Masters 2022 Highlights changes in golf for the better
Day one of The Masters, and I’ve already seen history made.
Tiger Woods. Cameron Champ. Harold Varner III.
Three African-American golfers teeing off in the same Masters Tournament for the first time in its 86-year history. Regardless of how it ends Sunday for this trio, that feat alone is worthy of intense Celebration.
That’s significant, given the history of the Black Caddy in this tournament, which is something I recently learned about in depth. And, to me, the thing that makes this milestone even more important is that these African-American golfers aren’t just “out here.” They’re competing. They’re excelling. They’re included among the world’s best for a reason.
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Obviously, Woods, the first Black golfer to win the Masters, is in a class by himself. And I’m not just talking about his prowess on the course. It’s his Indomitable spirit that has me in awe. To come back from a car crash that almost caused him to lose his leg and his life and compete in this field and finish 1-under par in the first round is absolutely amazing.
Even Woods got himself.
“Finishing in the red today with as long of a layoff as I’ve had. To play this golf course the way I did today,” Woods said. “People have no idea how hard that is.”
He’s right.
Whenever we see Greatness like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Kobe Bryant, Venus or Serena Williams or Tom Brady, it’s almost as if we get desensitized to how difficult it is to maintain such a consistently elite level of play. We think it’s automatic because these Athletes make it look easy. To underscore the difficulty of what he’d been through and finish as well as he did, Woods called his first-round finish a win.
“We’ve had days off since I got out of that bed,” Woods said. “If you would’ve seen how my leg looked, to get from there to here, it’s no easy task.”
Woods is four shots off the lead, and Varner and Champ are right there, too. Back for his third Masters, Champ, the 26-year-old from Sacramento shot 72 in hopes of again Qualifying for the weekend. Varner had an eagle and two birdies on the second nine to shoot 71 in his Masters debut.
Then there’s Aaron Jarvis, a freshman at UNLV, who comes from the Cayman Islands, a nation of 70,000 people that has only 27 total holes to play. But his desire to play the game at the highest level possible superseded the lack of opportunity in his Homeland.
While we’re talking about firsts, let’s add in Tony Finau. Finau is the first person of Tongan and Samoan descent to play on the PGA Tour and has three top-10 finishes at Augusta National since 2018. And, of course, last year we watched as Hideki Matsuyama became the first men’s player from Japan to win a major.
For some, it may not seem like a lot. But these firsts represent a gradual shifting away from the widespread perception of golf as a rich white man’s game to one that can be a source of success for anyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity or class.
I’ve been encouraged to see a more diverse set of golfers displaying elite-level chops. It meshes well with other initiatives on the youth and Amateur level, such as the work of organizations like The First Tee and, especially in Augusta, its partnership with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Augusta and Bank of America to provide opportunities for kids – many of them African American – to learn the game.
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I was impressed with Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley’s seemingly genuine desire to use the resources at his disposal to remove the stigma of golf being an elitist sport, gradually replacing it with hope that others, even in Augusta’s inner city, can see themselves in this game .
Everything from Augusta National’s $ 1 million donation to help Paine College start a Women’s golf team, the $ 10 million gift given to make The Hub for Community Innovation happen in the city’s historic Harrisburg and Laney Walker Neighborhoods to another $ 1 million pledge to Augusta Technical College to help fund the school’s new Automotive service training center shows a commitment from the club to the community in ways many probably could’ve happened years before now.
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But, better late than never, right?
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Representation matters. The more Tiger Woodses, Cameron Champs, Harold Varners, Aaron Jarvises, Tony Finaus and Hideki Matsuyamas we are in golf’s biggest stages, the more kids like my 10-year old-son may start it themselves in this game.
I told my son, a nationally ranked Taekwondo athlete and budding basketball player, that I was going to cover golf. He said, “Golf ?! Why golf, Daddy? That’s just a game for old white dudes, right?”
I asked him if he’d ever heard of Tiger Woods? He said, “I think so.”
“Go Google him, son,” I told him. He did. And then I gave him a few more of the aforementioned players’ names to research. He also saw last year’s $ 11.5 million purse for the Masters, and was profoundly shocked that one could make that much money playing golf.
And now he’s also asking me to tell him more about life on the golf course. If I know my son, the more questions he asks, the more likely he is to follow up his inquisitiveness with experimentation, meaning it won’t be long before he’s asking me to find a way for him to learn the game.
Again, representation matters.
There’s a lot more golf to be played here over the next three days, which means we’ve got many more opportunities to see this more history being made. But these first few days, on and off the course, have been an encouraging start.
Gabriel Stovall is a sports writer for the Augusta Chronicle. Contact him at gstovall@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter and Instagram, @GabrielCStovall.