By Allison Bourne-Vanneck, Special to Golf.com
At Argyle Country Club in the rolling hills of Silver Spring, Md., the two
golfers preparing to tee off aren't wearing aviator sunglasses and they no longer
sport afros.
There's no sight of the persimmon Wilson Staff drivers that used to be "clutch,"
and the fitted white cotton Princeton golf shirts they once wore have been replaced
with more colorful ones in, well, different sizes.
After all, it's no longer 1975.
On this brisk autumn day, no Ivy League opponents wait to be taken down, and
Princeton Coach Bill Quackenbush is not urging on the two black players who
broke the color barrier in Ivy League golf as surely as other athletes had done
in other sports much earlier.
But that was more than three decades ago. Today, Rick Hyde (Princeton '75) and
Burton Smith (Princeton '77) are simply two guys playing the game they love,
the game they've always loved.
Although it has been 33 years, Princeton golf has never entirely left Hyde and
Smith, nor should it. While there have been recent stories written about Andia
Winslow, an African American golfer at Yale (class of 2004), little has been
written about Hyde and Smith, who were pioneers before Winslow was born.
To read the rest of Allison Bourne-Vanneck's feature as found on Golf.com,
please click here.
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