Via YouTube, a look at how boxer Joe Louis changed golf forever:

Joe Louis had retired from boxing by 1952. He was age 38. The fight game wasn’t the only sport where Louis excelled. He was a 2 handicap golfer. When he wanted to compete in the San Diego Open that year, an event sponsored by the Professional Golfers Association, the PGA president Horton Smith denied his entry into the field of golfers.

Joe Louis knew how to fight, and he entered the fray by speaking out to the press about this public humiliation and injustice.

“This is the last major sport in America in which Negroes are barred,” he told THE LOS ANGELES SENTINEL.

“I want people to know what the PGA is,” Louis said to THE NEW YORK TIMES. “We’ve got another Hitler to get by.”

“It’s about time that it is brought out into the open,” he told the LOS ANGELES TIMES.

Another trail blazer and friend, Jackie Robinson, who crashed the color barrier in the sport of baseball, sent messages of support to encourage Louis in his fight. And he won the first round. The PGA was being humiliated in the press because the campaign of Joe Louis, long a national hero for his historic triumph over the face of the supposed German master race Max Schmeling  in the ring, had aroused overwhelming public support

On January 17, 1952, with the help of a sponsor’s exemption, and because he was an amateur, Joe Louis became the first golfer to compete in a major PGA sanctioned event. His opening round was a four over par 76.