Black lawyer says golf club asked her group to leave on slow-play pretext
A black lawyer claims white officials at a golf club discriminated against her group of five black women golfers by asking the women to leave based on a slow-golfing pretext and then calling police.
The lawyer, Sandra Thompson, is a solo practitioner in York, Pennsylvania, who is president of the York Chapter of the York NAACP, the Legal Intelligencer reports. She posted about her April 21 experience on Facebook and posted a video of part of the confrontation on YouTube. The York Daily Record, the Washington Post and the New York Times have reports on the incident.
Thompson says white club officials at the Grandview Golf Club in York said her group was golfing too slowly even though it wasn’t true. “Many of us were having great drive days. We were slamming that ball,” she told the New York Times. A member of the group behind Thompson’s group told the York Daily Record that the women kept pace and “not one time, from [hole] one to nine, did we catch up with those ladies.”
The women weren’t able to start until about an hour past their tee time because of a frost delay, Thompson says. The group had asked permission for all five to golf, since that is not the norm, and were given the go-ahead.
The group refused to leave at the second hole despite a request by a man who identified himself as the club owner. After nine holes, three members of the group left. Thompson and the other remaining member of the group took a break, and told the group behind them to skip ahead. But the other golfers didn’t want to skip because they wanted a beer break, Thompson said.
At the tenth hole, Thompson and her friend were again asked to leave. They refused. Police were called, but they made no arrests.
Golf club co-owner JJ Chronister later apologized. But in a statement on Monday, the club says that, in the past, “Players who have not followed the rules, specifically pace of play, have voluntarily left at our request as our scorecard states. In this instance, the members refused to leave so we called police to ensure an amicable result. … During the second conversation we asked members to leave as per our policy noted on the scorecard, voices escalated, and police were called to ensure an amicable resolution.”
