Why don't we have enough African-Americans on PGA Tour? It's because of the golf buggy

[Blue_Tires]

Sometimes it is necessary to dig deep past the clichés to reach the root of an issue; a fact Tiger Woods all but acknowledged this week when contemplating the paucity of African-Americans on the PGA Tour.

Woods has always been eloquent on the subject, which is a good job as he is repeatedly asked about it. On occasion, Woods, quite ridiculously, has been accused of not doing enough to take his success to the black masses, as if breaking down the barriers and setting up a huge foundation to assist the deprived was not enough to ask from one individual. But Woods understands why it was that in the Seventies, Eighties and for some of the Nineties there were, bizarrely, so many more African-Americans on Tour than now. The answer is that damned golf buggy.

“I honestly believe that we don’t have any African-Americans out here playing on the Tour or even a lot on the mini tours is because of the advent of the golf cart,” Woods said at the Players Championship at Sawgrass on Tuesday. “That took away a lot of the caddie programmes. They would go out and loop, carry for 36 [holes], hit a few balls here and there. At least they got introduced. They got to watch it, simulate it, got to be around it.

“That’s all gone. So we don’t have the pool of players anymore and so as you get up to the peak, as competition pyramids up to the top, it [the number] obviously declines.”

Woods was thinking of a few of his heroes who have died in the last few months. Last week, the game bid farewell to Calvin Peete, he of the bent left arm who went 2½ years without missing a fairway at Muirfield Village, a statistic Woods said he would struggle to emulate with seven iron in his hands.

Golf also lost Pete Brown, the Mississippi pioneer who recovered from polio to become the first African-American to win a PGA Tour event. The story goes that Waco Turner, the eccentric owner of the self-titled Waco Turner Open, was so concerned about the reaction to a black succeeding in this white man’s sport that he carried a gun with him during the final round and told Brown: “Don’t you worry, I’ve got your back.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/golf/tigerwoods/11587734/Why-dont-we-have-enough-African-Americans-on-PGA-Tour-Its-because-of-the-golf-buggy.html

[Scuba]

1. Woods' point about golf cars and caddies makes a lot of sense.