Access to golf in Sarasota is no longer a black and white matter

Accessibility to golf in an area beset with private country clubs can be challenging enough, even more so for Black golfers, even as recently as the 1980s.

That’s when Ken Spaulding’s parents, E.G. and Teena, started making regular trips from the East Coast of Florida to Sarasota specifically because of Bobby Jones Golf Club and, as a municipal golf course complex, its policy of racial inclusion. 

Courtesy image

“One of my dad's friends, said, ‘You've got to come over here. It's really nice,’” Spaulding said. “He did, and he stayed. They bought a house in 1995, but they were coming for like eight years before that.

“They were both golfers and they bought this place that I'm sitting in now because it was within the city limits. It was a city golf course, and they had a yearly pass you could buy, so it was very convenient.”

Spaulding, 78, said the course was integrated early on — to a point. It was in February 1959, he said, when caddies received permission to play nine holes after 4 p.m.

“When my parents got here, there was a similar situation where they couldn't get a tee time before noon,” Spaulding said. To remedy that, E.G. Spaulding and five friends who played together at the time paid a visit to City Hall to bring the situation to the attention of the city manager.

“They kind of got that straightened out,” Spaulding said. “And that group of six turned into what we have now, which is a group of up to 60. It's a diverse group, actually. It’s a lot of fun, but we had to move away from Bobby Jones when it closed.”

That was in 2020, amid COVID-19 and the regularly evolving plans to rehabilitate the course, eventually settling on a consolidation of the two 18-hole courses into the original Donald Ross 18-hole layout. In the meantime, the “Cleaves Group,” as it is known, relocated its regular outings the nearby Highlands Golf Course at the now-defunct The Meadows Country Club. It now congregates at Tatum Ridge Golf Links, about 6.5 miles to the east of Bobby Jones along Fruitville Road. 

Spaulding said he would like to see the group eventually return to Bobby Jones.

Meanwhile, he said he plays his home course — he lives across Circus Boulevard from the course in the Glen Oaks neighborhood — a couple times per week, free to make a tee time with no racially inspired restrictions.

“Getting tee times is very easy,” Spaulding said. “If you live in the city limits, you can get a tee time two weeks in advance, and the 40% discount you get is huge.”

The staff, he added, makes him feel welcome.

“All of the staff are very professional, very helpful and very friendly,” Spaulding said. “They are a pleasure to work with.”