Tiger’s First Masters Title Changed Golf
By: MICK ELLIOTT
Media General News Service

Golf, the game Tiger Woods rebuilt, returns this week to Augusta National, the hallowed grounds where 10 years ago he first dropped a wrecking ball.

Crash! Bam! Boom!

No one ever imagined the impending impact.

Ten years ago, Woods was 21 and preparing to play in the Masters, his first major championship as a professional. And while possessing an unequalled amateur record that included three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles before turning pro the previous year and winning three times in 14 starts, Woods remained an unproven novelty to many skeptics.

Four spring days in northeast Georgia would forever end that thinking. They also would alter the game in ways only future years will truly determine.

Woods, a young man of color, stepped to the whitest stage in golf’s four corners and painted it ready for change.

Almost 50 years to the day after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, Woods competed at a club that once had no black members and made it his own.

When finished, Woods had set 20 records, including the youngest Masters champion and largest margin of victory, a slack-jawing 12-shot decision over runner-up Tom Kite.

He did it at the very spot tournament founder, Clifford Roberts, once said, “As long as I’m alive, golfers will be white, and caddies will be black.” He did it as the black clubhouse workers put down their serving trays and trash bags to step outside and witness history.

Never before had one player attracted such a large and sudden following. The most casual of sports fans suddenly knew Tiger Woods. The result was immediate predictions, foreseeing the dawn of a new day for the once-exclusive game.

“Tiger Woods has the opportunity to do something for the human race that no other golfer before him has,” three-time Masters champ Gary Player said afterward. “Imagine the black people in Africa — 400 million watching Tiger Woods win the Masters. There has never been a world champion golfer who is a black golfer.”

Ben Crenshaw, the historian of all things golf, judged the moment bigger than real, fashioned by fate.

“I think it’s very appropriate that it comes here, at a magical place where these fabulous things happen,” Crenshaw said. “I’ve always thought a lot of things happen here for a reason.”

Now, 10 years later, Woods’ locomotive-like assault on golf continues, proving unequivocally that he will alter the game’s history in ways impossible to count.

Twelve major championships (four at Augusta) put him two-thirds of the way to equaling the career record of Jack Nicklaus that was once considered untouchable.

Fifty-six PGA Tour titles have him closing fast on Sam Snead’s lifetime mark of 82. He already owns the PGA Tour record of 142 consecutive cuts made.

And don’t forget the Tiger Slam, ownership of all four major championship trophies at the same time. Or the riches he has brought others in the game, the direct result of soaring tournament purses funded by new television contracts negotiated by worldwide interest in Woods.

“You see a special player, you see a special talent, you see something special happening in front of your eyes,” Ernie Els said. “There’s no point in denying it.”

The results say Woods is arguably the most-recognized athlete in the world. Maybe its most popular, too. Television ratings soar when he plays and sag when he does not. He is an advertiser’s dream, blending good looks, a spotless image and personality to rank as one of the most sought-after pitchmen.

Yet, there is one thing — the elephant in the living room — that clashes with all the rosy predictions for what Woods would most assuredly do for pro golf.

Ten years later, one golf question has not changed.

Where’s its color?

Trying To Build A Base

With the exception of Vijay Singh, the 44-year-old Fijian, Woods is the only man of color among any PGA Tour players of merit, suggesting that if anything pro golf’s membership has gone backward.

Although brief in overall numbers, the roles of blacks in past PGA Tour eras are rich and inspiring. Woods made a point of acknowledging those trailblazers during his 1997 victory speech.

“I wasn’t the pioneer,” Woods said. “Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Ted Rhodes, those are the guys who paved the way. All night I was thinking about them, what they’ve done for me and the game of golf. Coming up 18, I said a little of prayer of thanks to those guys. Those guys are the ones who did it.”

So why, 10 years after the greatest breakthrough by a minority in the history of golf and with many doors now open and inviting, is there such a continuing absence of color in golf?

“This is what I think it is,” Woods said last week. “One, it takes time. And two, it’s about building a bigger base and having more kids. It’s a pyramid effect. The more you go through junior golf locally to the state, to national, then to amateur, collegiate, minitours, pro, then eventually out here, you’re just dwindling it down.

“Starting out in junior golf, you may have a couple thousand, but you get to the collegiate ranks, well, some of them just are not good enough to make it that far. You get to amateur golf, you’re not good enough to make it that far and you get to professional golf, you’re not good enough to make it that far.

“So the bigger the base, the better chance you have for somebody making it, and that takes time because golf wasn’t always that popular. I remember when I was in high school, golf … no one ever played it. You were not cool if you played golf. That stereotype is changing and it’s evolving and more kids who are part of football and track and baseball and basketball are now trying out for golf teams.”

Without question, Woods has done what has to be considered more than his share. Since arriving on tour he has formed the Tiger Woods Foundation, which has awarded more than $30 million in grants. He is also hands-on involved in the Tiger Woods Learning Center, a 14-acre campus in Anaheim, Calif., where some 8,000 students, grades 4-12, last year enhanced their public-school education by tackling subjects such as rocket science, software design and crime-scene investigation. A similar center is on the drawing board for an East Coast location.

“I think I’ve brought a new look to the tour,” he said. “What I mean by that are young kids that have never even thought about going to a golf course are now coming out and watching what we do and getting inspired by some of us playing golf and watching it on TV and getting fired up to participate. I think that’s pretty neat.”

One Step Forward, Two Back

Others think that pro golf has never been whiter.

“When I went on tour, we had about six blacks,” said longtime Tampa resident Charlie Owens, who played from 1970 to 1975 on the PGA Tour and in May will be inducted into the African American Golfers Hall of Fame. “Today they don’t have any. It looks like we made 10 steps forward and 12 backwards.

“If you don’t see blacks playing in a sport, most likely you will not see blacks interested in that sport. You don’t see any in hockey. You see very few in soccer. But in baseball, basketball and football, which are brutal games, physically dangerous, they go there because they see other blacks playing that game.

“I don’t see a future for blacks in golf. It’s almost like it was when I went out. It’s an all-white tour now. It’s like old times, only it’s the price of golf that discriminates. It’s so expensive to play the average person can’t play golf. You got to have plenty of money.”

Michael Cooper, the Southeast Regional Director for the First Tee Program whose passion is to provide opportunity for youth who might otherwise never be introduced to the game, does not disagree. At least, not totally.

“Charlie is right in that minorities are probably facing a more difficult route to the PGA Tour than ever before, beginning with the fact the African-Americans who rose to that level in the past learned the game by being caddies,” Cooper said. “Now, there are no caddies.

“But also, now the training and technology at places like the IMG Academy are almost a must for juniors hoping to reach that level, and that’s going to eliminate most minorities.”

On the other hand, never have more minorities been involved in the game, through First Tee, high school and junior programs.

“Kids who once would have had no interest in golf are now interested,” Cooper said. “I don’t think the accomplishments made can be judged by who’s playing as a pro.”

Not even when possibly it’s the best there has ever been.

“One, it takes time. And two, it’s about building a bigger base and having more kids. It’s a pyramid effect. … So the bigger the base, the better chance you have for somebody making it, and that takes time because golf wasn’t always that popular.”

MICK ELLIOTT is a staff writer for The Tampa Tribune