Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast
Speaker 1: and to the third installment of Frida Egg's Stories, our
Speaker 1: audio documentary series. Today's episode is about Tiger Woods's professional
Speaker 1: debut at the nineteen ninety six Greater Milwaukee Open, and
Speaker 1: today's sponsor, appropriately enough, is visit Milwaukee. Wisconsin is an
Speaker 1: amazing golf destination. You have courses designed by Langford and Moreau,
Speaker 1: Pete die Corn, Crenshaw, David McLay kid, many of which
Speaker 1: are accessible within a few hours drive from Milwaukee Mitchell Airport,
Speaker 1: which itself is just eight miles from downtown. You can
Speaker 1: fly into Milwaukee and choose from an array of different
Speaker 1: courses that you can play in the same day. Now.
Speaker 1: The Greater Milwaukee area has also been the site of
Speaker 1: some really memorable golf tournaments and some big ones that
Speaker 1: are coming up. You've got the Ryder Cup in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty at Whistling Straits. You've got PGA Championships two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, ten, twenty fifteen, also at Whistling Straits. You
Speaker 1: had the twenty seventeen US Open at Aaron Hills, and
Speaker 1: of course, for much of the twentieth century, you had
Speaker 1: the Greater Milwaukee Open at Brown Deer Park golf Course
Speaker 1: just outside of Milwaukee, where Tiger Woods said Hello World
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six. To learn more about golf in Milwaukee,
Speaker 1: go to visit Milwaukee dot org slash golf. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the story. We're excited about this one.
Speaker 1: We've been working on it for a while. We talked
Speaker 1: to US Open champion Curtis Strange, journalists Timi Diaz and
Speaker 1: Gary Dematto. We talked to the Greater Milwaukee Open tournament
Speaker 1: director Tom Strong. We even talked to Jim Riswold, the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote that famous Hello World Nike ad, and
Speaker 1: they were all great, were really thankful to all of them.
Speaker 1: And so, without further ado, here is Hello Milwaukee Tiger's
Speaker 1: pro debut.
Speaker 2: Frida Egg requires a different technique. What you need to
Speaker 2: do is actually square the face so they'll dig down
Speaker 2: underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out
Speaker 2: onto the green.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing.
Speaker 4: Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely
Speaker 4: different than playing out of a nice clean lion of
Speaker 4: green side bunker. You need to be aggressive on any shop,
Speaker 4: weather it's sitting cleanly or it's Friday eg well, we've
Speaker 4: all faced it the dreaded Friday.
Speaker 1: It's not to be feared though.
Speaker 4: It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
Speaker 5: And tell you, this is the longest one footer he's ever.
Speaker 1: Had, Pumpkin Rich nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 4: I'm glad he's making them put it.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you it's amazing the thoughts to go through
Speaker 3: your head at this position.
Speaker 1: Right here, a golfer in red and black addresses a
Speaker 1: short putt.
Speaker 4: Another Tiger come back completed, and with it golf.
Speaker 2: History, three straight US Comitar Championships or Tiger Woods, the
Speaker 2: pearl Woods.
Speaker 4: Coming in from mother and father.
Speaker 3: There's a famous og where tears.
Speaker 4: Will be exchanged.
Speaker 1: It had been one of the most exciting final matches
Speaker 1: anyone could remember. Over the first nine holes, twenty year
Speaker 1: old Tiger Woods of Stanford University went four down to
Speaker 1: Steve Scott, a University of Florida sophomore who was playing
Speaker 1: tough inspired golf. But on the second eighteen of the day,
Speaker 1: Tiger willed himself back into the match, sinking several clutch puts,
Speaker 1: including an astonishing thirty five footer on the thirty fifth hole.
Speaker 6: It's good, great speed, it's in are you serious?
Speaker 1: He closed out the championship on the second playoff hole,
Speaker 1: but according to Haimi Diaz, the atmosphere on the green
Speaker 1: wasn't as jubilant as he might expect.
