x
Skip to main content
Golf Logo
InsideGolf Join Now  / Log In
Golf’s ultimate secret legend, Ann Gregory, lived a life of firsts
SHARE
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share by Email
Golf Logo
  • News
    • Latest
      • News
      • Features
      • Shows
      • PGA Tour Schedule
    • Series
      • Tour Confidential
      • Monday Finish
      • Hot Mic
      • Rogers Report
    • Shows
      • The Scoop
      • Subpar
      • Seen & Heard
  • Instruction
    • Game Improvement
      • Driving
      • Approach Shots
      • Bunker Shots
      • Short Game
      • Putting
      • Rules
      • Fitness
    • Series
      • Top 100 Teachers
      • Rules Guy
      • The Etiquetteist
      • Emergency 9
    • Shows
      • Warming Up
      • Play Smart
      • Short Game Chef
      • Pros Teaching Joes
  • Gear
    • Clubs
      • Drivers
      • Irons
      • Hybrids
      • Fairway Woods
      • Wedges
      • Putters
    • Other Gear
      • Balls
      • Shoes
      • Apparel
      • Golf Accessories
    • Series
      • ClubTest
      • Winner’s Bag
    • Shows
      • Fully Equipped
  • Travel & Lifestyle
    • Travel
      • Course Finder
      • Courses
      • Resorts
    • Lifestyle
      • Accessories
      • Celebrities
      • Food
      • Style
      • Betting Advice
    • Shows
      • Super Secrets
      • Destination Golf
  • Shop
    • Shop
      • Clubs
      • Shafts
      • Training Aids
      • Balls
      • Bags
      • Technology
      • Apparel
      • Accessories
      • Our Picks
      • Shop All
    • Collections
      • The GOLF Collection
      • The Birdie Juice Collection
      • The Fully Equipped Collection
      • Shop All
  • Newsletters
    • Sign Up for GOLF’s Newsletters
      • Hot Mic
      • Monday Finish
      • Play Smart
      • Our Picks
      • Top Stories
      • Sign Up for All
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Features
    • Shows
    • PGA Tour Schedule
  • Instruction
    • All Instruction
    • Driving
    • Approach Shots
    • Bunker Shots
    • Short Game
    • Putting
    • Rules
    • Fitness
  • Gear
    • All Gear
    • Drivers
    • Irons
    • Hybrids
    • Fairway Woods
    • Wedges
    • Putters
    • Balls
    • Shoes
    • Apparel
    • Golf Accessories
  • Travel & Lifestyle
    • All Travel
    • All Lifestyle
    • Course Finder
    • Courses
    • Resorts
    • Accessories
    • Celebrities
    • Food
    • Style
    • Betting Advice
  • Series
    • Tour Confidential
    • Monday Finish
    • Hot Mic
    • Rogers Report
    • Rules Guy
    • The Etiquetteist
    • Emergency 9
    • ClubTest
    • Winner’s Bag
  • Shows
    • The Scoop
    • Subpar
    • Seen & Heard
    • Warming Up
    • Play Smart
    • Short Game Chef
    • Pros Teaching Joes
    • Fully Equipped
    • Super Secrets
    • Destination Golf
  • Shop
    • Clubs
    • Shafts
    • Training Aids
    • Balls
    • Bags
    • Technology
    • Apparel
    • Accessories
    • The GOLF Collection
    • The Birdie Juice Collection
    • The Fully Equipped Collection
  • Newsletters
    • Hot Mic
    • Monday Finish
    • Play Smart
    • Top Stories
    • Our Picks
    • Sign Up for All
InsideGolf Join Now  / Log In
InsideGolf

Great for yourself...or your Dad

InsideGOLF
Features

Golf’s ultimate secret legend, Ann Gregory, lived a life of firsts

By: Michael Bamberger
November 18, 2020
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share by Email
Ann Gregory

Ann Gregory accumulated enough trophies to fill a basement.

Alexandria Black History Resource Center/USGA Museum

JoAnne Gregory Overstreet is a 77-year-old retired teacher who lives in Las Vegas. She’s not a golfer. But she is the daughter of one, the only child of golf’s ultimate secret legend, Ann Moore Gregory. Mrs. Overstreet knows what her mother endured as a Black woman playing amateur golf in mid-century America. She tells her mother’s story because she must.

Her mother was born as Ann Moore in 1912 in Aberdeen, Miss. She attended segregated schools and after the death of her parents in a car crash went to school while working as a live-in maid for a white family. It was not fun and games. As a grown woman, she became the first Black golfer to play the 18-hole city-owned course in Gary, Ind. The “big course,” the locals called it. That was in 1947. Nine years later, in 1956, Ann Gregory became the first Black woman golfer to play in a U.S. Women’s Open and, two months later, a U.S. Women’s Amateur.

The latter breakthrough was reported in scores of American newspapers. From an AP account: “This tournament is also noteworthy because of the entry of its first Negro woman golfer. She is 38-year-old Ann Gregory of Gary, Ind., twice the winner of the National Negro Association title.” But she was actually 44. The 44-year-old rookie. 

Features
Papwa Sewgolum
Sewsunker ‘Papwa’ Sewgolum is likely the best golfer you’ve never heard of — and here’s why
By: Michael Bamberger

Ann Moore moved to Gary in the 1930s and married Leroy Gregory, a steelworker, in 1939. He was a transplanted Mississippian, too. The warmth of other suns. A bit of poetry from Richard Wright’s typewriter that captured the migration of millions of Blacks from the South, Ann Moore and Leroy Gregory among them.

