Loving Tiger More Than We Love His Sport.(8/21/09)

I don’t care what Tiger Woods said in 1997.

I was rooting for him like he was a member of my own family during last week's PGA golf championship, the one he lost to “newcomer” Y. E. Yang.

I have to admit that I'm no different than the vast majority of black folks who become fans of golf only when Tiger happens to be playing it. I've actually played the game--about five times--when invited to do so by friends or business associates who thought it was vitally important that I did.

So, I’m not even what you might call a real “golfer.”

Don’t play me cheap... I do have golf shoes, caps, shirts and clubs. When I'm out there, I definitely LOOK the part but, quite frankly, the game, itself, bores me to death.

In my opinion, it's still played at too many racially exclusive private clubs, the equipment is still too expensive, and it takes far too many hours to actually play the game. Who’s got the time?

I watch golf when Tiger is playing, period.

When he was not playing, as was the case over the past year as he recovered from an injury, golf, in my opinion, ceased to exist.

It was like that.

Even if Tiger did tell Oprah after he won his first Master’s golf tournament, back in 1997, that it “bothered” him to be called African American, last weekend, I was claiming him, anyway.

Even if he did go on to tell Winfrey that instead of "African American," he wanted to be known as a “Cablinasian,” a weird, nonsensical combination of the words "Caucasian," "black," "Indian," and "Asian" …that was alright, as far as I was concerned.

For most African Americans, including me, Tiger’s “pop” was black, and that made him one of my new African-American heroes.

Even before Tiger, black folks, who have been systematically excluded from private golf club membership and from participation in PGA tournaments for as long as anyone can remember, have always had a strange fascination with golf.

In a similar fashion, years ago, blacks became the nation's largest consumers of scotch whiskey, and then, cognac, primarily because they thought well-to-do whites drank the stuff. By drinking more scotch, cognac, and, today, champagne, than they needed to, or even enjoyed, African Americans believed they were telling the world that they had, in at least that small way, “made it.”

In my opinion, that phenomenon plays at least a small part in golf’s appeal to some African Americans, who don’t play the game well, at all, and who don’t necessarily like it, but feel that it is something they must do to "make it," to fit in, to get ahead.

Can you say "Charles Barkley?"

I’ve heard otherwise intelligent African-American business types say, “All of the big business deals are made on the golf course and, if you’re not there, you’ll be shut out of contract opportunities.”

What my confused, black, contract-seeking, golf-pretending friends don’t seem to recognize is that business deals are made whenever and wherever people with economic resources choose to do so. Such “deals” are made on weekends on their patios, on a train to New York, in a cab following a wholly unrelated meeting, over a quick cup of coffee, and in sky boxes in sports arenas and stadiums, among other places.

No one, and I repeat here very slowly, no one, waits until they actually set foot on a golf course before talking about business. It’s not that it doesn’t happen at all, it’s just that it’s not the only place where such conversations take place.

Even worse is the fact that, frequently, when blacks are finally added to the “foursome” or seated at the clubhouse bar after the game, what had been a business discussion before they arrived is changed to one about the NBA or the NFL or Usain Bolt--anything but the “big deal.” That conversation was already had before the new, black golfers actually showed up.

But I digress … I was talking about rooting for Tiger.

For me, the importance of us still doing so was driven home by the curious “Great Asian Hope” article written about Yang by a sports journalist named Jay Mariotti, who is a frequent contributor on ESPN.

Mariotti, in his column following Yang’s victory over Woods, could hardly contain himself. He described in great detail how Tiger “choked away” the 91st PGA championship, about how Tiger had let Yang “kick the stuffing out of him,” about “the sight of Woods fumbling his 15th major title, which leaves him four behind Jack Nicklaus as his 34th birthday nears.” Mariotti then said: “We’ve waited for someone, anyone to highjack a major from Woods’ grasp.”

“We’ve waited?” “Someone, anyone?”

I don’t recall…is that how sports writers covered Arnold Palmer and Nicklaus in their early thirties? Did they often write about wanting “someone, anyone” to beat those two Hall of Fame golfers?

In his rush to bring Tiger back to earth, maybe Mariotti has forgotten that Woods has not only re-written golf’s record books, he’s also single-handedly brought what was a narrowly followed and vaguely understood game into mainstream consciousness. When Tiger plays, TV ratings increase on average, by nearly 40 percent. The more people watch, the more revenues are generated for the PGA and the more all professional golfers earn – including Mr.Yang. It’s a fact that, over a ten-year period following Tiger's first Masters’ Golf tournament victory, the money available for professional golf purses increased from $70.7 million to $256.8 million.

Last year, for example, when Tiger was injured and did not play in the PGA tournament, TV ratings for that event declined by an amazing 55 percent. In the same year, also without Tiger, the legendary British Open golf tournament saw a 14.6 percent ratings decline. When Tiger Woods doesn’t play, people find something else to do.

On top of all of that, as he has matured, Tiger has been very active, through his foundation, in creating opportunities for young black and minority students.

So, with all of that in mind, I was more than a little disappointed in how happy Mariotti and most of the nation's sports-writing community seemed to be – not that Yang had won, but that Tiger had lost.

While Tiger, the “Cablinasian,” would probably shy away from such comparisons, the whole thing reminded me a little too much of how anxious sports writers, and many Americans, had been to find a “Great White Hope” to finally beat the first black heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. It also called to mind how that same sports writing community, many years later, worked to convince the pathetic, former black heavyweight champ, Floyd Patterson, to try to win back the same heavyweight title, for all of "Christianity," from the younger, faster, taller, heavier, vastly more talented, but newly Muslim, Muhammad Ali.

Patterson, of course, was soundly beaten by Ali. The butt-whipping Ali put on him that night was so bad that Patterson resorted to wearing dark glasses and fake facial hair as he left the arena after the fight, because he felt he had so deeply disappointed those who wanted to see Ali fall.

Black folks? We, of course, were with Ali all the way and with Jack Johnson for every single one of his fights. The thing about us is that we do remain loyal to our sports heroes; more so, regrettably, than we are to our black-owned businesses. But, that's a whole other subject.

I can’t wait to see Tiger come back to pick up where he left off on the way to solidifying his legacy as the very best to have ever played the game of golf.

It’s going to happen.

Jay Mariotti and the rest of the country’s “hating" sports journalists will just have to "get over it."




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