Speaker 7: The crowd was almost exhausted from all the excitement that
Speaker 7: the comeback had entailed. And there I think there was
Speaker 7: a kind of a sense of inevitability that Tiger would
Speaker 7: win the playoff. So I'm not saying there was an excitement,
Speaker 7: but there was almost like a coronation feeling, as opposed
Speaker 7: to oh my god, he did it. There was a
Speaker 7: sense that, Okay, I've completed this mission and a new
Speaker 7: chapter was ahead.
Speaker 1: And in the post round interview, Roger Malby asked about
Speaker 1: that new chapter.
Speaker 8: Well, Tiger, we got to ask the question, what does
Speaker 8: this do to these to your feelings as to where
Speaker 8: the old term pro or stay in school.
Speaker 4: I don't know right now. I just know one thing
Speaker 4: I'm going to celebrate, like hell tonight.
Speaker 1: That was a dodge. Of course, the decision had already
Speaker 1: been made. Tiger was going to turn pro and his
Speaker 1: first tournament, the Greater Milwaukee Open, would start in four days.
Speaker 1: In this episode of Fridagg's Stories, We're focusing on one
Speaker 1: week in Tiger Woods's career, his professional debut in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, and I'll tell you upfront, this won't be
Speaker 1: a story about what happened on the course, because with
Speaker 1: a couple of exceptions, nothing much did. The most significant
Speaker 1: events occurred off the course, in the press room, in
Speaker 1: front of the cameras during commercial breaks. It was in
Speaker 1: those spaces that the public image of Tiger Woods, the
Speaker 1: myth of him as a professional golfer, began to be invented.
Speaker 1: And not everything went smoothly at first. Make no mistake.
Speaker 1: When Tiger arrived in Milwaukee on August twenty sixth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, he was already a star. He had won
Speaker 1: three straight US Junior Amateurs and three straight US Amateurs.
Speaker 1: The press had been singing his praises for years, and yes,
Speaker 1: the golf world had seen its share of child prodigies
Speaker 1: come and go. But this fiercely competitive, fiercely talented half
Speaker 1: African American, half Asian American young man from Cyprus, California
Speaker 1: was different.
Speaker 5: I just recall he always looked so poised over the ball.
Speaker 7: He never looked like there was any tension in his
Speaker 7: jaw or anything that was like getting ready to load
Speaker 7: up and really kill it. It was more this kind
Speaker 7: of gathered speed at a really very fluid and I
Speaker 7: won't say leisurely, but at just a very controlled pace,
Speaker 7: and then the hips and the lower body just turned
Speaker 7: so fast. It was just a beautiful kind of swivel
Speaker 7: of the hips that was just so fast and so correct.
Speaker 1: Jimi Diaz was a writer for Sports Illustrated and he
Speaker 1: had been covering Tiger since Tiger was fourteen.
Speaker 7: It was in my head, certainly that we may be
Speaker 7: looking at perhaps the greatest golfer whoever lived in his
Speaker 7: formative years. Here to some people that felt like it
Speaker 7: was exaggerated or unjustified, but he had this intangible quality
Speaker 7: of playing his best golf under the most pressure, which
Speaker 7: was kind of transcendent. And Jack certainly had had that
Speaker 7: and not many others in history. And that's the thing
Speaker 7: that made Tiger so special. I mean, he had all
Speaker 7: kinds of physical game, but when he had to do it,
Speaker 7: he entered this mental state that seemed to facilitate his
Speaker 7: best golf. I don't know, that's kind of the final
Speaker 7: level of golf greatness, and you do your best at
Speaker 7: the moments that are the biggest at the times that
Speaker 7: you want to do your best. That's usually an inhibitor
Speaker 7: to most people, and for him it was an enhancer.
Speaker 1: Diaz's Sports Illustrated story about the Pumpkin Ridge Amateur Open
Speaker 1: This way Long odds are still available on Tiger Woods's
Speaker 1: achieving his goal of becoming the greatest golfer of all time.
