“I’m not talking,” Elder told them. “Every time I talk, I get into trouble.”

The golf world had been waiting for Elder’s arrival at the Masters. No Black golfer had ever played the tournament before, and by the early 1970s, some were beginning to wonder whether one ever would.

The revered club, built on a plantation and at that point accepting only White members, was swathed in tradition, from the shallow-rooted azaleas to the deep-rooted racial divisions. One quote oft-attributed to the club’s co-founder and longtime chairman, Clifford Roberts — albeit with unclear origins and uncertain veracity — went, “As long as I’m alive, all the golfers will be White, and all the caddies will be Black.”

By 1975, Roberts was still alive and the green jackets and White traditionalists in Augusta resisted change, even as pressure intensified, including from a group of congressmen who had pleaded with the club to further open its doors.

The Masters always has been an invitation-only tournament, and though there were accomplished Black golfers before Elder, none was ever summoned to compete in the most prestigious tournament of them all. But officials had tweaked their rules, granting a spot in the field to anyone who won a PGA Tour event, and Elder seized the opportunity.

In May 1974, at the Monsanto Open in Pensacola, Florida, he defeated Peter Oosterhuis in a sudden-death playoff. Oosterhuis took a golf cart to the clubhouse; Elder had to be escorted by a police car to ensure his safety. The death threats already had started coming in, and Elder’s victory ceremony was moved indoors, away from the public.

With his Masters invite formalized, over the next 11 months, the threats, the hate mail and the concerns intensified. In Augusta, he made sure to have bodyguards nearby. He rented two houses and a hotel room, so no one could be certain where he was staying. And his meals were all prepared by the kitchen staff at Paine College, a historically Black school in town.

Elder didn’t want a circus. He just hoped to compete, to show he belonged. Stepping out of the car and toward the imposing white clubhouse, his wife, Rose, explained to reporters: “He has been talking for 52 weeks. He is here to play a tournament. All he asks is to be left alone for this week.”

There would be no hiding, though, not with the world tuned in to see one of the last color barriers in American sports finally crossed. Elder and Rose disappeared into the building, prepared to usher in a new era for the storied club.

Tuesday

The next day Elder hit the course for a practice round, in which he shot a respectable 1-under-par 71. He seemed to realize there was no escaping the extra attention, so after his round, Elder asked Augusta National officials whether they could help arrange a news conference. Get it all out of the way at once, he figured. As he fielded questions from about 100 reporters, he smoked a cigarette and sipped beer from a paper cup.

Are athletes like you, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson representing yourselves or your race?

“Lee Elder is playing for Lee and Rose Elder,” the golfer told them. “I know people are rooting for me, but I don’t think they’re looking for me to be a saint or something. I don’t feel I have to play well to keep from embarrassing them or myself.”

What does it feel like being a rookie in this tournament?

“Actually, I feel like a veteran. I’ve had four practice rounds: a 74 last fall, two where I didn’t keep score and today’s 71.”

The 1975 Masters was not Elder’s first time at Augusta National — and he wasn’t the first Black golfer to play the course. He had been invited the previous October by club member J. Paul Austin, a longtime Coca-Cola executive. Elder felt good about his practice round — “This is the type of course I feel I can win on” — and even shook Roberts’s hand that day, thanking the man who was most responsible for the policies that had kept Black players out of the tournament in the first place.

Years later, Elder would tell the Augusta Chronicle that he wasn’t certain what to make of Roberts and their brief interactions. “He tried to show a presence of welcome,” the golfer explained, “but I know deep down he didn’t care about opening his arms up to me and saying the things that he would have liked to have said.”

“Our only quarrel with Lee,” Roberts told a Washington Post reporter at the time, “is that he didn’t qualify sooner. There’s been too much conversation about not having a Black golfer in the Masters. As you know, that’s our bad luck.”

Few others ascribed it to luck. In 1969, Jim Murray, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, wrote: “The Masters is as white as the Ku Klux Klan. Everybody in it can ride in the front of the bus.”