Mr. Gregory took up golf. Mrs. Gregory took up tennis. Mr. Gregory joined The Par-Breakers, a club for Black male golfers in Gary. Mrs. Gregory asked herself, What is it with these men and that golf? (Same as forever.) Mr. Gregory served on a Navy ship in the South Pacific during World War II. Mrs. Gregory, a young mother with a husband a half-world away, started playing Gary’s city-owned hardscrabble nine-hole course. Mr. Gregory came home and started playing with his wife. Mrs. Gregory beat him like a drum and all his Par-Breaker buddies, too, even when they made her play from the men’s tees.

One day in 1947, Ann and Leroy Gregory went out to play golf. Ann didn’t want to play the little course, the nine-holer to which Black golfers were relegated. But no Black golfer had ever played the big course.

“I’m a resident of Gary,” Ann Gregory told the man in the pro shop, as her daughter recounted it recently. “I pay my taxes. My money’s as good and as green as anybody else’s. I want to play the big course.” Nobody stopped her.

Ann Gregory strolls the fairway with Althea Gibson. Alexandria Black History Resource Center/USGA Muse

Consider what Ann Gregory endured to get to that first tee, and to others. She was mistaken for country-club help at one USGA event. She wasn’t permitted in the clubhouse for a contestants’ dinner at another. People said rude and threatening things to her. Her attitude was always the same: “Racism is their problem.” Ann Moore Gregory knew who she was, and others did, too. She was invited to play in an exhibition with Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson and Althea Gibson. (What a foursome!) She won hundreds of tournaments, local, regional and national. First the trophies took over a room. Later a basement. 

She was a church leader at Delaney Memorial United Methodist. She played with the male owner of The Elbow Room, a bar and restaurant in her midtown neighborhood. She was a caterer. She was the first Black woman to serve on the board of the Gary Public Library. She helped Richard Hatcher become the first Black mayor of Gary. 

Her daughter the teacher, JoAnne Gregory Overstreet, married a civil engineer. Now their grandchildren are learning all about their great-grandmother. 

Mrs. Overstreet told me the story of her mother’s life as she has told it to others over the last 30 years. Her mother died in 1990, eight months after her father. Mrs. Overstreet packed the scrapbooks and sold the family’s redbrick house. It had three bedrooms, a one-car garage and a front door framed by distinctive stonework. Everything was nearby: JoAnne’s schools, The Elbow Room, her mother’s golf course and hairdresser and sister, the family’s church. Ann Gregory went in and out that front door a dozen times a day as a mother, wife, sister, civic leader, church elder. As a pioneer and an athlete. As a giant. 

Latest In News

9 hours ago

PGA Tour to name NFL's Brian Rolapp new CEO

9 hours ago

Uh oh: A fiery, fierce, ticked off Brooks Koepka is back at the U.S. Open

9 hours ago

What was the biggest surprise on Day 1 of the U.S. Open?

9 hours ago

The 6 most relatable moments at the U.S. Open on Thursday | Rogers Report

Michael Bamberger

Michael Bamberger

Golf.com Contributor

Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. Before that, he spent nearly 23 years as senior writer for Sports Illustrated. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has written a variety of books about golf and other subjects, the most recent of which is The Second Life of Tiger Woods. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on The E-Club, a utility golf club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organization’s highest honor.

Related Articles

Features
Judy Rankin and Mike Tirico

InsideGOLF exclusive: Why Judy Rankin's life and career is a major example for us all

By: Michael Bamberger
Features
Clubtest driver heads

Why searching for — and finding! — the perfect driver is one of golf's great joys

By: Michael Bamberger
Features
Justin Thomas and Tiger and Charlie Woods

Tiger's changing life — and priorities — were never more evident than at the PNC Championship

By: Michael Bamberger
News
Phil Mickelson flashes a thumbs-up after winning on the Champions tour

Phil Mickelson's odd rules situation shined a spotlight on the significance of golf's honor code

By: Michael Bamberger
Features
Steve Stricker

Why Steve Stricker is the perfect Ryder Cup captain for these unsettled times

By: Michael Bamberger
News
Joaquin Niemann

Joaquin Niemann’s brief time on Tour has already translated into universal truths about teamwork, compassion

By: Michael Bamberger
Features
slugger white

For 40 years, PGA Tour rules official Slugger White has lived his life by the book

By: Michael Bamberger
Features

How Jordan Spieth's high school golf coach helped shape him into the player he is today

By: Michael Bamberger
Features
Dick Ferris and Arnold Palmer

How Dick Ferris — pal of Arnie, force in West Coast golf — has impacted your life more than you might know

By: Michael Bamberger
Sign up for GOLF's Newsletters
Get the latest news, the hottest instruction tips, new product releases, golf media insider reports and more delivered directly to your inbox. Choose your favorites now.
Sign Up
Categories
  • News
  • Instruction
  • Gear
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
Services
  • Masthead
  • GOLF Media Kit
  • GOLF Magazine Customer Service
  • TERMS OF SERVICE
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • Opt-out of Ads/Sharing
  • Your Privacy Choices
Social
  • facebook
  • x
  • instagram
  • youtube
Membership
InsideGOLF Logo
More than $140 Value for JUST $39.99

INCLUDES 12 SRIXON Z-STAR XV GOLF BALLS, 1 YR OF GOLF MAGAZINE, $20 FAIRWAY JOCKEY CREDIT - AND MUCH MORE!

LEARN MORE

© 2025 EB Golf Media LLC. An 8AM Golf Affiliated Brand. All Rights Reserved. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy a linked product, GOLF.COM may earn a fee. Pricing may vary.

Go to mobile version