Tiger and the Masters
In the March 11 edition of
Sports Illustrated,
the cover of which was graced with a picture of me without a shirt breaking out of chains—it was carefully thought out, planned and meant to be symbolic—I said some things about Tiger Woods, Augusta National and the Masters that pissed off a lot of people. Specifically, I said, “Look what they’re doing at Augusta. They’re lengthening the course for one reason: to hurt Tiger.” I don’t believe that the course was lengthened specifically to stop Tiger from winning, but I do believe that his winning all the time must make people who run the Masters tournament uncomfortable.
It’s not Tiger’s personality—not yet anyway—to speak out about stuff that might be controversial to some people. It’s not like him to talk about whether this thing was designed to specifically stop him and whether that involves race. But I’m not worried about saying the proper thing. I think it needs to be examined. And I don’t think I’m the only one who feels like this was aimed more at Tiger than at anybody else. And even if I am the only one who felt that way, then I’ll say it anyway. People want me to give the benefit of the doubt to Augusta National and the people who run the Masters tournament. Why? Benefit of the doubt is something you earn through past actions. We know what the past actions have been at Augusta National: to exclude black golfers, to make black and Hispanic golfers feel unwelcome, as if they better not even think of the idea of showing up to play there. There are a few members of color now, but that’s happened in the last few years. It ain’t exactly the U.N. up in that clubhouse.
So you mean to tell me that all of a sudden, after all these years of discrimination, the people who run Augusta just became color-blind? We’re supposed to believe that their decisions regarding a golfer of color, the one who was kicking their course in the ass, were made without any consideration of his race? Why would we believe that? You can believe that BS if you want but don’t ask me to. Maybe I would believe it if the history of Augusta was different. But Augusta National is what it is, a great golf course and a symbol of prejudice and racism in the South. It’s a symbol of what people who run traditional southern institutions think of black people.
The people who take me on about my views on Augusta National . . . I’d like to ask them one thing: Does Tiger’s winning change everything that ever happened at Augusta National? Does it affect the lives of the black people who’ve been denied access? Does it change the fact that most of the black people on the grounds can still only caddie there? I love Tiger like a brother and I’m glad he’s got three Green Jackets. But is Augusta National a completely different institution now because of it? Is the history of Augusta any different now? I don’t know this for sure, but I’m thinking that Tiger winning at Augusta allows a whole lot of people an easy way to feel better about ugly things like exclusion. Tiger wins, so they get an easy way out of dealing with some real ugly stuff, some of their own bigoted feelings they’ve been carrying around but don’t want to deal with.
This issue is certainly not limited to Augusta National, or even to race. I am personally uncomfortable playing golf anywhere that doesn’t admit minorities or women as members.
People have to deal with this stuff even though it’s difficult, and not just try to sweep it under the rug. And it doesn’t get resolved in a hurry. Prejudice and racism scar people for life. But we as a society never really discuss that stuff at length because it isn’t comfortable. The black goaltender who plays for the Carolina Hurricanes, the backup goaltender, is a guy named Kevin Weekes. He played great for Carolina early in the playoffs coming off the bench, and he helped the Hurricanes get to the Stanley Cup finals. That sorry-ass franchise never had been close to the finals before. And even though this guy was mostly the backup (to Arturs Irbe), the team couldn’t have gotten to the finals without Weekes coming in to play the way he did several different times during the playoffs. Anyway, somebody threw a banana at him and hit him in the head during the playoffs. Yes, it was reported, but it was touched on just for a minute on
SportsCenter
. I’m sure—or at least I hope—it got some major attention down around Raleigh because it was local or regional news in North Carolina. But nationally, there was hardly anything on it. Wasn’t that worth a longer discussion, that a black goalie gets hit in the head by a banana in 2002? You know the symbolism is, “Here’s this black guy in a predominately white sport and he’s being called a monkey.” Don’t get me wrong now, I’m glad ESPN reported it, but don’t tell me that in 2002 a black man playing goalie for a professional hockey team and gets hit by some bigot throwing a banana isn’t worth more than just a mention. You don’t just give five seconds to a story like that and go straight to a damn baseball score. That shit deserves some examination and some comment, doesn’t it?
