Either a liar or an idiot

BikeMonkey PostApparently Tiger Woods’ ex-caddie Steve Williams holds a grudge against the Tiger. Upon receiving some caddie award, he apparently said: “”My aim was to shove it right up that black – – – -hole,” in the context of his new employer winning a golf tournament. I gotta say, when I finally found the quote after hearing a bunch of breathless coverage of the “racist” remarks on the radio, I was distinctly unimpressed. I mean, yes, perhaps he should have described Tiger’s rectum as being “smug” or “arrogant” or “overrated” or something but…c’mon.

But what really annoyed me about this was a moronic statement made by a legend of the sport, Greg Norman.

Asked if racism is a problem in golf, Norman said he’s “never seen it at all.”

According to Wikipedia Greg Norman was active from 1975 to 2009 in professional golf. That entry also indicates that Norman played the Masters tournament regularly, including an unbroken streak from 1981-2002.

The Masters is held, of course, at Augusta National which only allowed black members to join in 1990 after being threatened with the loss of their tournament by the PGA.

The action by Augusta National, which is situated in Augusta, Ga., came in the wake of the controversy that surrounded the racial makeup of Shoal Creek Country Club outside Birmingham, Ala., where the P.G.A. Championship was held last month.

In response to the events at Shoal Creek, three of the main administrative bodies in golf, the PGA Tour, the P.G.A. of America and the United States Golf Association, all adopted new guidelines effective in 1991 requiring private clubs that want to host tournaments to demonstrate that their membership policies are not discriminatory against minority members or women by policy or practice.

And in case the lack of black members doesn’t convince you (“wayul, them coloreds just don’t wanna join our lil’ club, Colonel”) perhaps this will:

Because of the Masters, one of golf’s four major championships, the club has long been one of the nation’s most visible bastions of all-white golf. No black player played in the tournament until Lee Elder in 1975. And until 1982, when the competitors were allowed for the first time to bring their regular tour caddies, all the caddies in the tournament were black.

Because it just doesn’t look right to have white men carrying the golf bags of other white men, you know?

Greg Norman played at Augusta many, many times. He was a professional golfer of some note when the professional organizations felt it necessary to adopt new guidelines to force old style racist country clubs to modernize or lose the considerable benefits of a PGA event.

Yet he allegedly never saw any racism in the sport “at all”?

Greg Norman, if quoted within reasonable context, is either an idiot or an asshole.

__
Additional Reading

A brief history of black contributions in golf
Decline of black caddies a bad thing?
Robert Lee Elder
Charles Sifford

Are you attending the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting?

I will extend my usual no-promises offer. If you care to offer up your presentation details in the comments or by email (drugmnky at the gmail) I will endeavor to stop by. Who knows? If it is really cool I might even blog it.

(Don’t forget to visit NIH Row)