Speaker 1: But after the breath taking away in which he made
Speaker 1: history on Sunday by winning the most dramatic US Amateur ever,
Speaker 1: would a wise man bet against him. Words like those
Speaker 1: and deeds that seemed to validate them gave Tiger opportunities
Speaker 1: that other amateurs just didn't get. In April nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: he made his second appearance as an amateur at the
Speaker 1: Master's Tournament. There under one hundred and fifty year old
Speaker 1: oak that serves as a gathering spot at Augusta National,
Speaker 1: a reporter named Gary Dematto approached Tiger's father, Earl Woods.
Speaker 9: I said, you know, mister Woods, the greater Wacke Open
Speaker 9: fellows by one week, the US Amateur champion and pre
Speaker 9: seeds Tiger returning for what would have been his junior
Speaker 9: year at Stanford, and I said, would you guys be
Speaker 9: interested if the tournament offered you sponsor's exemption to play
Speaker 9: in it? And he said, yeah, we definitely would consider
Speaker 9: that right away.
Speaker 1: Demato, who wrote for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, called Tom Strong,
Speaker 1: the Greater Milwaukee Opens tournament director.
Speaker 10: I said, you know, I would love to give him
Speaker 10: a spot, whether he turns pro or not. We had
Speaker 10: eight exemptions and four of them we could use unrestricted.
Speaker 10: So the week of the Masters, Glenn Greenspan was running
Speaker 10: the media center. So we sent a letter to Glenn
Speaker 10: and said, please give this to Earl Woods, and so
Speaker 10: he did, and Earl called me back that day when
Speaker 10: it was delivered, and at that point in time he said,
Speaker 10: we'd love to play.
Speaker 1: And in that way, the Greater Milwaukee Open or GMO,
Speaker 1: became the site of Tiger Woods's professional debut. And so
Speaker 1: tell me about the GMO.
Speaker 10: Well, it was nice that we had a PGA tour
Speaker 10: level event, you know, in Wisconsin. It was it had
Speaker 10: been around for a long time. We'd have maybe ten
Speaker 10: to twenty of the top thirty players to fifty players
Speaker 10: in the world coming to play at that time, and
Speaker 10: we had a great time with it. When a lot
Speaker 10: of people come on out and watch it and truly
Speaker 10: enjoyed it. It was it was fun to run, to
Speaker 10: be real honest.
Speaker 1: So it was an event that the community kind of supported.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a massive market event, but they kind
Speaker 1: of got behind it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, they got behind it a lot, and that's it's
Speaker 10: kind of what Wisconsin's all about.
Speaker 1: But according to Gary Demato, the GMO did have its issues.
Speaker 9: It was not certainly not among the upper echelon of
Speaker 9: tour events.
Speaker 5: You know, it had smaller.
Speaker 9: Purse, It had bad dates, usually around our opposite the
Speaker 9: British Open in the summer, and then for a while
Speaker 9: it moved to Labor Day weekend, which was good for
Speaker 9: some reasons, but it also bumped into the start of
Speaker 9: packer season and you know, University Wisconsin football, so football
Speaker 9: sort of overwhelmed it. When it was on the Labor
Speaker 9: Day dates, it sort of bounced back and forth. It
Speaker 9: never had a title sponsor until the last few years
Speaker 9: of its existence, so the tour kind of pushed it
Speaker 9: around a little bit. But it was a nice summertime
Speaker 9: staple event in Milwaukee that attracted a pretty good field,
Speaker 9: you know, considering the person a date for a week.
Speaker 1: In August nineteen ninety six, However, Tom Strong saw the
Speaker 1: GMO go from a quiet, small market event to the
Speaker 1: center of the golf universe.
Speaker 10: It definitely notched up to what i'd call electric. It
Speaker 10: just didn't ticket sales. We sold out everything we could
Speaker 10: possibly sell when we announced he was coming, and then
Speaker 10: on top of that, the impact on just dollars and cents.
