Tiger Woods congratulates Charlie Sifford for receiving Presidential Medal of Freedom

Tiger Woods expressed his gratitude on Monday night to Charlie Sifford for paving the way for his sure-fire Hall of Fame career and lauded President Barack Obama’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the first black golfer to earn a PGA Tour card.

Sifford, 92, will become only the third golfer — after Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer — to receive this country’s highest civilian honor. The former caddie, who won two tour events after striving successfully to end the PGA’s whites-only policy and was the first black golfer inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, will be among 19 honorees to accept the award on November 24.

“From scientists who kept America on the cutting edge to public servants who help write new chapters in our American story, these citizens have made extraordinary contributions to our country and the world,” Obama said in a statement.

Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, served as inspiration for Sifford, whose 1992 autobiography, “Just Let Me Play” unveiled the battles he fought largely on his own.

“He asked me if I was a quitter,” Sifford later recalled about a discussion he had with Robinson. “He said, ‘OK, if you’re not a quitter, go ahead and take the challenge. If you’re a quitter, there’s going to be a lot of obstacles you’re going to have to go through to be successful in what you’re trying to do.’

“I made up my mind I was going to do it. I just did it,” Sifford recounted. “Everything worked out perfect, I think.”

Sifford endured unspeakable injustice, torment, and death threats on his way to forcing the PGA — with pressure from the California attorney general — to open the professional game to people of color in 1961.

Despite the tour awarding Sifford full membership, the indignities continued. In addition to many clubhouses barring him from eating in their dining rooms, hotels and restaurants prohibited him from their premises.

After getting off to an 18-hole lead at the 1961 Greater Greensboro Open, Sifford received a phone call full of racial epithets and warning him to stay away from the course. Determined to persevere, Sifford faced a gang of racists, who followed him for several holes, screaming obscenities and threats, until the police finally ushered them away on the 14th hole.

Though his most competitive years were behind him, Sifford in 1967 became the first African American to win a PGA event when he captured the title at the Greater Hartford Open. Two years later, Sifford bested the field at the Los Angeles Open, and though Augusta National denied him entry, his efforts enabled Lee Elder in 1975 to become the first black golfer to play the Masters.

While no honor or accolade can ever restore to Sifford his prime playing years, when he was excluded from the PGA Tour but won five straight United Golfers Association National Negro Opens, he has since received recognition of his efforts

Sifford gained induction into the Hall of Fame via the Lifetime Achievement category.

“Tonight we honor a man not just for what he accomplished on the course, but for the course he chose in life,” South African Gary Player said in his introduction of Sifford at the induction ceremony in St. Augustine, Fla.

The University of St. Andrews, Scotland, awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2006.

In 2011, the Revolution Park Golf Course in Sifford’s native Charlotte, N.C., was renamed the Dr. Charles L. Sifford Golf Course.

And now later this month at the White House, the first African American PGA Tour golfer will receive his nation’s highest civilian honor from the country’s first African American president.

Other honorees will include actor Meryl Streep and singer Stevie Wonder. Obama will also award five medals posthumously, with four going to choreographer Alvin Ailey and three slain civil rights workers ­-- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner -- killed during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer in 1964.