He was barred from competing — so he taught a major champ instead

In the late Forties, a future British Open champion named Tony Lema began taking classes.

His teacher? A person named Lucious Bateman.

Lema was a teenager and a reside wire, certainly one of 4 youngsters raised by a widowed mother in a modest dwelling in Oakland, Calif.

Bateman was a soft-spoken transplant from the South who, in one other period, may need been a champion himself.

This was a benighted time in golf, rife with coloration boundaries. The PGA Tour had a Caucasian-only clause.

Bateman was the son of sharecroppers. Born in Louisiana, in 1906, he grew up in Biloxi, Miss. and realized the sport whereas working at a native lodge and golf membership, the place he earned taking part in privileges and set a course document. He possessed, by all accounts, Tour-level expertise. But as a Black man he was blocked from any prospects of competing for a dwelling, so he took to educating the sport instead. 

In Oakland, the place he settled after serving within the Air Force throughout World War II, Bateman assumed a publish at Airway Fairways, a bare-bones driving vary throughout from the Oakland Airport, the place a Hilton lodge stands at this time. Hired largely as a handyman, he morphed into a full-time teacher, although what he taught prolonged past the swing.

To Lema, Bateman turned a mentor and a father determine, a guiding gentle for a rambunctious boy who wanted assist following the straight and slender. It was a position he stuffed for a lot of Lema’s friends.

“Many kids might have made jails instead of pars and birdies if it hadn’t been for Loosh,” Lema as soon as stated. 

As with Kevin Bacon, you possibly can play a energetic recreation of six-degrees of Lucious Bateman. Along with Lema, his steady of juniors included John McMullen, John Whitt, and the brothers Dick and John Lotz, all of whom went on to win on Tour. Other Bateman college students made their mark as membership execs. Among them: Randy Hertzberg, an esteemed Bay Area teacher, and Gary Plato, a Northern California PGA Hall of Famer who taught the likes of Roger Maltbie and the LPGA stalwarts Dana Laughlin and Debbie Hall. 

Around Northern California, Bateman’s most achieved college students turned referred to as Bateman’s Boys. But his work was not restricted to a comfortable interior circle. His impression rippled outward. It endures at this time.

“He helped so many kids, not just with their golf but with life lessons, which they in turn have passed on,” says Plato, the previous longtime head professional at San Jose Country Club. “He was like a one-man First Tee program.”

He taught adults, too. At $3.50 per session, Bateman’s schedule was stacked. But there was at all times room for youths, who received their classes free. When kids dropped by the vary, Bateman usually paid them to shag balls. Invariably, he wound up sharing insights.

Like all the most effective instructors, he had a eager eye and a knack for communication. His philosophy was easy. He favored a brief backswing, palms no greater than the shoulders on the high, and insisted on earnest effort.

“When I first met him, I would swing out of my shoes on every shot, trying to kill it,” says three-time Tour winner Dick Lotz, who alongside along with his older brother, John, began choosing balls at Airway Fairways in his early teenagers. “Lucious told me, Dick, you’re not old enough to swing the big swing. He’d send me to the putting green to chip and putt for three hours. The fact that I developed a pretty good short game, I owe that to him.”

Bateman, who by no means married and had no youngsters of his personal, lived along with his sister in a dwelling he purchased for her on the avenues in Oakland’s outer reaches. He labored six days a week. On Fridays, he pegged it, usually bringing college students to play with him. Though many non-public golf equipment prolonged entry to him, setting foot on segregated programs didn’t sit proper with Bateman. He caught to the munis. The place he performed as steadily as any was the power identified at this time as Corica Park, on the island metropolis of Alameda, neighboring Oakland. 

After Bateman’s dying, in 1972, the vary at Corica was renamed in his honor, and a plaque put in to memorialize him. Now, one other tribute at Corica is in retailer.

On Wednesday, within the professional store beside the vary, an exhibit dedicated to Bateman will open, showcasing photographs, awards and different memorabilia from his profession. In life, Bateman by no means sought consideration, however recognition discovered him, gathering pressure in newer years. In 2008, the California Golf Writers Association bestowed him with Golden State Award, the group’s highest honor. That similar 12 months, Bateman was additionally granted honorary membership into the Northern California PGA. He has since been inducted into each the National African American Golf Hall of Fame and the Northern California Golf Association Hall of Fame, amongst different shrines to the sport.

Bateman’s life has impressed a documentary and a characteristic movie, each of that are within the works. Though particulars of these tasks are nonetheless beneath wraps, each are additionally certain to the touch on Bateman’s ties to his most well-known pupil, Lema, who died in a aircraft crash, in 1966, nonetheless in his taking part in prime.

Two years previous to his dying, Lema gained the British Open, on the Old Course in St. Andrews, 5 pictures away from runner-up Jack Nicklaus. On his return to California, certainly one of Lema’s first stops with the Claret Jug was Airway Fairways.

His previous instructor was on the vary, as ever. So was Bateman’s pupil, Plato, who snapped what stays one of many few identified photographs of Bateman and Lema collectively. In the image, which is able to dangle within the exhibit at Corica, Bateman is in a golf stance, gripping a fairway wooden with Lema crouched behind him within the position of teacher: a staged picture that captures the reality of their connection in reverse.

With help from Corica Park, the Bateman is exhibited is being mounted by the Lucious Bateman Foundation, a non-profit that furthers the legacy of its namesake by supporting junior golf in Northern California.

This is a part of our Muni Mondays sequence spotlighting tales from municipal programs.

Josh Sens

Golf.com Contributor

A golf, meals and journey author, Josh Sens has been a GOLF Magazine contributor since 2004 and now contributes throughout all of GOLF’s platforms. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Sportswriting. He can be the co-author, with Sammy Hagar, of Are We Having Any Fun Yet: the Cooking and Partying Handbook.