Speaker 10: It was three to four hundred thousand dollars just an
Speaker 10: extra ticket revenue that we took in from his announcement
Speaker 10: over and above, And it was very easy to track
Speaker 10: based on kind of how we looked at it from
Speaker 10: the previous year, which was the field was pretty much
Speaker 10: the same, other than him cooming in and being part
Speaker 10: of the event, just having him there, just all the
Speaker 10: buzz everything going on him announcing. People just wanted to
Speaker 10: come off and see him, and it drove our numbers
Speaker 10: through the look. We were busy. I can tell it all.
Speaker 1: Over in the press tent. Gary Demato noticed another kind
Speaker 1: of shift.
Speaker 9: There were media types that I saw at the Masters,
Speaker 9: in the US Open and the PGA Championship, but never
Speaker 9: in Milwaukee, so it was definitely a different scene. Typically
Speaker 9: the Greater Milwaukee Open was covered by a couple of newspapers,
Speaker 9: a couple of radio stations. The media center was sort
Speaker 9: of a sleepy little tent where not much was happening.
Speaker 9: But that week certainly things changed. People magazine came in,
Speaker 9: The New York Times, the Washington Posts, LA Times, NBC
Speaker 9: Nightly News was had someone there. So yeah, there was
Speaker 9: a field certainly that the event was much much bigger
Speaker 9: because Tiger was coming.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday. After the pro am, Tiger was going to
Speaker 1: hold a press conference. By now, everyone had a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea of what he planned to announce, and Tom
Speaker 1: Strong had a pretty good idea that they'd need a
Speaker 1: bigger tent.
Speaker 10: Probably around nine in the morning that time frame, we
Speaker 10: started talking more with our media officials and what our
Speaker 10: options would be. The next thing I know as I
Speaker 10: get a call from Forget the media official at that time,
Speaker 10: but said Tom, we're up over one hundred and fifty
Speaker 10: to two hundred media that want to come and cover this.
Speaker 10: And then all of a sudden, I think it was
Speaker 10: ABC that really kind of pushed it over the edge
Speaker 10: and said we're bringing in our crew and everything else
Speaker 10: and where we're going to host this. They just wanted
Speaker 10: to take over the media center, and they said, well,
Speaker 10: we can't really do that, so we worked out the details.
Speaker 10: They said, look, I've got a pavilion over here that's
Speaker 10: ten thousand square feet. It's just straight by the range.
Speaker 10: It's very easy to do well. Mid afternoon, we were
Speaker 10: pushing over three hundred that wanted to come cover it,
Speaker 10: so it was coming from every angle.
Speaker 1: At the press conference, as expected, Tiger declared that his
Speaker 1: amateur career was over. With his father sitting in an
Speaker 1: easy chair beside him, he read a prepared statement and
Speaker 1: answered questions from the assembled media. But the one thing
Speaker 1: everyone remembers from that day happened at the very beginning,
Speaker 1: when Tiger walked up to the microphone instant the crowd
Speaker 1: of reporters, laughed a little to himself, studied his notes
Speaker 1: for a second, and then greeted the room with a
Speaker 1: confident smile.
Speaker 6: I guess, hello world, huh.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It was a striking opener, and it got a variety
Speaker 1: of reactions. Here's Tom Strong.
Speaker 10: I kind of sat maybe six feet away from him
Speaker 10: in the front row and got to hear the Hello world.
Speaker 10: You know, did that that little statement right there? Will
Speaker 10: never never leave my memory banks. It was so cool
Speaker 10: to watch.
Speaker 1: And here's Curtis Strange, two time US Open winner and
Speaker 1: one of Tiger's competitors at the ninety six GMO.
Speaker 4: All I remember is Hello World. I don't remember anything
Speaker 4: else about the It was probably the most routine press
Speaker 4: conference after that. But when he opened it with that
Speaker 4: that and myself to me, I might I was immediately thinking, well,
Speaker 4: I don't know if I have said something like that,
Speaker 4: you know, that kind of thing. So, and I'm sure
Speaker 4: most other tour players now speaking on behalf of the
Speaker 4: tour players. I have no idea what the general public
Speaker 4: was thinking, but you know, it's he hadn't hit a
Speaker 4: professional shot yet, so we were just going to wait
Speaker 4: and see how good this kid really was.