The Masters qualification process at the time was fluid, and past champions could vote to invite any golfer of their choosing. Charlie Sifford, the cigar-chomping, obstinate and outspoken Charlotte native who paved the way for Black golfers such as Elder, had won twice on the PGA Tour, in 1967 and 1969, but he never received an invite. And he never hid his feelings about Augusta’s gatekeepers.

“Lee Elder really saved their a–es in some ways,” said Curt Sampson, author of the book “The Masters: Golf, Money and Power in Augusta, Georgia.” “He was easy to like, easy to talk to. Charlie Sifford, if you put a microphone in front of his face, you don’t know what he’s going to say.”

Roberts shouldered much of the blame for Augusta’s policies. For four decades, he had ruled the club with an iron fist and kept the traditions sacred: green jackets, White golfers and Black caddies among them.

“We excuse people by saying someone’s a product of their time and maybe that’s true enough, but he was an out-and-out racist,” Sampson said in an interview. “The n-word was part of his vocabulary, especially in a joke. Not an enlightened man by modern standards in racial terms.”

In 1971, the club amended its criteria, granting a spot in the Masters to any golfer who won a PGA Tour event the previous year, effectively opening the door for a Black golfer. But there was an outcry for more pathways in.

In 1973, several U.S. congressmen sent Roberts a letter, urging the club to clear the way for Elder to compete. “It is probably time that your regulations be subject to a careful review and reconsideration,” the lawmakers wrote. “Certainly the present form of subtle discrimination taints the image of the tourney and brings no credit to the world of professional golf.”

Roberts was unmoved. Allowing Elder to play without properly earning his way “would be practicing discrimination in reverse,” Roberts said.

For his part, Elder said he wanted “no favors” and hoped to earn his way into the tournament. Before qualifying in 1974, Elder told The Post: “I don’t mind telling you that I want to win one of those tournaments real bad. … But they have their own ground rules, and I have to live with them. That Masters invitation is always in front of me when I play. It’s not pressure; it’s an incentive.”

When Elder won in Pensacola, Roberts followed through on his word, extending Elder a Masters invitation. And 51 weeks later in Augusta, the 81-year-old inflexible club leader sounded almost relieved.

“Believe me, that took a burden off my shoulders and, I think, eliminated the unfortunate label of ‘racism,’” Roberts told reporters. “All that we ever tried to do at the Masters was make it a great tournament involving the cream of the crop. I’m glad Elder qualified, and I’m looking to the day when a Black becomes the Masters champion — and I think one will.”

Still, Roberts bristled at the suggestion of discrimination, boasting that the tournament had allowed Black patrons in the galleries since the inaugural tournament in 1934.

“Our decision then took courage,” Roberts said. “And we never barred a Black from playing. Why, many of our foreign invitees have been blacker than Lee Elder.”

Meeting with reporters in Augusta two days before the opening round, Elder jokingly referred to himself as “the dark horse of the tournament.” He deflected praise, dismissed pressure and declined to make a fuss about his place in the sport’s history books.

“Now, I hope I can go back to playing golf,” he said.

Wednesday

Elder’s historic week was making headlines around the world. Despite his best wishes, there would be no quiet rounds of golf at Augusta National.

“If he gets in a position to do well, the claws will reach out and engulf him,” fellow golfer Lee Trevino told reporters that week. “He won’t have any trouble with the fans, but the press will murder him. This year, he’s just trying to survive. I don’t think he has a prayer of winning because I don’t think he’ll be able to relax and play golf.”

In the Augusta National locker room, with its wall-to-wall green carpeting, Elder shared a locker with Terry Diehl, a fellow Masters first-timer from Rochester, New York. Now 75, Diehl doesn’t recall seeing Elder around the dressing area much.

“Maybe he kept a pair of shoes there,” Diehl said in an interview. “But there were so many people pulling on him, if you wanted to find him, you had to go to the huge oak tree. That’s where he spent most of his time.”