I’m thinking, “Man, there’s some shit still going on out here in the world,” but people aren’t saying anything about it. Do they not think about it, or just not say anything about it? Bad stuff just happens and it goes unreported or there’s barely a mention of it before we go back to business as usual. The Weekes story reminded me of the Bobby Jones story going into the Masters. ESPN did a
SportsCentury
profile on Bobby Jones, and I know magazine articles and entire books have been written on the life of Bobby Jones because he’s a historic figure in golf. You can’t write the history of golf without telling the story of Bobby Jones. The
SportsCentury
piece was talking about him being the greatest golfer ever . . . then just like that you hear, “Oh, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with black people.” Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but after a couple of more comments by people saying the same thing, that was pretty much the extent of the treatment of Bobby Jones as a racist? Most times when you see or read stories on Bobby Jones there isn’t even that much on what a bigot he was. Usually, it’s like somebody shrugs and says, “Well, it’s not that big a deal because he was a product of his time.” What kind of shit is that when things just get explained away by the phrase “product of his time”? Is that supposed to convince us that it was cool, because a lot of other white people did it, too?
A lot of stuff that happened in the South and stuff that still happens today makes me angry as hell. But those times in the South were more complex than that. Some people didn’t just go along. Weren’t there a bunch of courageous white people who got their asses bit by police dogs and sprayed with water hoses and beat with police batons trying to fight racism? They were right there in the front of marches alongside black people all across the South. They were right there at those lunch counters protesting segregation in public places. They were on the front lines hand in hand with black people. They were white and southern, so what the hell were they a product of?
Tell you something else: no black athlete or performer could be portrayed in mainstream media as a hero if he openly hated white people. He was a product of his time? No damn way. That excuse would never fly for a black athlete or entertainer. And after I said something about it, after I commented about it on TBS or TNT, people came up to me and said, “How could you call Bobby Jones a racist? You shouldn’t say that.” Hey, ESPN just told me about Bobby Jones in the
SportsCentury
profile, and from all indications he was a bigot. I didn’t know Bobby Jones personally. He’d be 129 years old by now. I can only go by ESPN’s reporting. And it’s not like anybody has come forward to dispute their reporting. What am I supposed to say after I see a profile of Bobby Jones’s life that made it very clear he didn’t like black people? Am I supposed to say, “God Bless Bobby Jones”?
I was telling some friends that if Tiger keeps winning the Masters, Bobby Jones is gonna walk through the front door of the Augusta National clubhouse one day and say, “If y’all can’t beat this colored boy I’m gonna come back from the dead and kick his ass myself. I know y’all can do a better job than this against him.”
I know Bobby Jones wasn’t alone in the way he thought, but damn, let’s not act like a great golfer is the only thing he was. The lives of athletes and public figures get examined all the time today. This ain’t the 1930s. Things have to be looked at and discussed and not just swept under the damn rug.
I know people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds, particularly kids and people in their twenties, who don’t get bogged down with ugly shit like race; they embrace Tiger. Kids just don’t care; they haven’t been programmed by adults yet and brainwashed with a whole lot of garbage. Their interests are pure. They see somebody doing something great, they like it and appreciate it and aren’t polluted with some sick-ass agenda.
But I think also that a lot of other folks who’ve been carrying around their own baggage see Tiger win at Augusta and want to think everything is okay. They’ll try to act like everything at Augusta National is just fine. Look, if they want to take the easy way out and not confront a whole lot of truths, fine, go ahead. But it’s still a bunch of BS.
