I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [34]
It’s interesting that golf courses are places where guys really talk now. You’ve got all kinds of people playing together and eating lunch in the clubhouse together, and some of those guys would never meet people different from themselves if it wasn’t for the golf course. You’ve got to think some of the people coming into golf now are there because of Tiger, right? I’m not talking about just black people, but white people and Asian people and Hispanic people who didn’t think golf was open to them. A lot of people just started to look at it differently because of him. It’s like the game is okay for everybody to participate in.
And a lot of us are always going to remember what we were doing or where we were when he won the Masters for the first time, in 1997, when he just kicked everybody’s butt, set the record (270) and the next guy—was it Tom Kite?—was something like 12 strokes back (282). Man, that’s a day that changed golf forever. It changed the direction of sports in this country. The day Tiger won, I was playing for the Houston Rockets and we had a Sunday afternoon game. I remember I was nervous as hell. Black people aren’t always happy for other black people when they achieve goals, which is something that really bothers me. There’s often jealousy involved, and I just don’t understand why that is or how something like that got started. But sometimes guys come up to me and say—and they’re talking about athletes or entertainers—“Man, you guys have it great.” And yeah, the end result is great. But I tell them, “Man, getting there involves some shit you don’t want to know about and I don’t want to talk about.”
But I’m sure that other successful black people, people who have had to negotiate some serious situations to get where they are and appreciate all the BS that comes with trying to climb the mountain, are happy for other successful black people. There’s a kinship there because people have gone through similar experiences to achieve something even if their professions aren’t the same and don’t have much in common. I know successful black people were happy for Tiger in a way that had to be different from people of other races who were happy for Tiger that day, or in awe of what he did. I know black people who do backbreaking work every day of their lives, work like that for forty, fifty years trying to make a better life. But sadly they never get the chance to be successful on a big stage or even on a small stage doing something they love to do. And sometimes they can’t completely identify with what some successful black people have gone through just to reach that level.
I looked at Lee Elder, having been the first black man to play in the Masters, with tears in his eyes and I was trying to imagine just how deep his happiness was for Tiger. You know Lee Elder knew better than probably anybody else what Tiger had to go through, and he probably had more of an appreciation for what Tiger did than anybody else. That was so significant to me, just unbelievable. All the brothers in the Houston Rockets locker room that Sunday were just entranced sitting there watching the final round of the Masters. I don’t think we knew where we were or what we were doing for those few hours. Tiger had what seemed like a 50-shot lead and stayed perfect on every shot. But we were hanging on every swing and every putt, like he was clinging to a one-shot lead.
You relive it when you’re around other people and the topic comes up, Tiger and the Masters. And people who may not feel the same way have asked me, “Why were you so nervous when Tiger had such a big lead and nobody was threatening to challenge him?” And