Tiger Woods has broken his silence and told an interview he's solidly behind the president-elect:
And, in a first, he talked about the election of Barack Obama. "I think it's absolutely incredible," Woods told me. "He represents America, he's multi-racial, and I was hoping it would happen in my lifetime. My father was hoping it would happen in his lifetime. He didn't get to see it, but I'm lucky enough to see a person of color in the White House." When I asked what his father might say if he had lived to see the election, Woods replied, "He would've cried."
This may seem pretty dog-bites-man, I guess, but it was not inevitable that Woods would say anything. Back in the 1990s, aides to Harvey Gantt, an African American who was running against arch-racist Jesse Helms for Senate in North Carolina, approached Michael Jordan for support. Jordan is a North Carolina native. He was at the peak of his popularity. But he declined, famously saying, "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
Granted, Woods didn't speak before the voting. But even doing what he did is okay, given the context of the golf world. It's pretty right wing, in case you wouldn't have been able to guess.
How do I square my own enthusiasm for the game with this fact? I play at public courses. Where I play, Obama would have won a straw poll by about 80-20.
