Joe Beditz, the president of the National Golf Foundation, saw the impact, including a 22 percent increase in recreational golf participation and a 50 percent jump in the number of nonwhite golfers from when Woods turned pro in 1996 to 2001.
JOE BEDITZ Tiger’s biggest impact, by far, was on golf’s public awareness. He became ubiquitous: TV ads, magazine covers, interviews and television appearances. The ultra-elevated public awareness was the headspring from which all of golf’s blessings flowed — more fans, more golfers, more courses, more equipment sales.
In the same five-year period beginning in 1996, PGA Tour prize money mushroomed by 172 percent, television ratings for the Masters jumped by 58 percent and network cameras tried to capture every shot struck by Woods at any tournament.
NANTZ The idea was to never lose track of Tiger during the entire body of a three-hour broadcast. It was a new era for golf because a golfer was now maybe the most famous athlete in the world.
The pervasive belief in the wake of Woods’s 1997 Masters victory was that it would be a catalyst for diversifying professional golf, which had a well-deserved reputation for exclusionary tactics and biases. The PGA Tour had a Caucasian-only clause until 1961. Elder was not welcomed to the Masters until 14 years later. Woods’s 1997 Masters breakthrough and exploding fame were expected to bring sweeping change. But 25 years later, there are no more than a handful of Black golfers on the PGA Tour.
JARIAH BEARD (one of dozens of Black caddies at Augusta National from 1955 to 1983) We had more Black pros in the 1960s than we do now. In the 1980s, another Black golfer, Calvin Peete, won 12 PGA Tour events. He won the Players Championship and was near the top of the money rankings list almost every year. Tiger came along 10 years later, but how many have followed him?
EDWARD WANAMBWA (an editor for African American Golfer’s Digest and a former caddie for Elder) It was a bit naïve to think there was going to be this sudden influx of African American golfers. Why didn’t the floodgates open? Because elite golf is not a cheap endeavor — the equipment, the travel, the entry fees to tournaments, it’s expensive. There are well-meaning initiatives to introduce the game to junior golfers, but the mechanisms for getting to the tour weren’t there.
(Subcribe to BritishHerald : VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY – A CONTEMPORARY HERO)