Elder understood the weight of what he was doing, even if he was averse to some of the attention. He had not set out to be a civil rights icon. He was born in Dallas, one of 10 children in a poor household. His father died in Germany during World War II. His mother died three months later. Just 9 at the time, Elder was sent to Los Angeles to live with an aunt.

He picked up a few dollars working as a caddie but didn’t play a full round of golf until he was 16. Making money on the course often meant hustling.

“There were so many bandits that were out there,” Elder told reporters in 2021. “And when I talk about bandits, I’m talking about guys that were real good players that always sat around and waited for somebody to come along. And when they found out that I was a pretty good player, all of them wanted to kind of be partners with me.”

None were more infamous than Titanic Thompson, the legendary golf hustler. Elder would tell friends of Thompson’s ruses and misdeeds, how he would hoodwink some haughty country club hacker by a couple of strokes and then offer to play again double or nothing — but this time left-handed. He didn’t reveal that he was a natural lefty.

“He’d win, of course, and then tell them: ‘I’ll give you one more shot. I’ll bet you can’t even beat my caddie,’” says Diehl, recalling Elder’s story. “Well, who do you think his caddie was? It was Lee Elder, and no one was beating Lee Elder.”

In 1961, Elder joined the United Golf Association tour — a circuit for Black professionals who were barred at the time from the PGA Tour. Elder was in his prime and at one stretch won 18 of 22 events.

The PGA Tour soon changed its rules, and Elder earned his tour card in 1968 — a 34-year-old rookie. He was immediately competitive. Players on tour were mostly welcoming, but the galleries varied. When he was in contention on a weekend, threats often surfaced. At the 1972 Memphis Open, a spectator stole Elder’s ball out of the 15th fairway, and he needed an armed guard for the final round there. (“I still shot 70,” he noted.)

In April 1974, Elder finally broke through at the Monsanto Open. It had never been the kindest tour stop for Black golfers. In 1968, Elder had to change clothes in the parking lot because the Pensacola Country Club refused to allow Black players inside its clubhouse.

By 1975, Elder was 40 years old, still plenty formidable. He was paired at the Masters with a caddie named Henry Brown, a 36-year cabdriver who was skilled on the course and plenty colorful off it.

Brown himself had once shot a 68 at Augusta National, and he had been caddying at the club for two decades.

“I can walk this course backward,” Brown told reporters in Augusta. “I know every blade of grass on it. I am No. 1.”

Brown had a feeling Elder might be the first, so he put in a request to caddie for him nearly two years before Elder actually qualified.

“He’s an inspiration to me and all Black golfers who never thought they had a chance,” he said.

Elder had been hearing some version of that since he won in Pensacola. It made it hard to focus on golf. At tournaments, he would miss Monday and Tuesday practice sessions, juggling various commitments.

“Everyone wanted me to come and speak at banquets, play at exhibitions,” he told the Augusta Chronicle. “I was weighing about 165 pounds when I won [in Pensacola]. By the time I got to the Masters, a year later, I was over 200 pounds. I was on the banquet circuit.”

When he qualified, Elder was overcome by a sense of relief. But then expectations began to build.

“I go to bed thinking about the Masters,” he told the Associated Press a month before the tournament. “I dream about the Masters. I wake up thinking about the Masters.”

Thursday

On the morning he was set to make history, Elder sat down to a breakfast of bacon, eggs and grits. He had an 11:15 a.m. tee time and arrived at the course about an hour early, wearing green slacks and a green sweater over a green shirt, all slightly different shades.

“Rather than wait until Sunday, I thought I’d better wear it today,” he explained.

There were a handful of reporters gathered around his locker as Elder sipped a 7-Up. A stack of telegrams about two inches thick sat nearby, along with a couple of flower arrangements that had been delivered to the course.

“Memorial bouquet?” someone joked.

“Must be,” Elder said.

He was trying not to let his nerves show, but he absentmindedly put his golf balls in the locker and slipped his watch into his pocket.

