Tiger is only interested in green - golfer Tiger Woods - Column - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1997 by Wayne M. Barrett

Is ELDRICK "TIGER" WOODS: (A) potentially the greatest golfer the sport has ever known or (B) just a greedy opportunist whose main goal in life is to cash in on his enormous talents and multi-cultural marketability? Perhaps the answer is (C) both of the above, although only time and many more championships will prove the former, while there are mounds of evidence that already make the latter an ugly reality.

Actually, Woods probably is no more a greed monger than any other big-name athlete we see haughtily parading through the daily sports pages and the nightly TV highlights. What is irksome is the hypocrisy that seems to be Tiger's modus operandi. For example, although he has Thai, African, Chinese, European, and American Indian bloodlines, Woods, 21, paints himself as a black man who has had to battle his way through the indignity of prejudice, even to the point of being portrayed as the Jackie Robinson of golf. This is a real slap at the Robinson legend, especially this year, which marks the 50th anniversary of the Hall of Fame Brooklyn Dodger breaking major league baseball's color barrier. Robinson endured unimaginable hardships and brutal racial taunts from a country still in the throes of Jim Crow. Woods, meanwhile, grew up enjoying a comfortable California middle-class existence while playing golf morning, noon, and night. (He was swinging a club while still in diapers and beat a club pro at age three. Eventually, he won three straight U.S. Junior Amateur titles and three U.S. Amateur championships in a row.)

To be fair, though, it should be pointed out that Woods exploits blacks, too. He has five-year endorsement deals with Nike, Titleist, American Express, and Rolex for $40,000,000, $20,000,000, $13,000,000, and $7,000,000, respectively. Nike is notorious for using ultra-cheap foreign labor (paying sweatshop workers pennies per hour) and then selling its sneakers for $150 to inner-city black kids who have to steal to come up with that kind of purchase price. Moreover, Nike is one of America's biggest suppliers of gang wear (when you see in the news that some kid was killed for his jacket or sneakers, odds-on it was a Nike product), and the company's commercials display the violent, in-your-face attitude that now pervades society and gives most law-abiding citizens the jitters. Yet, that doesn't stop Earl Woods, Tiger's father and top advisor, from having his son collect endorsement blood money while stating, with a straight face, "This is the most racist society in the world--I know that."

After Woods won the 1997 Masters in mind-boggling fashion (at 20, he was the youngest ever to do so, shooting a course record 270 and winning by 12 strokes, the largest margin of victory at a Major tournament this century), he slipped to 19th at the U.S. Open, 24th at the British Open, and 29th at the PGA Championship. So much for becoming the first man in history to sweep all four in a single year.

Yet, at these and other tournaments, Woods--followed from hole to hole by a boisterous gallery whose rambunctious antics often disturb the other golfers--is always the headliner in print and electronic coverage. (The Masters was the most watched television golf event ever.) TV cameras focus on Tiger no matter how he's playing, almost to the exclusion of everyone else, including the leader. Tune into any radio sports report, and Tiger's score, whether he's on the leader board or not, is always the first one given. Moreover, his picture accompanies every newspaper story about that week's particular tournament. Some prejudice!

Of course, this overexposure is what Nike was counting on when the company forked over all those millions. There isn't a picture to be had of Woods in ordinary street clothes. Wherever he goes and whatever he does, there are Nike Swoosh symbols all over his hat, shirt, pants, and shoes. And we haven't even touched upon how, as an amateur at Stanford University, Woods illegally hired an agent and magically, 24 hours after turning professional, signed his $40,000,000 deal with Nike, then claimed there had been no prior agreement between the two. We're supposed to believe that Woods hired an agent and cut a multi-million-dollar Nike deal all in one day; the same day, incidentally, that Nike hired Tiger's dad for a bloated salary and nominal duties.

Also, let's not forget that the responsible black community long has maintained that education--namely, getting a college degree--and not sports stardom, is the way out of poverty. Yet, Woods happily, and under shady financial circumstances, ditched his golf scholarship at one of the finest universities in the country to turn pro. Unlike football's hardship cases, where underclassmen rush to join the NFL because to play a senior year means risking a career-threatening injury with every snap of the ball (a totally understandable get-the-money-while-you-can philosophy), Woods' prospects in no way were threatened by injury. This is, after all, golf we're discussing.

This is a free country and capitalism long has been America's guiding light, so Tiger is completely within his rights to cash in. Actually, he'd probably be crazy not to. That's all well and good, if he and his father would just take their millions and shut up. Instead, Tiger told Sports Illustrated when he was named its 1996 Sportsman of the Year: "I have no desire to be the king of endorsement money." In the same article, Earl Woods proclaimed, "Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity." The interviewer blinked in disbelief and asked if Tiger will have a bigger impact than Nelson Mandela, or Gandhi, or Buddha? Earl replied, "Yes, because . . . he's qualified through his ethnicity to accomplish miracles. . . . I don't know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. He'll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power."