Speaker 1: While it may have irked some of his new colleagues,
Speaker 1: Tiger's Hello World quip was a hit with almost everyone else.
Speaker 1: It seemed spontaneous, but it actually wasn't. The next day,
Speaker 1: in newspapers and on TV, Nike rolled out it's now
Speaker 1: iconic Hello World advertisements. The campaign was the brainchild of
Speaker 1: Jim Riswold, a writer at the agency Widen and Kennedy
Speaker 1: and the go to guy for its Nike account. If
Speaker 1: you are a sports fan in the nineteen nineties, you'll
Speaker 1: recognize many of his ads instantly.
Speaker 4: I am not a role model, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Lars Blackman, And there's my main man, Michael Jordan.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it's baseball, Hey Glan, hey Gan, who'd you expect.
Speaker 1: Riswold also happened to be a single digit handicap, and
Speaker 1: he had been following Tiger's exploits on the amateur circuit
Speaker 1: for years.
Speaker 12: And I thought it was pretty good. And I see
Speaker 12: that guy play and I go, I'm a frickin' hack.
Speaker 12: That's exactly how I felt. He made good golfers and
Speaker 12: great golfers feel like hacks. And I believe I pestered
Speaker 12: Nike quite a bit that this guy should be a
Speaker 12: Nike athlete.
Speaker 1: About a month before the US Amateur Riswold got word
Speaker 1: that he would be developing Tiger's first Nike campaign. Initially,
Speaker 1: Riswold considered the slogan I Am Not a Token, but
Speaker 1: decided that was too on the nose. Then came the
Speaker 1: idea for the soundtrack. He shows dramatic choral music with
Speaker 1: vaguely exotic percussion on the screen. Images of Tiger's triumphs,
Speaker 1: along with short bursts of text, Hello World, I shot
Speaker 1: in the seventies when I was eight. I shot in
Speaker 1: the sixties when I was twelve. I won the US
Speaker 1: Junior Amateur when I was fifteen. Hello World. I played
Speaker 1: in the Nissana Open when I was sixteen. Hello World.
Speaker 1: I won the US Amateur when I was eighteen. I
Speaker 1: played in the Masters when I was nineteen. I am
Speaker 1: the only man to win three consecutive US Amateur titles.
Speaker 1: Hello World, there are still courses in the US. I
Speaker 1: am not allowed to play it because of the color
Speaker 1: of my skin. Hello World. I've heard I'm not ready
Speaker 1: for you? Are you ready for me? It was goosebump
Speaker 1: inducing but also something of a risk. The ad put
Speaker 1: Tiger's racial identity front and center, and it portrayed the
Speaker 1: golf world is more racially prejudiced than the rest of society.
Speaker 1: It was pressing on a sore spot. Race has always
Speaker 1: been a powder keg in America, but it was particularly
Speaker 1: so in nineteen ninety six. It had been just six
Speaker 1: years since Hall Thompson, the founder of Shoal Creek Club
Speaker 1: in Alabama, set off a national controversy by saying we
Speaker 1: don't discriminate in every other area except blacks. It had
Speaker 1: been four years since south central Los Angeles, not far
Speaker 1: from Tiger's childhood home, was rocked by riots in response
Speaker 1: to the acquittal of the police officers who had beaten
Speaker 1: Rodney King, and it had been less than a year
Speaker 1: since O. J. Simpson was found not guilty of the
Speaker 1: murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. The tactics
Speaker 1: of Simpson's attorneys had brought the notion of the race
Speaker 1: card into public discourse. To play the race card, it
Speaker 1: was said, was to bring up the issue of race
Speaker 1: in order to manipulate people's feelings and gain an advantage.
