A golf club in York County, Pennsylvania, apologized for making five black women “uncomfortable” on its course, but one of the players said Tuesday that she and her companions ― all members ― remain undecided about how to respond after club officials told them to leave.
The officials also called police during the incident.
“We are processing information and the club called to meet and we have not decided when,” Myneca Ojo told HuffPost.
Ojo and the four others were playing at the Grandview Golf Club on Saturday when the tense encounter unfolded.
“I felt
we were discriminated against,” Ojo told The York Daily Record. “It was a horrific experience.”
The group, who call themselves the Sisters of the Fairway, said that club representatives twice complained to them that they were playing too slowly ― the first time at the second hole. The women said they were maintaining the required pace because they remained appropriately ahead of the group behind them, but they skipped the third hole to avoid further confrontation.
“We were keeping the front group in our sights” ― as required, Sandra Thompson, a lawyer and NAACP chapter president, told Fox43 in the segment above.
After the ninth hole, three of the group left the course because they were disturbed by the earlier encounter, the women told the Record. The women told Fox43 they played the first nine holes in under 2 hours, yet the remaining two golfers, Ojo and Thompson, were confronted again, this time by the man from earlier, former York County Commissioner Steve Chronister; his son, club co-owner Jordan Chronister; and a few other white male employees.
The women said the men’s approach, captured in part on Thompson’s cell phone video, was “hostile.”
“We were frightened,” one of the women told WPMT Fox43.
The station’s report also included a segment of the cell phone video in which Jordan Chronister says sardonically to one of the women, “Congratulations, you’re a real winner.”
According to the women, the men accused them of taking too long a break ― a complaint the players refuted. Club officials informed the women that the cops had been summoned and asked them to leave the premises.
That’s when the Northern York County Regional Police arrived to try to sort out the dispute.
“
We were called there for an issue; the issue did not warrant any charges,” Police Chief Mark Bentzel said, according to The Associated Press. “All parties left and we left as well.”
HuffPost attempted to reach the club, but its message machine was full.
JJ Chronister, Jordan Chronister’s wife and the club’s co-owner, said she called the women to apologize for the other club officials “making them feel uncomfortable.” She said she was attempting to meet with them to work out the issue,
USA Today reported.
But Chronister later sent USA Today an email that was not quite as conciliatory: “We spoke with (the women) once about pace of play and then spoke with them a second time,” she wrote. “During the second conversation we asked members to leave as per our policy noted on the scorecard, voices escalated, and police were called to ensure an amicable resolution.”
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