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By Newsweek Editors
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IT'S A SCRIPT THAT SOUNDS TOO GOOD to be true: the new kid on the sports block is not only talented and handsome and charming; he's at his best in the clinch. He comes from way behind to become the first golfer in history to win three straight U.S. Amateur titles, then announces 48 hours later he has decided to turn pro. Within a nanosecond, he's a multimillionaire with contracts -- more than $40 million -- from Nike and Titleist in hand and lots more to come.
Meet Eldrick (Tiger) Woods, a legendary figure in golf long before he officially decided to play it for a living. When he teed off in his first round as a professional last Thursday, ESPN announcer Roger Twibell opened the telecast by saying bluntly, ""We are here for one reason and one reason only.'' In other words, the other 155 pros in the Greater Milwaukee Open weren't on the same par.
And by many measures, they aren't. Woods is a 20-year-old star in a sport where most players don't peak until their 30s. If all that isn't enough, he is a black man in a sport that is virtually all white and in desperate need of a star who can help it shed its elitist, racist image. ""It is conceivable that in terms of overall impact on the sport -- when you figure in media, the dollars on the table for him, his ability to be a role model -- that if he succeeds he might be the most important player ever,'' said PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem. (A man not known for going out on a limb -- ever.) Woods knows all about the hopes many in the game have for him, and he bridles at the notion of being a role model for minorities. ""I don't consider myself a Great Black Hope,'' he said. ""I'm just a golfer who happens to be black and Asian. It doesn't matter whether they're white, black, brown or green. All that matters is I touch kids the way I can through clinics and they benefit from them.''
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That comment is either naive or disingenuous. All of the attention that Woods has generated has as much to do with the color of his skin as his golf portfolio. Four years ago when Phil Mickelson turned pro, he had already won a PGA Tour event. (Woods hadn't by the time he turned pro.) He received a lot of attention and signed lucrative contracts, but they weren't anywhere close to Tiger's league. The fact that Woods's first Nike commercial, which began airing last week, has him looking into a camera and noting that there are (at least) 23 clubs in the United States that will not allow him to play because of the color of his skin is a tipoff to the marketing plans ahead for him.
Which makes perfect sense in a sport that was rocked in 1990 when the founder of Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., told a reporter that there wasn't any way that an African-American would be considered for membership. This was shortly before the PGA Championship was to be held at the all-white club. Although all of golf's governing bodies moved quickly to establish guidelines that said that no club with restrictive membership policies could host their events in the future, that action was more Band-Aid than cure.
Six years after Shoal Creek, Woods's decision to turn pro doubled the number of African-Americans on tour. For the past several years Jim Thorpe has been the only African-American player on the PGA Tour. Thorpe is 47, the last of a generation of excellent black players that included men like Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Jim Dent, Calvin Peete and Pete Brown. Most of them learned the game working as caddies, but with caddies being replaced by golf carts in most of the country, the opportunities for youngsters to learn the game that way have dwindled. Thorpe, for example, once tried to give away 100 sets of clubs to inner-city kids, but got only 30 takers. ""The kids all want to grow up to be Michael Jordan,'' he says sadly. Tiger's father and others hope he can change that.
Expectations are nothing new for Woods. His father, Earl, has guided his son's career almost from the womb. He first talked to Tiger (a nickname he gave him as an infant because he reminded him of an army buddy named Tiger) about how to deal with the media when he was 4. By then, he was already developing the arching swing that now allows him to hit the ball John Daly-like distances -- well over 300 yards. At 15, Tiger won the U.S. Junior title for the first time, then defended that title the next two years. Two summers ago, just prior to entering Stanford, he won his first U.S. Amateur, becoming, at 18, the youngest player to ever win the trophy that has been won in the past by players like Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Then he won it again. And again.
Earl Woods is almost as much a part of the story as his son. He reminds many people of the kind of pushy stage fathers who seem to populate tennis. When Tiger arrived for his first press conference, Earl (already decked out in Nike gear from head to toe) sat right there with him. And while Tiger modestly downplayed his own hopes, his father stuck around afterward to declare, among other things, that his son would be bigger than both Arthur Ashe and Muhammad Ali. ""There is no comprehension by anyone on the impact this kid is going to have, not only on the game of golf, but on the world itself,'' he said. ""The Lord sent him here on a mission and it will transcend the game,'' Earl Woods said.
But there are signs that Earl's handling of Tiger may already be creating tension. Entourages, for instance, don't go over too well on the PGA Tour. But there was Tiger Woods in Milwaukee, accompanied by his mother and father; three International Management Group reps; a Nike rep; a Titleist rep; his coach; his sports psychologist; an L.A. public-relations man, and a California lawyer/family friend. Word spread around the locker room when Earl Woods was heard demanding 25 passes to the tournament (the norm is a maximum of six). In fact, Earl Woods conjures up memories of Stefano Capriati, who turned his daughter Jennifer into a lucrative meal ticket when she was 14 and burned her out by 16. Like Stefano, Earl Woods hasn't had a full-time job since 1988, ""sacrificing'' to be at his son's side. Earl Woods says he won't travel full-time with Tiger. That would be a bonus.
So how good is this kid? ""He'll win more Masters titles than Arnold and I did combined,'' Nicklaus said this past April at golf's most prestigious tournament. That means Woods must win a whopping 11 Masters titles to meet Jack's expectations. As for his immediate future, it's far from a sure thing. He will play in seven straight tournaments, an exhausting schedule for anybody hoping to earn enough money -- probably about $150,000 -- to make the top 125 on the money list for the year. That would make him fully exempt on the PGA Tour in 1997. (As of press time, Woods had made the cut at the Milwaukee Open.)
In truth, Tiger doesn't need to play by the same rules as the journeymen pros at the Milwaukee Open, who are fighting to retain their playing privileges next year. If he can crack the top 150 (about $125,000), he will, for all intents and purposes, be fully exempt, since a player in the top 150 can get an unlimited number of sponsors' exemptions into tournaments, and there isn't a sponsor alive who wouldn't kill to have Woods in his field. If Woods doesn't crack the top 150 or make it through the tour's qualifying school in December, he'll probably spend most of next year overseas playing for large, IMG-arranged appearance fees.
Regardless of what happens this fall, Woods is already very rich and very famous. He is also very young in a game famous for eating its young. The four players who won the major titles this year were 39, 37, 39 and 35. He needs time to grow and learn. No one has ever dominated golf at the age of 20 or 21 or even 22.
But everyone says Tiger Woods is different. His past certainly says that. His contracts and his status say that. Whether his future will continue to follow that same dreamlike script is unknown for the moment. In the meantime, everyone in golf waits, watches and hopes.
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