Speaker 1: And Jim Riswold knew that the Hello World ad could
Speaker 1: easily be accused of race carding.
Speaker 12: And you know, I wasn't sure if it was the
Speaker 12: right thing to do. And I showed the script to
Speaker 12: my boss, Dan Wyden, and he said, this is the
Speaker 12: only thing we're going to do. And then Phil Knight
Speaker 12: was involved in approval of this ad. I went that
Speaker 12: high and he says, of course, because you know, they
Speaker 12: like to poke the bear. They liked to be irreverent,
Speaker 12: and it was pretty easy to poke the bear at
Speaker 12: golf at the time pretty lily white. You know, a
Speaker 12: man of color changing the game. I don't think golf
Speaker 12: was ready for it. You know, Nike likes to be
Speaker 12: an iconic class in tennis. They challenged the tennis norms
Speaker 12: with players like McEnroe and Agacy. You know, it's essentially
Speaker 12: the same. We're going to challenge the status quo and
Speaker 12: the norm with not only a man of color, but
Speaker 12: a man who played the game at a far different level,
Speaker 12: you know, mentally and physically than anybody had seen before.
Speaker 1: Yet, Reswald denies the charge that the ad was just
Speaker 1: trying to be provocative.
Speaker 12: A lot of advertising tries to shocking for shocking sake.
Speaker 12: You know, whether you think this as shocking or not,
Speaker 12: that might be a bit much. But it came from
Speaker 12: the truth. It wasn't just made up hull baloo. Sports
Speaker 12: is part of the fabric of this country, and as
Speaker 12: part of the fabric of a country, when social issues
Speaker 12: arise within sports, they should be discussed, or they it
Speaker 12: becomes just this little, exclusive, little island that only a
Speaker 12: few people are allowed to be on.
Speaker 1: Of course, it should be said that this ideal was
Speaker 1: well aligned with his client's business interests, the wider golf's appeal,
Speaker 1: the more product Nike you would sell. Besides, as much
Speaker 1: as the ad was sure to anger some people, it
Speaker 1: was bound to appeal to many more. For most of
Speaker 1: its runtime, it focused not on Tiger Wood's race, but
Speaker 1: on his accomplishments, the scores, the wins. So the story
Speaker 1: it told was actually one of merit overcoming obstacles, and
Speaker 1: in that way, the Hello World campaign was even somewhat conventional.
Speaker 1: It was about the American dream. Just hours after Tiger
Speaker 1: beat Steve Scott on the thirty eighth hole to win
Speaker 1: the US amateur Riswold walked into a room in Pumpkin
Speaker 1: Ridges Clubhouse carrying a tape. Tiger was there, along with
Speaker 1: his mother and father, his coach, Butch Harmon, and Nike
Speaker 1: CEO Phil Knight.
Speaker 12: And film makes an introduction and I think he made
Speaker 12: some joke about me and said he's done a lot
Speaker 12: of ads that I like for me. He thinks this
Speaker 12: is one of his best ones. And we play it
Speaker 12: and it's silent, and Phil asked Tiger, well, what do
Speaker 12: you think? And Tiger goes, can I see it again?
Speaker 12: And then we played again and there was Hooper in
Speaker 12: and holler, and I think his dad said, Bobby Jones
Speaker 12: is turning over in his grave. You know, Earl was
Speaker 12: not one to hold his and I just remember getting
Speaker 12: to drink out of the trophy with Tiger. That was
Speaker 12: pretty cool. But Charman said he pulled me aside and said,
Speaker 12: I think that's the best golf ad I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Hello World aired four days later during the first round
Speaker 1: of the GMO. The public response was about what Riswold
Speaker 1: had expected and what Nike had hoped for.
Speaker 12: I remember I almost had to change my telephone number
Speaker 12: at home. I was getting some calls from people that
Speaker 12: didn't appreciate the ad, called me names and stuff. And
Speaker 12: then you know, the next week, it's not only on television,
Speaker 12: it's on the news everywhere, which you can't ask for
Speaker 12: better than that within reason. Phil Knight adores negative publicity
Speaker 12: within reason. I mean, this created a conversation. Everybody was
Speaker 12: talking about.