I didn’t know until recently that Lee Trevino went to that clubhouse only once. Somebody wanted to throw him out the very first time he went there to play and he never wanted to go there again. They made him feel so uncomfortable being there he went out back and changed his shoes. He changed his shoes in the trunk of his car like he was some weekend hacker at a public course. Lee Trevino, one of the greatest golfers of all time. Can you imagine that? And you know there are people running around saying, “How can Lee Trevino be bitter toward Augusta and the Masters?” The people who ask that question, with disgust in their voices, were probably never turned away from someplace or asked to leave or enter a back door because of their color. I was down in Alabama playing golf one day in May, not long after the
Sports Illustrated
article ran, and I ran into some guys who said, “Hale Irwin said your views about Tiger and Augusta National were silly.” I said, “Listen, I like Hale Irwin. But Hale Irwin doesn’t live in Alabama where y’all are rednecks. Hale Irwin flew in here in a private jet for a few days, maybe a week. He played at the finest country club and he stayed in the most luxurious hotel he could find, which didn’t exactly give him a taste of what it’s like to be poor and black in Alabama, or poor and white in Alabama for that matter. Of course he’s going to feel what I said was silly. But did you ask him if he disagreed with me that blacks and poor whites and Hispanics in this country are treated like shit?” Of course, the guy didn’t ask him. He couldn’t even connect with the sentiment I was expressing. The larger question would never cross the guy’s mind. I’m not saying he was a bad guy. But it simply wouldn’t cross his mind.
It’s interesting that golf courses are places where guys really talk now. You’ve got all kinds of people playing together and eating lunch in the clubhouse together, and some of those guys would never meet people different from themselves if it wasn’t for the golf course. You’ve got to think some of the people coming into golf now are there because of Tiger, right? I’m not talking about just black people, but white people and Asian people and Hispanic people who didn’t think golf was open to them. A lot of people just started to look at it differently because of him. It’s like the game is okay for everybody to participate in.
And a lot of us are always going to remember what we were doing or where we were when he won the Masters for the first time, in 1997, when he just kicked everybody’s butt, set the record (270) and the next guy—was it Tom Kite?—was something like 12 strokes back (282). Man, that’s a day that changed golf forever. It changed the direction of sports in this country. The day Tiger won, I was playing for the Houston Rockets and we had a Sunday afternoon game. I remember I was nervous as hell. Black people aren’t always happy for other black people when they achieve goals, which is something that really bothers me. There’s often jealousy involved, and I just don’t understand why that is or how something like that got started. But sometimes guys come up to me and say—and they’re talking about athletes or entertainers—“Man, you guys have it great.” And yeah, the end result is great. But I tell them, “Man, getting there involves some shit you don’t want to know about and I don’t want to talk about.”
But I’m sure that other successful black people, people who have had to negotiate some serious situations to get where they are and appreciate all the BS that comes with trying to climb the mountain, are happy for other successful black people. There’s a kinship there because people have gone through similar experiences to achieve something even if their professions aren’t the same and don’t have much in common. I know successful black people were happy for Tiger in a way that had to be different from people of other races who were happy for Tiger that day, or in awe of what he did. I know black people who do backbreaking work every day of their lives, work like that for forty, fifty years trying to make a better life. But sadly they never get the chance to be successful on a big stage or even on a small stage doing something they love to do. And sometimes they can’t completely identify with what some successful black people have gone through just to reach that level.
I looked at Lee Elder, having been the first black man to play in the Masters, with tears in his eyes and I was trying to imagine just how deep his happiness was for Tiger. You know Lee Elder knew better than probably anybody else what Tiger had to go through, and he probably had more of an appreciation for what Tiger did than anybody else. That was so significant to me, just unbelievable. All the brothers in the Houston Rockets locker room that Sunday were just entranced sitting there watching the final round of the Masters. I don’t think we knew where we were or what we were doing for those few hours. Tiger had what seemed like a 50-shot lead and stayed perfect on every shot. But we were hanging on every swing and every putt, like he was clinging to a one-shot lead.
You relive it when you’re around other people and the topic comes up, Tiger and the Masters. And people who may not feel the same way have asked me, “Why were you so nervous when Tiger had such a big lead and nobody was threatening to challenge him?” And I remind them that this was 1997, one year after Greg Norman lost his final-round lead at the Masters. Every single shot that day, I’m thinking about Greg’s collapse the previous year. Man, I almost cried for Greg Norman. It was so hard to watch. Some of my friends at CBS told me Ben Crenshaw broke down and cried watching that. Oh man, that broke my heart that day for that to happen to Greg Norman.