Dan Rodricks: These Black golfers played through segregation on Maryland greens. They became champions. | STAFF COMMENTARY

Things turned out pretty well: Al Wilson and Tim McCready, who learned to golf back when racist laws kept most Black people off Maryland greens unless they were caddies, ended up hitting thousands of long, sweet drives and teaching hundreds of men and women to do the same.

The bonus: They’ve been best friends for nearly 60 years, since their days on the Morgan State University golf team, and they still play together each week.

“Good shot, Tim! Just like college!” Wilson, 77, yells after McCready, 76, tees off with a loud ping! on the 5th hole at Rocky Point, the public course on the Baltimore County waterfront.

McCready’s ball flies high and straight down the fairway; nice work for a guy with an ailing, aching back.

“I haven’t golfed in a while,” he says, suggesting a layoff that lasted months when it’s only been 12 days.

McCready and Wilson golf together so frequently, they’ve achieved a certain level of fame, as “Al and Tim,” on local courses. They’re clearly into a long-running routine.

In fact, that’s a shared motto of Tee Mac Golf , their partnership in golf instruction: “Routine is the key to consistency.”

They came to golf in the 1950s, from different directions — Wilson from a house with no electricity or running water in Howard County and McCready from the hard segregation of Dorchester County, on the Eastern Shore.

Wilson’s mother, who hunted rabbits to feed her four children, moved the family to a city home in the 1950s. Al raised money for the household by caddying at Carroll Park, the only public course where Blacks had been allowed to golf.

“I was 10 years old and carrying 30-pound bags,” Wilson laughs. “How do you think I got bow-legged? … The caddy fee was a buck and a quarter for nine holes, or $2.50 for 18 holes. If you didn’t lose a golf ball, they gave you a 50-cent tip. So you could make $3 carrying a golf bag for 18 holes.”

Carroll Park only had nine holes and sand greens; there was nothing separate-but-equal about Baltimore’s municipal golf courses in the 1950s, before a federal lawsuit brought an end to segregated links.

Like Wilson, McCready learned to play golf, starting at age 8, by watching the men who paid him to carry their bags. The men were all white. The golf club in Cambridge, the seat of Dorchester County, was off limits to Blacks unless they were caddies.

McCready learned fast, to the point where he was giving advice to men who had been golfing for years. He managed to golf on “Caddy Mondays” at the club until the civil rights movement arrived in Cambridge in the 1960s. Protests against racial discrimination led to a series of civil disturbances that shuttered, among other things, the golf course. When he was unable to borrow clubs, McCready fashioned one out of a wooden stick and kept up his game.

Both McCready and Wilson went to Morgan. That’s where they met. They were members of the 1967 team that won Morgan’s first conference championship in golf.

And they’ve been driving, chipping and putting ever since.

“Golf is life,” Wilson gets philosophical as he drives along a Rocky Point fairway. “You’ve got to adjust to what’s ahead — the trees, the sand traps, the water. You’ve got all these obstacles that you have to be aware of in order to make a decision, based on your skills, talents and expertise, on how you are going to navigate the course.”

So far, life seems to have worked out pretty well.

Wilson and McCready have golfed in twosomes and foursomes, in fund-raising tournaments, with celebrities, judges and military veterans. They’ve conducted clinics for nonprofits and corporations.

Wilson, who had a long career in juvenile justice, was chief golf instructor for the Salvation Army Boys & Girls Clubs for several years.

McCready, who worked for a pharmaceutical company, schmoozed prospective customers, many of them doctors, on golf courses in several states. He held the title of “corporate golf director,” setting up outings and tournaments in the cause of pharmaceutical sales. His employer considered him essential personnel.

McCready smiles at that whole business, still amazed at his good fortune.

He and Wilson love teaching as much as golfing, and that’s a rare trait among swingers of five irons.

Women, McCready found, are generally better students than men.

“They want all the details to get it right,” he says. “Guys are, ‘Give it to me real quick and let me go.’ Women want to know everything, and this is a knowledge game, there’s a lot to know.”

Alma Yarborough, one of their students and many friends, golfed with Wilson and McCready on Monday.

“They know every aspect of the game,” she says. “From your grip to your walk-in routine, your stance, your backswing, forward swing, chipping and pitching, they can correct anything. … Al is very patient. You can just hit two balls and he’ll tell you exactly what you’re doing wrong.”

There was a fellow who spent a lot of money on lessons in Florida, then came back to Maryland and played golf at Hobbit’s Glenn in Howard County. He swung so poorly and became so frustrated, he called the course ranger to pick him up and take him to the clubhouse. After that, he went to see McCready and Wilson, and they shaped him into a solid, passionate golfer. Things turned out pretty well.