With 14 major titles and unprecendented notoriety among even non-golfers, Tiger Woods has driven the game of golf over the past decade. After his U.S. Open win in 2000 at Pebble Beach, many thought Woods would lead an explosion of minority participation in the game. However, a decade later, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Ten years after his groundbreaking win at Pebble, Woods is still the only black player on the PGA Tour, and there are no blacks on the LPGA or Nationwide tours. Some estimates indicate less than 1 percent of golf industry employees are black and in Colorado Springs, where 6.6 percent of 414,600 residents are black, there are few blacks at the high school ranks and in junior programs.
Debate continues over whether the “Tiger effect” has materialized, yet the latest national statistics on participation by minorities paints a picture without many blacks on the links, and locals say golf isn’t attractive to a younger generation of blacks because of high costs compared with other sports and the absence of a black role model beyond Woods.
Woods has won 12 majors the past 10 years, most notably the Masters three times, giving him 14 major titles overall, four shy of the record held by Jack Nicklaus, and he boasts 71 PGA Tour victories, along with a record $93.1 million in prize money. He’s undoubtedly golf’s biggest name, despite a recent sex scandal that shattered his once-pristine image.
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