A black man in a green jacket
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) - A black man in a green jacket.
It seems remarkable now, nearly 50 years to the day Jackie
Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, that something so
simple could still cause such a stir. But then, Tiger Woods has
a sense of occasion like almost no one else.
Kids, clubhouse attendants and captains of industry stood elbow
to elbow in the shade of a great live oak alongside the first
tee Sunday, all of them cheering Woods as if he were one of their
own.
Which, in a sense, he was. The son of an African-American father
and a Thai mother, 21 years old and already a millionaire businessman,
he is blessed with skills so sublime you can glimpse the golf's
future simply by watching him play it today.
And by playing the game better than anyone has in a Masters
- and as well as anyone ever in a major championship - Woods took
one more giant step toward unifying a sport that was once regarded
as the most divisive. Especially since he won his first major
in that place whose very name, Augusta National, once served as
code words for exclusivity, and whose spartan white clubhouse
was once home to the owner of an indigo plantation.
"I was the first," Woods said just before slipping
his green jacket over a red sweater, "but I wasn't the pioneer.
"Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Teddy Rhodes - those are
the ones who paved the road for me to be here. And I thank them,
because if it wasn't for them, I might not have had the chance
to play at all.
"I was thinking about them last night and what they've
done for me and for the game of golf," he added. "I
was coming up 18 and I said a little prayer; I said thanks, thanks
to those guys, because those guys are the ones that did it."
Those names do not belong to ancient history.
Fifty years ago, Rhodes and Howard Wheeler were the stars of
the Negro National Tour, self-taught, self-made men who rode buses
and trains west in the fall and back east by spring, staying a
few days in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, Ohio, and
points in-between - anywhere a promoter could scratch together
an audience big enough to throw a few hundred dollars in the pot.
It wasn't much, but they had no alternative. It was only 36
years ago that the PGA lifted its "Caucasian clause"
and Sifford, who played some on the Negro tour, changed paths
and blazed the trail out on the PGA tour. It has been only 22
years since Lee Elder became the first black invited to play in
the Masters.
Sifford, who once wrote that he believed the powers at Augusta
changed the qualifying standards to keep him out of the tournament,
was not on hand to see Tiger's triumph.
"I took a lot of knocks when I started talking about the
Masters," Sifford said by telephone from his home in Kingwood,
Texas. "But it's all over with now. Lee Elder played and
now Tiger has won it. I'm proud of them both."
Elder set out early from his Pompano Beach, Fla., home to reach
Augusta. He felt he needed to be on hand.
"I was part of history being the first black to play at
the Masters," he said. "I had to be part of history
to see Tiger become the first black to win here."
He was not the only one.
All four days of the tournament, Woods pulled huge galleries
along behind him like an undertow. Some of the faces in the crowd,
like Elder's, belonged to people following the kid out of a sense
of kinship, or history, or both. Most belonged to people who wanted
to get a look at state-of-the-art golf.
Still others were less interested in the fine points of Woods'
game; they wanted to see, hear and feel what it was like when
he drilled holes in the wind with drives that defy imagination.
Woods appreciated every one of them, even the youngster who
came out of the gallery at the 15th to offer a sympathetic pat
on the back after a tough shot and nearly got conked with a club
Woods swung over his head in anger.
"I was still so hot with that shot," he said afterward,
"I didn't know he was behind me."
But after emotional hugs to repay his mother and father, who
trained him from infancy for just such a test, the support Woods
appreciated most of all came from Elder. He walked behind the
clubhouse to watch Woods practice chipping before going off.
"Because of what he did" Woods said, "I was
able to live my dream."
And because of that, the rest of us have been treated to transcendent
golf. That alone should be a reminder that golf can only benefit
by being accessible to anyone and everyone struck with the curious
desire to chase a little white ball across a big green expanse.
A glance through the PGA Tour media guide reveals only three
black faces among the 291 professionals pictured inside: Woods,
Vijay Singh, who is from Fiji with his family roots in India,
and Jim Thorpe.
What Woods achieved Sunday will change that. Not immediately,
but soon. Anyone who saw him play understood that.
"This might have more potential than Jackie Robinson breaking
into baseball," Elder said. "Because no one will ever
turn their head again when a black man walks to the first tee."
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