CALVIN PEETE’S MISSION . . . THE MASTERS : Winning the Tournament Would Be the Best Revenge

Approaching the first tee for a practice round Wednesday at Augusta National, Calvin Peete was interrupted almost every other step by autograph seekers. Finally, he gave up and was quickly surrounded.

Observing the scene from a distance was a group of middle-aged golf fans.

“You never would have seen that 10 years ago,” one of them said, alluding to the popularity of a black golfer in a Southern society setting.

He was probably right. When Lee Elder broke the Masters color barrier in 1975, his presence was a curiosity. There was interest in him, but it wasn’t because anyone gave him a chance to win. It was because he had a chance to play.

Joining the PGA Tour a year later, Peete never had to think about not being allowed to play here. Rule changes in 1971 gave automatic invitations to players who qualified.

All Peete had to do was qualify, which he did for the first time in 1980 and has done every year since.

About to begin his sixth Masters as one of 77 players teeing off today, he has emerged as a standout among outstanding players and is considered a legitimate contender here.

He has won nine tournaments since 1982, more than any other player in that time. He went over $1 million in career earnings last year and is the tour’s second-leading money winner this year with $269,585.

One of four players with two victories this year, he won early in the season at Phoenix, then again two weeks ago in the Tournament Players Championship, which isn’t considered a major tournament by most of the media but is by the players.

In short, he can match his credentials of the last three years with anyone else’s, which, in his mind, has enabled him to transcend a distinction as the best black golfer and become, simply, one of the best golfers.

“That’s been my objective,” he said after his practice round Wednesday. “I’ve passed that stage of wanting to establish myself as an excellent black player. I want to be recognized as a professional golfer.

“I’m not out here playing against blacks only. I’m playing against professionals, and I’m one of them. Period.”

His story is one of the most remarkable in all of sports, particularly considering that golf is still basically a country club endeavor.

In a sport where most of the players seem to be young, blond and college-educated, Peete, 41, is none of those.

One of 18 children on a Florida farm, he dropped out of school after the eighth grade and went to work for $10 a day in the fields.

Several years later, in 1966, he was making $250 to $300 a week selling clothes and jewelry to migrant workers on the East Coast when some friends tricked him into playing golf with them by telling him they were taking him to a clambake.

“I hit all the fairways, but I never got the ball off the ground,” he said.

He was hooked, but he didn’t begin to take the game seriously until a few years later, when he watched on television as Jack Nicklaus and Elder met in a playoff at the American Golf event at Akron, Ohio.

“That really inspired me, a black man going against the greatest player of all time,” Peete said.

After failing in two attempts to qualify for the tour, he earned his PGA card in 1975, at 32. He won for the first time in 1979, earning an invitation to the 1980 Masters.

That didn’t mean much to a man who had never even heard of the Masters until he joined the professional tour.

He drove that point home to the people here in 1983, when he said the Masters meant no more to him than the Greater Milwaukee Open.

That he said that after shooting a third-round 87, and dropping from contention into oblivion, made some people wonder if he was taking out his frustration on the Masters tradition.

He had a few choice words that day for tradition.

“Tradition, they can keep it,” he said. “Asking a black man about the tradition of the Masters is like asking if he enjoyed his forefathers being slaves.”

Tradition evened the score the next day, when Peete had to play the final round by himself. It is the rule here that the last man in the field, a distinction Peete had earned for himself with the 87, is not assigned a playing partner.

Again, Peete had the last word.

Beginning the round, he tipped his cap to imaginary partners and said, “Gentlemen, play well.”

If Peete still feels bitterness toward the Masters, he hides it well. Perhaps that is because he was encouraged by his performance here last year.

Peete is the most accurate player on the tour, seldom missing a fairway.

“Lee Trevino used to be the measuring stick for guys who hit the ball straight, but now it’s Calvin Peete,” Hubert Green said this week.

Asked how he would like to be remembered, Peete said: “As the straightest ball hitter in the world.”

But the Masters doesn’t reward straight hitters as much as it does those who can drive the ball across the state line into South Carolina.

Still, after an opening-round 79 last year, he finished the next three rounds at 10 under par.

That was before he had begun his rigid physical-conditioning program of stretching, jogging and lifting weights, which has strengthened his legs and added 10 to 15 yards to his drives. That should help this week.

While other players are contemplating retirement at 41, Peete said this week he hasn’t reached his peak.

“I’m still learning new shots,” he said.

As a result of his success, reporters no longer treat him as a novelty.

There are fewer questions about the two half-carat diamonds he used to wear in his front teeth. (He had the diamonds implanted into a ring in 1980.) There are fewer questions about his crooked left arm, which he broke in a fall from a tree as a child. There are more questions about his golf game.

He also has had galleries during practice rounds this week to match those of Nicklaus and Tom Watson.

“They’ve got me thinking I’m Arnold Palmer,” he said of his fans’ support.

So Peete has made peace with the Masters.

“Most of the problems were before my time,” he said. “Since I’ve been coming here, I’ve been treated as a professional, not as a black professional or as a minority professional.

“I judge people by the way they treat me, not the way they treat anyone else.”

When told later of Peete’s remarks, his caddy, Dolphus (Golf Ball) Hull, smiled knowingly, as if he and Peete had had this conversation before.

“There’s still an attitude here,” he said. “But Calvin’s decided he can’t do anything about it by talking about the past. But he might do something about it if he wins the thing. That’s what he wants now--to join the club by winning the tournament.”