Gets Real: Jefferson Park Golf Course renamed for legendary Seattle golfer

SEATTLE — A legendary golfer who helped break the color barrier is finally getting his due in his hometown. It’s a new chapter in the story of one of golf’s most accomplished players, you may never have heard of.

Before golfing legend Tiger Woods, there was Bill Wright.

The Franklin High School graduate made history in 1959 as the first African-American to win a national golf championship. But Wright couldn’t turn pro because of the PGA’s ‘Caucasian Only’ rule.

Now, the Beacon Hill golf course where he learned to love the game has been renamed for him.

It is a sport that is centuries old, most often associated with the higher-paying class, who also happened to be mostly white.

But more than a century ago, no matter your race, if golf was your game, you could play here at the Emerald City’s Jefferson Park Golf Course. And this is where the game believed to have been born in Scotland first took hold of Bill Wright.

“When I first met him,” said Joan Ann Liddell, “I thought he was warm, caring, loving, kind, intelligent, articulate. He was the best, just like my husband, Jim.”

Liddell met Wright through her husband, an avid golfer, too.

“And I loved him from the get-go,” she said. “I just adored him. Just his personality. His demeanor.”

Even so, her husband and Wright were barred from playing golf courses almost anywhere else because they weren’t white.

“So, he played a lot here,” Joan said. “I guess it was legal for him.”

“Yeah, they could play,” said Derek Liddell. “But he couldn’t compete in tournaments.”

Wright was Derek Liddell’s godfather.

“So, even though he could see that I’m better than that kid,” Derek said. “He’s the city champion, ‘I can’t compete against him because I don’t have a handicap.’ So, that was when it got serious. And he became a pioneer and an activist, taking on the city of Seattle so that blacks could have a handicap. Not just blacks. All non-white races could have a handicap to compete in tournaments.”

As Wright himself tells it, in an old U.S. Golf Association video, both his father and mother loved golf and passed their passion on to him.

“All of the schools throughout Seattle, they had a championship,” Wright said. “And I won that.”

In Portland, he got a handicap, a numerical calculation of a golfer’s skill level. So, in 1959, he was able to compete in the USGA’s Amateur Championship game.

“I birdied the very first two holes,” remembered Wright. “After those I played good the whole rest of the round. And I won.”

Making history, besides, being the first African-American ever to win.

“I felt super,” Wright said. “I felt good that I got there and won. When I got home, there were about thirty or forty people there. A whole group of black golfers. My victory in 1959 was the best thing that happened to me in my life.”

Bill Wright died in 2021 when he was 84 years old.

He did not live to see what could be the greatest honor of all: the culmination of a years-long effort by the Beacon Hill Council and Fir State Golf Club where he honed his game, renamed for him.

On a warm Saturday in July, the Jefferson Park Golf Course became the Bill Wright Golf Course.

Longtime Fir State Golf Club member Bob Woodard was asked why it was important that the golf course bear Bill Wright’s name.

“He earned it,” Woodard said.

He helped make it so.

“It’s time,” he said. “It’s past time. And this is one of the steps along the way.”

A step toward enshrining golf as a game for all.

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