A Fierce Cat on the Prowl

by Kemi James

“What?!”

“Are you serious? Are you kidding me?”

“No way. No. Way. Absolutely freakin’ no way!”

“Dude, Nick Faldo all the way.”

“Justin Leonard.”

“Jon Daly.”

“No. Davis Love III, guys!”

“It’s gotta be [Phil] Mickelson’s turn.”

“He has a slim chance, but maybe he’ll turn up in the top 10 on the leaderboard.”

And on and on it went.

On Thursday, April 10, 1997, before history class began at Gonzaga College High School, Mr. Favret, my fascinating, sports fanatic teacher, asked a simple question: “Who will win the Masters? From the discussion above, the “He” in question was Tiger Woods, and the majority of the students in the predominantly-white classroom grew restless—shifting taciturn natures into a collective, animated frenzy.

Different opinions had come up—why it would be hard for Tiger to win, why Tiger’s too “green,” why the other pro golfers had better chances due to experience, why the competition was too stiff.

Why, why, why.

My classmates’ theories were not racist or ignorant. In fact, their rebuttals were somewhat valid. My fellow classmates had more opportunities and fortunes, especially in their overall knowledge of golf, which I couldn’t even fathom as a wide-eyed black teen, who witnessed some of the horrors of the crack epidemic on the doorsteps of my junior high school. They interned as caddies for semi-pro and pro-am players; they set foot on beautiful golf courses around the world; they mingled, wined, and dined several times at galas and other occasions in elite country clubs; and as much of a sports fanatic myself, it was they who really knew the difference in relation to a four-iron, a three-wood, and a wedge.

At that the same time, I had followed some of Tiger’s budding career on TV, long before the courtesy of YouTube, watching replays of his now-famous appearance as a two-year-old on The Mike Douglas Show in the late 1970s on ESPN, and later catching highlights of his dominance in the USGA (United States Golf Association) Amateur Championship three straight times in the 1990s on The George Michael Sports Machine on Channel 4.

Mr. Favret asked other students if they had any favorites, if they thought Tiger could gnaw through the competition. There were few students of color in Mr. Favret’s World History class, but I raised my hand meekly. So did my friends Matt and Jason. Greg wasn’t into sports, just astrophysics and roller coasters, so he kept his uninterested comments to himself—to avoid joining the bawdy banter. And the guy named Other Matt? Well, let’s just say that if Tiger Woods were to run for president today, he’d vote for the Other Guy…

It was clear that Mr. Favret was interested in hearing “other” perspectives, so that he could hear positions based on compassion, add a counter-balance to the student’s heated debate, or just out of plain, old curiosity. It was interesting that we brothers, let alone the Asian and Latino kids, could voice an “authoritarian” point of view with the rest of the students, since we three (or on good days, four of us) never really viewed this vanilla sport of white-bread players hitting an alabaster-colored ball amongst the trees and amid galleries into a tiny hole for 18 rounds everyday for four days.

School and early afternoon broadcasts made it difficult to keep up-to-date and see which predictions would come true. But on Saturday and Sunday, halfway through the Masters tournament, it was evident that this “cat” came to play. For the first time in my life, I focused on a man so intriguing with the cool nickname of “Tiger” and his geriatric caddy named “Fluff.” My eyes were glued to them as they ambled down Amen Corner and other landmarks on the famed Augusta golf course.

Like those who saw Jesse Owens crush the competition in Berlin’s 1936 Olympics and thumb his nose to the belief of Aryan supremacy; or cheer Muhammad Ali in 1961, as he stunned the world by beating Sonny Liston, after his imprisonment for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War; or saw Michael Jordan wag his tongue, soar high and cheat gravity (more than the standard 9.8 meters per second squared) with the Chicago Bulls, I captured the moment of a new legend in the making.

Tiger Woods set many unheard-of records that day, including an outstanding 12-stroke win. His fundamentally sound technique was regarded as something only imaginable in a video game. His ferocious swing on every tee, on a total of 72 holes, consistently created a sonic boom heard from Georgia to the Himalayas and back.

More importantly, it is true that he would not have been as triumphant and successful were it not for the black golfers before him like Pete Brown, Lee Elder and Charlie Sifford, to whom Woods gave credence. For these soldiers, as well as Tiger’s own father Earl—who became the first black student athlete to play baseball at Kansas State University in 1951, shunned by bigotry and discrimination, overcoming racial barriers—paved the way so that the African-American superstar athletes of today, like Woods, could flourish.

On Monday, April 14, 1997, after the whole debacle cleared and the weekend passed—Matt, Jason, and I strutted proudly into that Forte Hall classroom like peacocks. None of our classmates mustered enough courage or care to go into the details of Tiger’s phenomenal win. My boys and I didn’t mention it either. We didn’t need to. The results said it all. We—and the whole sporting world—saw our generation’s Owens, our Ali, our Jordan that day. Our Tiger. I, along with my brothers, smiled, because that Sunday, a tall black man wearing red and a plush tiger head on his driver, clawed his way down the path of the pantheon of sports gods.

There are those who question Tiger’s tepid response to fellow golfer Fuzzy Zoeller’s racist remarks as to what type of food (“fried chicken and collard greens”) would be served at the Masters champion reception in 1997; those who question his “caublinasian” ethnicity, a phrase he coined on The Oprah Winfrey Show; and those who question his marriage to a Swedish au pair. There is no need to address these thorny issues, however, because they detract attention from his talents and did not surface until his killer instinct, competitiveness and drive for excellence dove into the public atmosphere a decade ago.

Now he’s famous; but back then, he wasn’t a household name. Back then, both optimists and skeptics didn’t know—no way, no freakin’ way—that Eldrick “Tiger” Woods would swing us, with his mighty grip, into his illustrious lair of a stellar career.

Additional Resources

Cole, Cam. (2007, April 4). Decade of Dominance. Vancouver Sun.

On This Day | April 13, 1997: Tiger Woods wins Masters at 21. BBC News.