Pete McDaniel begins his account of the long struggle of African-Americans to find acceptance in the game of golf with Tiger Woods and his triumphant win at the 1997 Masters. The setting was symbolically perfect, because even as more American courses had finally become open to black players – however unwillingly in some cases where courts had intervened – the private Augusta National GC had been a holdout until 1975, when Lee Elder had finally been invited to play in the Masters.

As Woods approached the first tee for his Sunday round, Elder – on the course as a spectator – stepped from the crowd and said, “Good luck.”

Woods understood the good wishes, of course, but also the context. “I knew exactly what he meant,” he said later. “That’s when pride and joy just swelled up inside of me.”

Other chapters in “Uneven Lies: The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf” (The American Golfer, $50), McDaniel’s fine history of a shameful era in golf,  inspire something less than pride or joy. “Uneven Lies,” one of two books upon which the recent Golf Channel documentary “Uneven Fairways” was based, shows that prejudice and discrimination were part of golf from its earliest days in this country. When the second U.S. Open was played in 1894  some golfers bitterly objected to the presence of a black golfer, John Shippen, and a Native American, Oscar Bunn. Eventually they were allowed to play, in part, according to some accounts, because officials assuaged Shippen’s opponents by claiming he was at least part Shinnecock Indian – “a less distasteful racial cocktail.”

McDaniel, a senior writer for Golf Digest and chronicler of Tiger Woods’ career, introduces readers to the game’s “shadow people,” the African-American caddies, course workers and service people who made it possible for white Americans to enjoy the game. Some of those profiled will be familiar names – Herman Mitchell, who was a longtime caddie for, and friend of, Lee Trevino; Carl Jackson, the Masters caddie who comforted a sobbing Ben Crenshaw after his late-career win; and golfers who were able to push through the color line to find success on manicured fairways, including Jim Dent, Jim Thorpe, Elder, Charlie Sifford, Calvin Peete and more.

That they were ultimately successful should not gloss over the struggles and insults they were forced to endure. USGA tournaments were long hostile to black golfers, who finally established their own golf organizations in order to host tournaments in which they could compete, and the PGA did not drop its “Caucasian-only clause” until 1961, and only then under pressure. Not for nothing was Sifford’s autobiography called “Just Let Me Play.”

When Woods won that Masters he said in his victory speech that he was the first to win, but not the pioneer. “Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Teddy Rhodes, those guys paved the way for me,” he said. “If it wasn’t for them, I might not have had the chance to play here.”

— Dennis McCann