Wednesday, June 7, 2000
Woods part of crusade: Minority golf numbers
growing
By John Branch
The Gazette
(KRT)
DENVER — The early morning shadows of the stately elm trees
are still long, and sprinklers quench the thirst of City Park
Golf Course's vast green grass. Four men amble up the first fairway
in search of their wayward golf balls. Four others wait and joke
at the tee box.
It's just another June day, just another tee time, on just another
of the nearly 17,000 golf courses across the United States. The
only thing that makes the scene at City Park any more interesting
is that the men in the fairway are all African-American. And so
are the men on the tee box, and a couple others back on the practice
green.
It's not unusual at City Park, set in one of Denver's most ethnically
diverse neighborhoods, where about 35 percent of the players are
African-American. But it's not a common scene elsewhere. Because
blacks, even with a monumental push to get them involved and with
Tiger Woods carrying their torch, make up just 3.3 percent of
the country's 26.4 million golfers.
Just a couple miles away, the Tiger Woods Foundation will host
a golf clinic geared to reach out to minority and inner-city children
and invite them into what has stubbornly been a white man's game.
Woods and other minority golf professionals - a phrase still bordering
on the oxymoronic - will instruct about 100 kids at nearby Park
Hill Golf Club. Then Woods will perform an exhibition for about
2,500 inner-city children. Many have never been near a golfer,
much less the best golfer on the planet.
He is the athletic Pied Piper of our time, crossing generations,
races and genders. But Woods - born to a black father, a Thai
mother - has had the biggest impact on African-Americans.
“He made it OK (for blacks) to play golf,” says Jay
Tafoya, coordinator of the Denver Junior Golf Program, of which
35 percent of participants are minorities.
Woods, then 21, crushed the Masters' field in April 1997, the
first African-American to win a golf major. A few people noticed.
A stagnant sport that had for years seen 2 million new players
(and 2 million quitters) each year saw 3 million beginners in
1997.
“Within two days of the Master's there was a tremendous influx
of men trying to teach their sons to play golf,” says Geoff
Greig, the senior director of instruction at the Nike Golf Learning
Center at Park Hill, at Torrey Pines in San Diego. “I had
between a 25- and 40-percent increase in teaching income those
few months.”
Woods was an instant saint for an already rising movement trying
to link minorities and golf. That hasn't changed.
“Oh, God,” says Barbara Douglas, president of the National
Minority Golf Foundation. “I don't know how you measure it,
he's had such an impact.”
Progress takes time
Like a volcano, Woods' impact was explosive at first. But the
revolution since has been more of the lava-flow variety, moving
quietly, slowly, steadily. But moving.
The good signs are these: The number of African-American golfers
has more than doubled in 10 years, from about 360,000 to 882,000
today, according to the National Golf Federation. Since 1996,
the growth has been about 30 percent while the number of golfers
as a whole hasn't changed. Interest from black youths, nonexistent
a few years ago, is growing. Ten years ago there were 85 junior
golf programs in the country aimed at inner-city and minority
kids, says John David, executive director of the Multi-Cultural
Golf Association of America. Today there are nearly 500. They
seem to be reaching their target; more than 50 percent of the
kids in Park Hill's youth program are black.
The bad signs: Fewer than 1 percent of those employed by the golf
industry - pros, managers, executives, etc. - are black. There
are more African-Americans in the NHL than on the four major golf
tours combined. Colorado has one black PGA professional. At Jackson
State University, Eddie Payton (Walter's brother) has spent 14
years building the best golf program among historically black
colleges, but still could find just four black high-school players
worthy of recruiting this past year.
“We're just past the starting line,” Douglas admits.
Pay to practice
There have always been hurdles for minorities. Some are tangible,
such as the PGA waiting until 1961 to strike a “Caucasians
only” clause from its bylaws, and the first African-American
not playing in the Masters until 1975. Only 10 years ago Shoal
Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., hosted the PGA Championship
despite a no-blacks membership policy. Amid controversy, several
clubs took themselves off the list of possible PGA venues rather
than change similar member rules.
But access has long been a problem on a local level, too. Inner
cities are notorious for their dearth of golf facilities. For
decades, most golf courses were private, not friendly places for
minorities or children.
