Tigermania hasn't changed face of golf yet
By Kevin B. Blackistone / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS -- My buddy Geoff, who organizes our rec-league basketball
team, was hounding me the other day as he often does.
"C'mon, Kev," he said. "It's right out I-30.
I'll be there at 10."
He wasn't talking about a new gym for some pick-up game. He
was talking about a golf course for a quick 18.
I declined his invitation, again. Despite Michael Jordan's
addiction to the links and all the hullabaloo made in the wake
of Tiger Woods' historic victory at the Masters just over a year
ago, I'm a holdout. Tigermania didn't sweep me up, and, you might
be interested to discover, I'm hardly alone.
When the biggest phenom in golf came to Las Colinas this time
a year ago to play the Nelson, it was said he was changing the
face of his game. Nike produced all those ads with little kids
of different hues telling the camera, "I'm Tiger Woods."
Every newspaper and magazine and TV sports show devoted a story
to some inner-city golf clinic, several hosted by Woods and his
father, Earl. A program called First Tee was born to create short
courses and driving ranges in inner cities.
The senior Woods, not given to being shy, even announced last
May on these very pages, "I have visions that, within the
not-too-distant future, the PGA pros will have not one, but 50
minority PGA touring pros. Tiger and I are going to make sure
it happens."
Well, the evidence just released from the National Golf Foundation
shows that the number of people having a good walk spoiled increased
slightly in The Year of the Tiger. Approximately 26.5 million
people played the game over the past year, an increase of 7 percent.
The number of those people who were, like me, black was about
800,000, the foundation said, or about 3 percent of all golfers,
the same proportion before Tiger let loose.
Where the biggest increase in golfers was witnessed was among
beginners, according to the foundation. First-time players jumped
to 3 million from 2 million, or by 50 percent. Junior players,
those between the ages of 12 and 17, grew to 2.4 million from
1.8 million, or by 34 percent, the foundation reported.
There was little doubt that, with Nike's marketing arm pushing
Woods and his natural appeal as a phenom, Woods would ignite interest
in the game outside country club gates. Clearly, that's happened.
The galleries that follow the PGA Tour have taken on a little
color. More people who were more likely to have The Club on their
steering wheel than a bag of them in their trunk almost certainly
tune in more often to watch a tournament, especially if Woods
is playing.
Ironically, in this Era of the Tiger, folks like me have even
fewer players on the Tour we can naturally identify with than
before Woods was born. Outside of Woods, the only other black
member of the Tour is Jim Thorpe. Thorpe is a year away from graduating
to the Senior Tour, where he'll join the Senior Tour's black star,
Jim Dent.
On Sunday, Dent captured the Home Depot Invitational, the same
day Woods won his first title of the season in the BellSouth Classic.
Their double black men winning tour events the same weekend may
have been a first.
In the '70s, though, before the 22-year-old Woods was born,
black PGA Tour pros included Thorpe, Calvin Peete and Lee Elder.
Pioneering black golfer Charlie Sifford was just moving on to
the senior circuit.
Sifford, now 75, once talked about the impact his breakthrough
would have on the game he loves.
"I never thought that my victories would create a lot
of black golfers," he said. "I got a lot of attention,
and I think it helped some, but there are too many other things
that keep a lot of blacks from the courses."
Things have changed since Charlie Sifford made that observation,
but it isn't a revolution just yet.
(Kevin B. Blackistone is a sports columnist for the Dallas
Morning News. Write to him at: Dallas Morning News, Communications
Center, Dallas, Texas 75265.)
(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.
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