On a Monday in October, 1945, a woman named Lillian sent a postcard from the Sedgefield Inn to her dear friend Esther Olson. She told her how enjoyable the weather had been and how grateful she was to hear from her long-distance friend.
By the time that postcard was mailed, the inn had already been a local treasure and regional tourism draw for decades. It would go on to be a landmark of both sports and Civil Rights, now celebrating its 100th year.
Sedgefield began as approximately 3,660 acres of land between Greensboro and High Point. John Blackwell Cobb, vice president of the American Tobacco Company, developed it as a fox hunting preserve near his farm, naming it Sedgefield for the abundant sedge grasses there. The Sedgefield Hunt Club gained national renown, but Cobb did not live to see it expand to its greatest acclaim.
When Cobb died in 1923, the estate was left to his daughters, Mary Gilmour and Lucy Hill. While they didn’t keep the land in the family, they knew its value.
Sherry Teal is a historical researcher who worked on projects with the North Carolina Department of Transportation. She recently completed a project on The Sedgefield Inn.
“Those two [Cobb] sisters, they drove a hard bargain,” Teal told The Assembly. “They weren’t just ladies with garden clubs and such. They knew their business.”
The sisters sold the property to Alexander Worth McAlister, one of the founders of the Worth Wharton Real Estate and Investment Company. That firm, the first to be established in Greensboro after the Civil War, would become the Pilot Life Insurance Company. Insurance became so important an industry in Greensboro that it was known as the “Hartford of the South” — and its white-collar executives wanted their own country club.
McAlister admired Moore County’s Pinehurst, considered by many to be the birthplace of American golf. His Southern Real Estate Company hired the great Scottish designer of that course, Donald Ross, to build a course that could serve not just as the heart of a resort but a larger, self-sufficient community.
Together, McAlister and Ross transformed and expanded the inn from 1924 to 1926, when the first of two planned courses at Sedgefield opened. The natural beauty of the area, along with the inn’s rustic wood interiors and echoes of the Scottish Highlands, made it a roaring 20s destination.
Historic Moments, Slow Progress
“That was a fascinating moment in history to me, the 1920s,” Teal said. “The glitz and glamour behind the beginning of the film industry, all of that just wrapped together. The Great Gatsby kind of story, and it really unfolded in Sedgefield.”
Plans for greater expansion, including a second course, were halted by the Great Depression. Sedgefield would become its own unincorporated community, independent of Greensboro and High Point, but it would take nearly a decade for professional golf to take Sedgefield to the next level.
Historic Moments, Slow Progress
In 1938, the Greater Greensboro Open premiered, becoming the 7th event on the PGA Tour. The first event was held at both Sedgefield and Starmount Forest Country Club, six miles away. Golf great Sam Snead, then just 25-years-old, was its first winner.
Sedgefield became the exclusive home of the GGO in 1961—but that year’s event was fraught with controversy.
The Civil Rights movement was in full swing across America, tearing down Jim Crow-era barriers and challenging longstanding biases.
In 1955, six Black men defiantly played a historic round of golf at the whites-only public course at Greensboro’s Gillespie Park. They were arrested for trespassing. One of those men, Dr. George Simkins Jr., would lead the Greensboro branch of the NAACP for a quarter century.
In 1960, four students from N.C. A&T State University kicked off the famous Woolworth sit-in downtown to fight racial segregation.
The young members of Greensboro’s chapter of the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees) were founders and organizers of the Greater Greensboro Open. A year after the sit-ins, they had the opportunity to use the city’s high-profile golf event to make an important political statement. Simkins challenged the group to invite the PGA’s first black pro, Charlie Sifford, to play in the tournament. They did—and eventually got the then whites-only Sedgefield Country Club to agree. Hecklers had to be ejected from the event.
“He was playing in a very ‘pressure cooker’environment for sports,” Teal said. “The way that he handled himself, that was such an amazing story and an amazing achievement.”
While Sifford didn’t win the tournament, his invitation was a landmark moment for Civil Rights in one of the most exclusive and least diverse sports and in the evolution of the PGA. Sifford was not allowed to eat at the club’s buffet or to use its main entrance, but his groundbreaking appearance would inspire Black golfers for generations and make an impression on young white onlookers, including future Greensboro Mayor Jim Melvin. The episode would be cited by the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office in arguing for the club’s eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places.
Permanent change, however, was still decades away. While the “Greensboro Six” helped integrate all of the city’s public golf courses, the area’s private clubs and courses didn’t follow suit. When Sifford returned in 1969, he was again heckled and pelted with racial slurs. PGA staff had to call the police. Sedgefield did not officially integrate until 1991, a year after Augusta National Golf Club admitted its first Black member.
The Sifford story and Sedgefield’s glacial change thereafter represent the historic tension that is at the heart of Greensboro’s dual identity as a city slow to evolve but home to communities that continue to push for change. The city didn’t fully integrate its public schools until 1971, said John Swaine, CEO of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum.
“Greensboro is known as a progressive town, and I wrestle with that,” Swaine said. “You’re one of the last [cities] to integrate.”
Sedgefield’s Modern Challenge
Sedgefield’s signature golf tournament would undergo a series of sponsor-related name changes from 1987 to 2007, when it became the Wyndham Championship.
As the course and its clubhouse turn 100 this year, its biggest event faces a new challenge.
The PGA Tour recently announced changes to its structure. Starting in 2028, there will be two separate series—the PGA Tour Championship Series and the PGA Tour Challenger Series. The Championship Series will be more prestigious, with its lowest-ranked players being relegated to the Challenger Series. Championship Series events will also have a higher purse, a minimum of $20 million. The lesser Challenger Series events will have a minimum purse of $4 million.
The total purse at last year’s Wyndham Championship was just $8.2 million—well shy of Championship Series status.
Should the Wyndham fall into the second tier, it could be skipped by some of golf’s biggest names. Securing high-dollar sponsorships could become difficult.
Late last month, the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated $40 million to prevent that, trying to keep the event—and its economic impact—in Greensboro.
“I think this is an incentive like the state gives money for other things like Toyota and Boom,” N.C. Sen. Gladys Robinson told The Triad Business Journal.
While organizers say they’re confident the Wyndham will maintain its status and continue its tradition as one of the PGA Tour’s oldest stops, the environment is becoming more competitive. Far larger and more prosperous cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle are looking for their own top-tier events on the tour schedule.
A century on, Sedgefield’s future remains to be seen.
