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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Golf Starts To Pay For Recent Success

Ron Sirak Associated Press

For most of this century, golf drifted along in a cocoon of obscurity, dwarfed in popularity and publicity by the team sports, emerging only now and then into the public eye when a star of the magnitude of Bobby Jones or Ben Hogan or Arnold Palmer came along.

Looming now as the hot sport of the new century, golf is finding out what the big-guy sports found out a decade ago: Along with success comes scrutiny. Big money sometimes means big trouble.

Tiger Woods won the Masters. Mark O’Meara and Steve Elkington won twice on the PGA Tour this year.

Yet last week’s most talked about golf headlines had to do with Woods’ race, Fuzzy Zoeller’s racial remarks, and John Daly’s drinking and how it led to his loss of a wife and a lucrative endorsement contract.

Even seeping out is word of TV talks beginning in earnest this week as the PGA Tour tries to capitalize on its new popularity - and the prospect of years of Tiger Woods - to get some big bucks from the networks starting in 1999.

Many casual golf fans would be hard pressed to remember who won at Greensboro last week - it was Frank Nobilo - but they know the word “Cablinasian,” understand that fried chicken, cornbread and collard greens are not joking matters, and know that Daly has spent more time drying out at Betty Ford than playing golf with Gerald Ford.

The LPGA has two tremendous young stars in Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb. One of the greatest players ever - Nancy Lopez - proved over the weekend that she can still win.

Yet women’s golf found itself mired in an old issue this week when the head of Titleist announced the golf ball company was withdrawing $1 million in advertising from Sports Illustrated because of the magazine’s Golf Plus article on the lesbian party scene at the Dinah Shore tournament.

If success has a price, golf is starting to pay.

“Society has definitely changed,” Woods said earlier this month at the Masters. “People want to know dirt on anyone now. The gloves are off and it’s open game. For players such as myself, Greg (Norman), John Daly, it becomes difficult at times because people aren’t respectful of our private space.”

Yes, times have changed. But not all of what is dug up is dirt - or at least not dirt that doesn’t deserved to be exposed. Golf no longer exists in its own world, but in the real world by real rules of real journalism.

Woods, at only 21 years of age, wasn’t even born in the days when a player could drink until the wee hours, then play poorly the next day and not have it written about - sometimes because the guys he was drinking with were writers.

And when Zoeller was born in 1951, racially insensitive jokes went unreported because the PGA was still 10 years away from lifting its “Caucasian clause” and allowing blacks to play on tour.

Woods told Oprah Winfrey: “Growing up, I came up with this name: I’m a ‘Cablinasian,”’ referring to his multi-ethnic background.

Woods need remember that when Robinson broke the baseball color barrier in 1947 and Charlie Sifford was trying to get on the pro golf tour in the 1950s, it would not have helped if they had come up with another name for themselves.

Palmer, whose career has spanned the entire second half of the century, is in a better position than most to comment on the new scrutiny.

“It’s part of the price you pay,” Palmer said about the loss of privacy.

Everything has changed.

Golf has grown from a game to a business.

And - if everyone accepts that the old days are gone - it will all be for the better.