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Master Must Address The 'Slave' Trade
Richard Williams
April 15, 2026TIGER WOODS said the focus had never left him through that triumphant final round. He had just come in to talk to reporters after taking a telephone call from the President of the United States, who is currently off games after an accident at the home of another pro golfer.
But Woods did remember one bad moment. It came on the 18th tee, as he was winding up his drive. "I was at the top of my swing," he said, "when a photographer took a picture, and then fired off two more on the way down. That was uncalled for."
Disturbed, he hooked the ball into the gallery and was left with the need to scramble the last par that would give him his US Masters scoring record.
Hang on a minute. Isn't Tiger Woods the golfer we now know him to be because Lt Col Earl Woods drew on his own training with the Green Berets in Vietnam - specifically the techniques of prisoner interrogation - to bullet-proof his infant son against such moments? Wasn't he in the habit of dropping a club at a vital moment, or moving his shadow into the boy's eyeline, so that in years to come his prodigy would be able to handle any distraction?
"It wasn't a natural noise," the new Masters champion said. "The rustling of the trees, stuff like that, noises that are natural to a golf course, you don't hear them."
But Tiger got his par, and his record, in a way that confirmed his father's subsequent words. "He has the tools and the mental toughness," Earl Woods said, "but what he also has is a creative mind. And it's so powerful that it enables him to see escape routes which aren't there for a normal person. That's why he's so dangerous when he's in trouble."
The key to this, in his father's view, is a particular attitude to the job. "It's not work to Tiger," Earl Woods said. "It's play. When he's out there, he's not working. He's playing. He's at play."
It can hardly be as simple as that. After all, when Earl Woods was asked for an immediate reaction to his son's achievement, these were his words: "What a great, great job. It's marvellous when a kid can go out there and execute a game plan."
So is he doing a job, or is he at play?
The fact remains that Earl Woods has done enough to deserve the title of coach of the decade. He took a baby boy and turned him into someone that people are thinking might become the greatest golfer of all time. This took the sort of vision and persistence that nowadays arouses our suspicion, thanks to the Stefano Capriatis of this world, who have made us unsure about the point at which "tough love" shades into a dangerous obsession.
So far as one can tell from the middle distance, Earl and Kultida Woods have also produced a 21-year-old man of considerable maturity. If true, this gives their son a chance of turning his good fortune into a long and happy life, despite - and this is not said facetiously - the burden of all those millions of Nike dollars in his bank account.
He may even be mature enough to deal with the tainted nature of those dollars. This means confronting, at some point, the issue raised in a recent New York Times report about Nike's use of child labour in Vietnam to make the shoes bought by the kids who see Tiger Woods on TV and in the company's ads.
THE Vietnamese child labourers, and the older women who also work for Nike's manufacturers, exist in conditions barely distinguishable from slavery, which is ironic since so much was made about Woods being the first black golfer to win a major, two days before the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking major league baseball's colour bar. There was a lot of talk in Augusta about goals and dreams and making things possible for others.
"Tiger didn't ask for this role model business," said Earl Woods, who nicknamed his son after a South Vietnamese army buddy, "but he accepts it and he will do the best he can."
"I think as I've got older I've understood why the big guy in the sky gave me these talents," Tiger Woods said. "The main reason is to help people."
Opening up the country clubs of America to ghetto youth is not a bad priority. But another way of helping might be to find out for himself about the people who stitch his shoes together. And to focus, for an undistracted moment, on that.
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