the game, so he just went left hand low.  Whether any of this was true is anyone’s guess.  Some aspects of the stories though are less speculative. After the event I heard from a couple of golf buddies that he had been showing up at local muni-courses, Elbel Park GC and Erskine Park GC, for maybe a year before and was engaged in a little hustling.  If he was a hustler, the opportunities to earn would have been limited by the venues.  The big money games would have been at the private clubs like Morris Park CC (where I caddied as a kid), South Bend CC and a few others, and I doubt he would have had access to those tracks.  But a black guy playing cross-handed looking for a little action, well he probably cleaned up - that is until the word got out, because a guy like that won’t go unnoticed for long.  Maybe that is why he played in this event – the cat was out of the bag.

 

I don’t remember much about the round these guys played other than Henry/Harold was about 30 yards longer than Terry.   Terry was a country club kid and it seemed as though Henry/Harold’s play unsettled him.  Terry was doing that whole 80s golf smoking thing a la Fuzzy Zoeller and John Mahaffey firing up a cigarette with regularity.  I recall leaving before play had finished so I have no idea what the outcomes were for either golfer, like whether they made it to the next level of qualifying (assuming this was a U.S. Open qualifier).   There were accounts of Henry/Harold being seen playing that summer but by the next spring he was not heard of again around Northern Indiana.  In doing a little research I have learned that several notable African-American pro golfers like Jim Thorpe, Calvin Peete and others have a hustling history. 

 

So, does my story prompt any memories of Henry/Harold?

 

[PJE]

https://africanamericangolfersdigest.com/charlie-owens-the-man-from-florida/
 

Charlie Owens played cross handed and he was 6’2” or 6’3”.
He was a good player.

(There’s a bunch of information about him on Google. ) 

Perhaps he’s the golfer you saw? 

[fronesis]

I too was assuming you were talking about Charlie Owens. It seems unlikely there was another tall, talented, African-American, cross-handed golfer active in the 1980s.
(Unless there’s a cross-handed movement from back then that I’ve never heard of). 

[NevinW]

I'm not sure that the OP is talking about Charlie Owens, but I saw Owens play once in Tucson, Arizona when I was young.  That cross-handed swing impressed me with the way he struck the ball.  

[HoosBadg]

PJE, fronesis and NevinW,

 

Thank you for the responses.  I sent an email to the South Bend Country Club asking if they have any records from back in the 80s that might help and all I got was crickets - very disappointing, but not surprising.  It's clear that SBCC is not the institution it was 40 years ago. Heck, they probably had a club historian back then.  I visited their website and it looks like they have a staff of about three people.  They're probably facing the problems many country clubs have been facing for a while now: better courses that are open to the public (Notre Dame's Ben Crenshaw designed Warren Course for example),  no silly membership dues or faux elite exclusivity, etc.  Now they're peddling the place as wedding venue.  That wouldn't have happened back then.  But I digress.  

 

I have found Terry Decio on LinkedIn and I think I will try to message him.  Also, I watched a YouTube video of Charlie's swing and noticed that his daughter, Jennifer had responded in the Comments.  I also had a thought that if the event was a U.S. Open qualifier that maybe he wasn't living in South Bend but had simply traveled there to play.  That's not uncommon even today.  If that was the case, then all the speculation about him was just that - speculation .  Or more precisely, really, really bad speculation.  

 

Thanks again 

[jonsnow]

Did one of the Thorpe brothers play cross-handed?

[golferdude54]

Sam Snead mentioned in his “Slammin’ Sam” autobiography that he played with this African-American golfer in high school who could hit it a lot further than him and outplay him.
 

He never knew what happened to him past high school; perhaps being in Virginia/West Virginia in the 1920s was just the wrong place at the wrong time.

[HoosBadg]

I wasn't aware that he had a brother who played professionally, although according to Wikipedia Jim had 11 siblings. Jim's father was course superintendent, so it wouldn't be a surprise that he has a brother who played.  Cross-handed though - I have no idea.