Tiger Woods hits $50 million mark

But his success has not opened the game to more Blacks

By: Larry Fitzgerald
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 07/05/2005

Chicago, Illinois — Tiger Woods shot a final round 66 and finished second to Jim Furyk in the Cialis Western Open just outside Chicago, Illinois. It was the second time in a row that Woods has finished second; he came in behind winner Michael Campbell in last month’s United States Open.

Despite finishing second in the Western Open, a tournament he has won three times previously, it was a time for celebration. Woods became the first golfer in history to pass the $50 million dollar mark in career earnings. For finishing second, Woods received a check for $540,000 to bring his career PGA Tour earnings to $50,483,000 in this, his tenth year on tour.

Woods, however, is not pleased with how few Blacks have been able to reach the highest levels of golf: “Am I disappointed? Yes.” Many expected that, with his success, the floodgates would open for Blacks to succeed and reach the PGA Tour. That has not been the case so far. Woods remains the only African American who has qualified to participate on the PGA Tour.

Through his efforts with the Tiger Woods Foundation, Woods has brought great awareness to and focus on getting Blacks involved in the game of golf. And not just as players in all areas — the golf industry is a multi-billion dollar institution. Woods, according to Forbes Magazine, made $87 million last year; in compensation, he’s the number-one sports athlete in the world.

Just like in the broader society, although on the surface of the sports world racism and discrimination don’t appear to exist as they did in the past, that is not reality. Clearly, there has not been enough done by the USGA and PGA to seek Blacks on the grassroots level with an emphasis that is sustaining.

Woods cannot do it alone; it takes everyone putting aside their personal and traditional values to recognize that the damage that has been done to the game of golf, an elitist sport in terms of racism and discrimination against Blacks, cannot be repaired overnight.

Almost eight years ago, with much fanfare, the PGA Tour established the First Tee program, an attempt to bring the game of golf to the inner city and get more minorities involved. In some or many cases, the program has been a success, but again that’s on the surface.

Of the 450,000 First Tee participants, 44 percent are White, 27 percent are Black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. In all of golf, 84 percent of the players are White. Locally in Minneapolis, the First Tee program has been a major failure, primarily because the PGA Tour cuts the check for the program and allows the same people who manage and administrate the cities’ public golf courses to oversee the local First Tee.

These people are not connecting to the Black community — this is the case in Minneapolis, as I know from experience at Gross, Hiawatha, Meadowbrook, Columbia, and Theodore Wirth, the city golf courses where the First Tee programs are run. They are raking in First Tee program money, but they are only getting their (White) children involved.

If all the managers and administrators of the these courses are White, what makes you think that they will make the effort to connect to the Black community centers and churches, Urban League, and NAACP leaders to seek out Black children?

If they did not care in the first place when there was no First Tee Program money, now that they have all this money under false pretences, are they supposed to change who they are and suddenly care about getting Black children involved? I don’t buy it.

The First Tee offers scholarships and helps to set up courses where costs are low; golf is not a cheap sport to play. It is not basketball. Green fees are expensive, clubs cost lots of money, and you have to be instructed to play.

Woods said, “At the junior level there are some players with some talent, but as you continue to play throughout golf and continue to move up in levels, the process of screening kind of weeds them out. It’s hard to make it out here. We don’t have a big enough base for them to have an opportunity to get out here.”

The USGA executive committee has no Blacks among its 15 volunteer members. We are talking about an organization that generates billions of dollars. That is part of the problem: The organization does not have a passion to change the game.

In the meantime, the First Tee program created for our children continues to miss the fairway. I would call the First Tee program a token success.

Note: Some information for this column was taken from ESPN.com.