“Think I’m nervous?” he said.

He promised the reporters he would be back at his locker to answer their questions after his round. “We’ll all have a drink,” he said.

After a short visit to the putting green, Elder arrived at the first tee box. There was polite applause from the gallery. His playing partner, Gene Littler, the former U.S. Open champ and one of the most liked players on tour, grabbed his shoulder. “Good luck,” he said.

Years later, Elder would describe his mindset as he dug his tee into the ground: “Just relax and enjoy the moment. Your life is not going to depend on how well you play. You don’t have to be worrying about carrying anyone on your shoulder. You’re there just on your own. This was a goal that you had set for yourself.”

There was a light mist as Elder pulled back his driver and uncoiled his looping swing, the first Black man to send a ball down the first fairway of the Masters.

As he made his way around the course, a large gallery followed, about 500 people in all, as many as 12 deep at times, according to newspaper accounts. Many wore buttons that said “Good Luck Lee,” and every visit to a tee box or green was cause for celebration, or at least recognition.

Jim Brown, the football Hall of Famer and civil rights activist, was among those behind the ropes, craning his neck to watch each shot.

“The significance of this is not so much for Lee Elder as it is for a concept,” Brown told a Post reporter. “This is important because it helps the concept of people being able to compete and achieve in anything.”

After an opening par, Elder sank a 15-foot birdie putt on No. 2 and appeared to be settling in. But bogeys on Nos. 4 and 8 left him at 37 for the front nine.

On the back, he again posted a pair of bogeys with a birdie on No. 17. In all, he missed three birdie putts within 12 feet in the opening round. “I tried to attack the course, but it fought back at me,” he said afterward.

He was pleased with his 74 but knew he could do better — and probably would need to. As promised, he met with reporters afterward. Beer and cigarette in hand, he answered every question.

“My goal was anything under par, but it didn’t work out,” he said. “Who knows? It might be different tomorrow.”

Friday

After an evening poker game to take his mind off the leader board, Elder awoke the next morning well aware of the stakes. The top 44 players and ties would continue playing into the weekend. Elder began the day tied for 39th.

Paired with tour veteran Miller Barber, Elder would later say he was almost too relaxed when he showed up for his early-afternoon tee time. He posted bogeys on Nos. 2, 3, 7, 8 and 9 — a crippling 40 on the front nine.

The galleries that came to see history Thursday had thinned out by time Elder made the turn Friday. Rose often found herself alone following her husband on the backside of the course. Even before he bogeyed the final two holes, his fate was sealed. Elder posted a six-over 78 and missed the cut by four strokes.

“I did myself in all day,” he’d explain. “… Today, the wind was a factor on a couple of holes. But Lee Elder was the biggest factor.”

Elder said he planned to play much better the following year, and before walking out of the interview room, he told reporters: “See you, fellas. See you down the road.”

Elder didn’t qualify for the 1976 Masters, but he played the tournament five more times, making three cuts. He was a member of the 1979 Ryder Cup team and won three more PGA Tour events and then eight times on the Senior Tour.

Roberts — who died in 1977 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the banks of Ike’s Pond on Augusta National’s par-3 course — was right about one thing: A Black man eventually did win the Masters. Twenty-two years after Elder broke the color barrier, Tiger Woods won his first green jacket. Elder raced to the course that afternoon in 1997 to see the latest torchbearer pump his fist through the air.

After Woods signed his scorecard, he spotted Elder. “Lee,” he yelled, “get over here.” The two embraced, and Woods, then 21, thanked Elder for kicking open the door.

“He was the first,” Woods explained years later. “He was the one that I looked up to. And because of what he did, I was able to play here, which was my dream.”

Elder was invited back to Augusta National in 2021, to serve as an honorary starter, alongside Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. He had been slowed by diabetes by that point and was driven to the first tee in a golf cart. He used a cane to walk and an oxygen tank to help him breathe. Elder did not swing a club that day but received a standing ovation nonetheless.