Will Tiger make golf safe for the cool?
By RICK HAMPSON AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - His father once predicted he'd do more than
anyone "to change the course of humanity." So now that
Tiger Woods has won the Masters - at the youngest age, by the
widest margin, with the darkest skin - can he even change the
course of golf?
Changing humanity might be easier.
Golf is the most inaccessible, expensive major sport this side
of downhill skiing. While Woods may be transcending his sport,
as Jesse Jackson and everyone else was saying Monday, that does
not guarantee he will change it or even lure many more people
into it.
Lack of a role model isn't all that's kept young people and
minorities away from the fairways, not when a decent set of golf
clubs costs $500.
Tiger's own hopes were more modest. "I think that now,"
he said Sunday, "kids will think golf is cool."
His story certainly is. Born to a black U.S. Army officer and
a Thai mother, named after a tenacious Vietnamese soldier, he
learned to grip a club before he learned to walk. By age 3 he
was hitting balls off a tee on the Mike Douglas Show to the delight
of fellow guest Bob Hope.
Tiger became the most successful amateur golfer in U.S. history,
and his arrival on the pro tour has jacked up ratings and packed
galleries.
Still, golf's savior has a big job ahead.
Consider the scene Monday at the oldest (1895) and one of the
most accessible public courses in America, the municipal links
at Van Cortlandt Park in the north Bronx in New York City. You
can play weekdays for $24, and rent clubs for $20.
There was not a black or a young player to be be found on this
sunny afternoon, and assistant manager Mark Michelena was not
bracing for a Woodsian boom.
"It's great for kids to see this, but they also have to
realize he's been groomed for this all his life," he said.
"I imagine he'll have a big impact in suburban areas, but
I'm not so sure in the city."
Ray Medina, a 61-year-old Puerto Rican-American, brought his
3-year-old grandson Jose to watch the action on the 18th green.
"Golf has been a white man's sport," he said. Growing
up, he never saw a golf course other than on a TV screen.
"We never thought about golf," he said. "We
played stickball."
A few miles and several worlds away, in the South Bronx, two
teen-agers said they'd seen Woods on television, but had no plans
to emulate him.
"I don't understand it," complained 16-year-old Alex
Rodriguez. "The birdies, the eagle ... it's kind of boring."
James Lopez added, disapprovingly: "It's not a contact
sport."
And it's not cheap. You pay $13 a hole to play Pebble Beach.
A club in Southampton, N.Y., charges a $120,000 "initiation"
fee. A Westchester County club has a waiting list so long that
an executive who applied when he moved from Washington was still
waiting when he transferred back six years later.
And Augusta National, scene of Woods' Masters triumph, accepted
no minority members until 1990 and still has only two black members.
Think about Hispanics: Lee Trevino won six major titles and
Nancy Lopez once won nine tournaments in a row, but that didn't
create a golf boom among Hispanics.
Woods' more likely impact was seen at Griffith Park in Los
Angeles, where Nick and Robin Bakay, white middle-class baby boomers,
said they wouldn't have been at their 8:30 a.m. lesson if not
for Tiger Woods.
"If we hadn't seen (the Masters), we probably wouldn't
have gotten up," Nick Bakay said. "If he can be that
great, we can make it up and get our butts here."
If he can get the Bakays out of bed, maybe Woods CAN change
things.
Return to Ray Medina, standing there with his grandson in the
Bronx and itching to swing a club himself.
Turns out he's a golfer - took it up when he was 53 - and thinks
Tiger can grow the sport.
"Because of Tiger, I think a lot of minorities are going
to take notice," he said.
And the cost? No problem, he explained: "The ones that
can't come up with greens fees will jump over the fence."
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