“First and foremost, it has to be a welcoming facility,”
says Judy Thompson, spokeswoman for the National Golf Foundation,
a research group for the industry. “Kids haven't had access.
Minorities haven't had access. That's the biggest drawback. You
can give them the appetite, give them the instruction, but where
are they going to play?”
Money's an issue, too. The average greens fee for a U.S. municipal
course is $30, and for all public courses it's $36. Even a bucket
of balls on the range will cost a few bucks.
“Compare it to basketball,” says Tom Woodard, Denver's
director of golf and one of the few African-Americans who have
spent time (three years) on the PGA Tour. “Golf is one of
the few sports you have to pay to practice.”
But the hurdles are being lowered, and it's not because of Tiger
Woods. Seventy percent of courses today are public, and the number
is growing. The city of Denver, which hands 25 cents from each
of the 440,000 paid greens fees each year to its junior golf program,
provides free or low-cost instruction to low-income children.
It also has a warehouse of clubs kids can use. The junior program
is based at City Park rather than one of the city's other six
courses because of the diversity of the surrounding neighborhood.
More importantly, perhaps, there has been a national push to get
minorities involved. Tiger Woods might have made golf cool for
minorities, but his is just the face on a well-orchestrated movement.
“Ten years ago you could not find an organization trying
to get minority and inner-city kids on the golf course,”
Woodard says. “Now they are everywhere.”
Clubs for kids
The Multi-Cultural Golf Association of America was founded in
1991, with the Clintonesque mantra of trying to put “a textbook
and a golf club in the hands of every child in America.”
The group has developed 250 youth programs across the country,
and is sponsoring a Drive, Pitch and Putt competition for 10,000
kids in 110 cities July 24. “The largest one-day single golf
competition in the world,” David says.
The National Minority Golf Foundation was established in 1995
as an advocacy group, pushing for minorities in, “both the
game and the business of golf,” Douglas says.
“Tiger Woods is a great inspiration to people, and that's
great,” she says. “But equally I'd like to see the vice
president of human resources at Titleist be an African-American,
or the next general manager of a golf course. That's more realistic
than hoping for the next Tiger Woods.”
The first key is introduction. Many point to the First Tee, a
program founded in 1997 with the support of the PGA, USGA, LPGA
and others. It aims to create 100 sites, mostly in inner cities,
with driving ranges and at least three holes of golf. The group
has nearly 25 sites open, and will be halfway to its target by
year's end. The idea is to introduce the game to people - kids
- who might otherwise never have the chance, then usher them through
the early learning stages.
“The beauty of golf right now is that there are 40 million
people who have expressed interest in playing the game, and 50
percent who watch golf on television don't play,” says First
Tee national director Joe Louis Barrow, the son of boxer Joe Louis
and one of golf's great crusaders. “Golf has a tremendous
opportunity. And how we convert that opportunity is by providing
access to the facilities.”
Staying the course
The age-old problem is retention. Tiger Woods brings his show
to four or five cities each year for a weekend. There are thousands
of smaller-scale clinics across the country every year.
“The problem with the inner city is that we introduce them
to golf and then we leave,” says Jackson State's Payton.
“We give them a hunger for the game, then we leave. It needs
to be ongoing - not a clinic in July, then another clinic next
July.”
It's a never-ending battle, and has little to do with race. But,
in contrast to white males, more minorities (including women)
are taking up the game than dropping out. Introduce enough kids
to the game, make it accessible and affordable and fun, and some
are sure to stick.
“Kids play what their friends play,” says Thompson,
of the National Golf Foundation. “If their friends don't
play, it's a cinch - kids won't go out on their own and take up
golf.”
But if just some of the 2,500 children watching Tiger Woods perform
his exhibition this weekend take interest, maybe it will become
like the old shampoo commercial. They'll each tell two friends,
and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on.
It's a start. It may take years - decades - before the work pays
off.
“The finish line, and it's a never-ending line,” Douglas
says, “is when you can no longer name the minorities employed
in the golf industry, when you walk into an NCAA golf event and
the minorities are just a matter of course, or when you look at
the PGA Tour and don't think about how few minorities are on it.”
For now, Tiger Woods stands tall. But he won't always stand alone.
(c) 2000, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.).
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