Tiger should rethink playing at Lochinvar
By LYNN ZINSER / Knight-Ridder Newspapers
PHILADELPHIA - The bad part about criticizing Tiger Woods is
joining a chorus that includes Fuzzy Zoeller, closet racists,
status quo worshipers and all those fortysomething dorks in visors
who experience a midlife crisis when they hear how far Tiger can
hit a 5-iron. This is not company I like to keep. A big reason
I admire Tiger is because of the people who don't.
How painful it is, then, to learn that he who symbolizes the
foolishness of racial discrimination embraces it in another form.
Tiger consorts with a group of Neanderthals that run a country
club called Lochinvar in Houston because Lochinvar's pro is his
coach, Butch Harmon.
If you are a woman, not only can you not become a member at
Lochinvar, you can't walk in the front door, or the side door,
although if you have a very important, specific purpose, theyll
consider smuggling you in the back door under a blanket.
Yes, this sort of place still exists.
Yes, it's legal because it's a private club.
And yes, Tiger's participation is nauseating.
This puts a new face on a man who could be a real hero. His
success threatens to rattle golf to its staid, racist, sexist,
upper-crust, smug, little core. But it turns out that Tiger likes
golf's country club soul, as long as the country club welcomes
him. The sexist part, apparently, can stay.
Tiger isn't a Lochinvar member, but plays there when working
with Harmon. And by his complicity, he endorses its policies.
His lame defense for this: "I have to work with Butch
and sometimes he can't get out of there and I have to go see him."
And better yet: "I can't be a champion to all causes."
Perhaps they don't get to this until your senior year at Stanford,
but it's the same cause. Discrimination might change its mask
from time to time, but excluding a category of people is excluding
a category of people. Tiger is off partying in this males-only
enclave, oblivious that it's only a few hues away on the spectrum
from a whites-only enclave.
Tiger has shown himself to be human, his lingering adolescence
and penchant for bad jokes uncovered in a recent GQ article, and
he still is young. But he cant dodge this without running headlong
into the word "hypocrite."
His Nike ads set him up as a racial pied piper, someone who
will draw the excluded to a sport once closed to them. They are
wonderful, poignant ads and they are reflected in real life -
kids of all colors are flocking to golf because Tiger is hip,
cool, modern, progressive. Some of them are girls.
Earl Woods keeps telling us his son will change the world.
Well, he could start here.
How Tiger can stomach Lochinvar is a mystery. Sexist minorities
and racist women are vexing species. It seems that once you've
experienced the sting of discrimination, it would be impossible
to inflict it on others. Of course, there are plenty of racist
women and sexist minorities, and they all need a whack upside
the head. Because hes a public figure, Tiger needs a public whack
upside the head.
Places like Lochinvar exist without shame because they keep
a low profile. People of conscience are too timid to stand up
and call them what they are: caves of bigotry.
Several years ago, I accompanied a college basketball team
I covered to a practice before a tournament in New York. This
day, practice was at the Downtown Athletic Club - of Heisman Trophy
fame - and I went in the back door with the team and into the
gym.
As I sat against a wall, writing my story for the next day
on a laptop, I saw someone talking excitedly to one of the team
managers, who then came over to tell me that I was the cause of
the stir. I was a double whammy, not only a woman but a reporter,
neither of which were allowed on their hallowed premises. When
I stopped laughing, I told the manager that I wasn't leaving unless
someone physically removed me - which would have been a huge improvement
on the story I was writing. Word came back that I was to keep
a low profile. I promised not to grow.
It was great fun watching all the worried faces watching me.
I resisted the urge to ask for directions to the ladies room.
I couldn't change their world, but I could dent it for a few hours.
Tiger could do so much more. He could help change their world,
or, at the very least, condemn it. He just won't. What a waste.
(c) 1997, Philadelphia Daily News.
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