Speaker 1: That act, and behind the scenes at the GMO, some
Speaker 1: people weren't saying very nice things. On the driving range
Speaker 1: and in the press tent there were mutterings about sensationalism
Speaker 1: in the race card. Some doubted there were any courses
Speaker 1: in the US that would bar Tiger from playing just
Speaker 1: because he was black. A Washington Post reporter actually ended
Speaker 1: up posing that question to Nike, and Nike admitted that
Speaker 1: the claim wasn't to be taken literally.
Speaker 12: Well, that seemed to be a bit nitpicking. I mean,
Speaker 12: it was a general station about color in the game
Speaker 12: of golf. Of course, Tiger Woods could play anywhere he
Speaker 12: wanted to, but not the next Tiger was. I mean,
Speaker 12: I'm sure he wasn't playing certain clubs when he was
Speaker 12: eight year twelve years old.
Speaker 1: Jim Riswild felt and still feels, that the ad conveyed
Speaker 1: a truth about golf's exclusivity, and the customers Nike was
Speaker 1: trying to reach tended to agree. According to market studies,
Speaker 1: young people found Hello World very effective, So Nike wasn't
Speaker 1: too concerned about blowback from traditional sectors of the golf world.
Speaker 1: In fact, the company welcomed the controversy and the additional
Speaker 1: attention that came with it. Still, Riswold did have one concern.
Speaker 12: I look back on that ad, you know, I'm surprised
Speaker 12: that people still want to talk about it. But the thing,
Speaker 12: you know, did I put too much pressure on a
Speaker 12: kid to carry that mantle or that Torch.
Speaker 1: Unlike his father, Tiger had never been eager to discuss
Speaker 1: racial issues publicly. He had even said that the only
Speaker 1: time he thought about race was when the media asked
Speaker 1: him about it, and now here he was appearing in
Speaker 1: a commercial that invited questions about exactly that subject.
Speaker 7: I don't think he was terribly comfortable talking about race,
Speaker 7: but I do think that he carries that sense of
Speaker 7: a mission that you know, he's representing a disadvantage group
Speaker 7: of people. He hates the unfairness of racism, and I
Speaker 7: think golf for him was a way of making a statement.
Speaker 7: But I don't think he likes being a public figure
Speaker 7: or a public symbol of that battle, of that social movement.
Speaker 7: He was a golfer, he wanted to play his best.
Speaker 7: He wanted to have a private life. He didn't want
Speaker 7: a lot of baggage. And you know, I think in
Speaker 7: an efficient.
Speaker 5: Way, maybe a cold way.
Speaker 7: Maybe he got more socially conscious later, but I think
Speaker 7: he thought of it as a distraction that was only
Speaker 7: going to hurt his performance, and in the end he
Speaker 7: was going to be judged by his performance.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, Jimi Diaz believes that Hello World did touch on
Speaker 1: some real feelings that Tiger had.
Speaker 7: He used to talk about it, getting the look when
Speaker 7: he'd come to a go play at a junior event
Speaker 7: at a country club that perhaps didn't have African American
Speaker 7: members or very few, and he always felt that he'd
Speaker 7: be stared at in a way that made him uncomfortable.
Speaker 5: You know, Nike's very skillful.
Speaker 7: I mean they knew what buttons to push, and I
Speaker 7: don't think that was an artificially trumped up button.
Speaker 1: It was a real thing, maybe too real in other words,
Speaker 1: too personal, too private, distracting from his central purpose.
Speaker 7: He's like, Okay, I can be I can be a
Speaker 7: social warrior here, but what's it going to do for
Speaker 7: what I have to do here, which is play the
Speaker 7: best golf I can. And I don't like the feeling
Speaker 7: of being criticized and being having all every word I
Speaker 7: say parsed.
Speaker 5: It's too much. So he given his his personality.
