Funny thing is that even with Tiger’s success and impact and the increased number of kids joining minority golf programs and programs like First Tee, we haven’t seen any real change in the number of African Americans playing on any of the tours, or African Asians for that matter . . . not on the men’s tour anyway.

“I would make the case,” Tiger said, “that it’s still a numbers issue. Even when we had Calvin Peete, Jim Thorpe, Charlie Sifford, and Lee Elder out there on tour, we had a very small base to work from. If we can grow the base, you’re going to pyramid up and you’ll have a few more make it to the Tour. As I travel the country and do clinics I see these kids with technically sound golf swings at ten, twelve years old who are black. I never saw that when I first started playing the Tour. Technology has certainly helped, because now they can videotape and analyze their swings and become better. Now it’s a cool sport to play, and professional athletes are playing, which even adds to that coolness. To have you playing, Charles, Michael Jordan playing, that brings a whole new excitement level to a sport that people thought was just a game for WASPs. But now you have some of the most powerful athletes in the world playing golf? ‘Hey,’ kids say, ‘we should take a look at this; we never thought that was an option.’

“Obviously, I had some success, and that has something to do with it. I came along and got lucky with the timing. Just as Arnold Palmer had the right timing because he came along at the same time television was exploding in America. Now, we’ve got global Internet access. Our sport wasn’t global when I began playing the Tour. Now it is. You can log on anywhere in the world and see what any player did in any tournament or for the year. You can follow the PGA or the European Tour. With that international boom, that international stream of information, golf is getting exposed to parts of the world that it never even thought of getting into. That’s all about timing.”

Okay, that’s nice. But even if the time is right, the person has to come along, and he or she has to be willing to use the leverage they have at that time to make change.

“You know, we’ve had to use that,” Tiger said. “I don’t like using it, but we’ve had to use it in order to get the funds to be able to do what we do. That’s why Target has been so influential with us. That’s why it’s the Target Start Something program. We started working with Target in 1999, at St. Jude’s Hospital, with what they do with cancer patients. We built a library for them. Although I don’t like using that kind of personal leverage, sometimes you really have to in order to get the funds to be able to do what you want to do.

“But it’s also a matter of getting in there face to face and explaining to people what we’re trying to do. For that, it’s a matter of education and articulation. It’s essential to be able to articulate your points. You can’t just say, ‘Hey, gimme your money, I’m going to try to help kids.’ You can’t do that. It’s a lot more detailed than that. You have to be able to articulate your opinion, you really do.

“That’s why I try to emphasize with kids how important education is. I dropped out of school and turned pro in 1996 when I still had two more years of Stanford. But does that mean my education stopped there? No, it’s just starting. Now I’m in a whole new world, but I still read a boatload. I still watch TLC, the Discovery Channel, all these learning shows, because I like learning. I enjoy learning. Just because I dropped out of school doesn’t mean I ever quit learning. Maybe I’m not going to school now, but I can gain knowledge anywhere and everywhere.”

You cannot talk about Tiger Woods and race without dealing with his win at Augusta National in 1997, a historic win not just because Tiger was the first person of color to win there—a place that even now, because of its stance on women not being members, symbolizes exclusion and golf’s lingering intolerance—but because he won by a record margin. Many black people in America didn’t even know what the Masters Tournament was before that weekend. They certainly had never watched. I don’t know if any studies have been done, but my bet is that there were millions of Asians and Hispanics around the world who had never watched golf before, but watched the Masters on that Sunday afternoon when Tiger won. There’s a memory from that day that has nothing to do with golf that Tiger shared during our conversation that afternoon. His tone turned very serious as he recalled it. After the traditional ceremony at Butler Cabin to present him with the customary green jacket, Tiger had something else waiting for him, something that was very rewarding in a different sense.

“So, there’s this closing ceremony,” Tiger explained. “You go on the putting green, where it takes place, and I look up and they’re all there in their white outfits. The cooks, the staff, attendants, everybody. They’re all black. Each one of them came out onto the balcony and watched it. I look back and I start getting choked up just thinking about it. They touched me in a really powerful way. I started thinking about everything these people had faced in life, all the ugliness and all the prejudice and all the obstacles they had to deal with. I’ve seen what they struggle with and I feel so bad. I was thinking that they could have a lot of bitterness and feel ‘Why him? Why not me?’ But they didn’t. They don’t. It was very impactful, man. It was so huge to me, for them to feel that way about me and for them to honor me in that way.

“I’ve gotten to know most of those people now, learning about all the years they worked there. And it’s really that I want to say thank you to them because they influenced my life. They touched me more than they will ever know. Ever. As I walked out that day, I said, ‘Dad, look up there in the clubhouse. Just look over there.’ And my dad started getting choked up. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘take this in.’ And I said, ‘Dad, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been looking over there the entire time.’”

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-from Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?, by Charles Barkley.
Copyright © April 2005, The Penguin Press, a member of The Penguin Group, Inc.,
used by permission.