Speaker 7: I consider him an introvert who had had enough coverage
Speaker 7: and enough exposure.
Speaker 5: He wasn't looking for more attention. He was looking for
Speaker 5: less attention.
Speaker 1: But that too subjected Tiger to criticism at first.
Speaker 5: At first it was like, Oh, he's going to be
Speaker 5: He's going to play the race card.
Speaker 7: You know, Okay, we don't like that, and he got
Speaker 7: criticized for that, and then you know, it was like, oh,
Speaker 7: he's not doing enough. You know, he's in the position
Speaker 7: to do to make a big difference, and he's not
Speaker 7: doing enough, and he's not doing as much as other athletes.
Speaker 1: Some seem to want Tiger to be a political firebrand
Speaker 1: in the mold of Muhammad Ali, but he was more
Speaker 1: inclined to be like Michael Jordan, focused on his sport,
Speaker 1: measured in public and reluctant to weigh in on controversial issues.
Speaker 1: Of course, it would be unfair to say that Tiger
Speaker 1: hasn't made an effort in the social domain. He formed
Speaker 1: the Tiger Woods Foundation in November ninety six and ever
Speaker 1: since it has worked to help underprivileged students.
Speaker 7: I think the foundation was the way that he could
Speaker 7: answer in an organized way that could not be questioned
Speaker 7: in terms of the good it was doing and the
Speaker 7: motive that he.
Speaker 5: Had for it. And again, just like his clubs did
Speaker 5: the talking, so did the foundation did the talking.
Speaker 1: But Tiger himself has declined to take partisan stances or
Speaker 1: really to speak out as a representative of any particular minority.
Speaker 1: Jim Riswold's second Nike campaign for Tiger was more in
Speaker 1: line with this attitude.
Speaker 5: I'm Tiger Woods, I'm Tiger Woods.
Speaker 4: I'm Tiger Woods.
Speaker 1: Unveiled during the nineteen ninety six Skins game. It alternates
Speaker 1: between shots of Tiger and footage of children, boys and
Speaker 1: girls ranging from tiny to teenage, from white to Asian
Speaker 1: American to African American to Latina, all reciting the same montreal.
Speaker 5: I'm Tiger Woods, I'm Tiger Woods.
Speaker 1: In this commercial, Tiger was no longer the outsider disrupting
Speaker 1: the status quo. Instead, Tiger was everybody, and everybody was Tiger. Anyone,
Speaker 1: no matter their ancestry, could identify with him, even identify
Speaker 1: as him. After his ninety seven Masters victory. In a
Speaker 1: famous appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Tiger took a
Speaker 1: similar approach.
Speaker 6: When we get this straight, what do you call yourself?
Speaker 8: Do you call yourself African American? I know you are
Speaker 8: your your father's half black.
Speaker 13: Quarter, Chinese, quarter American, Indian mother's hatie quarter Chinese.
Speaker 5: And quorter white.
Speaker 6: So you are That's why you are America.
Speaker 4: So you are American? Yeah?
Speaker 6: I guess two things?
Speaker 13: Is that I guess now that I'm on the Ryder
Speaker 13: Cup team, which we get to go over and play
Speaker 13: in Europe in September, that I won't be representing the
Speaker 13: United states'll be representing United Nations A little different, right,
Speaker 13: A little funny thing is growing up.
Speaker 10: I came up with his name.
Speaker 13: I'm a Comblainasian, a Comblinasian cough Ocasian blue black Indian
Speaker 13: Asian comblamation.
Speaker 10: That's what you call yourself?
Speaker 4: Yea, yeah, well coming up.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, this was no doubt a genuine sentiment.
Speaker 1: Tiger is referred to as African American far more often
Speaker 1: than he's referred to as Asian American, even though his
Speaker 1: mother is Asian. This is part of that long American
Speaker 1: tradition of categorizing any person with the proverbial one drop
Speaker 1: of African blood is black. So surely no one could
Speaker 1: blame Tiger for refusing to accept that oversimplification and for
Speaker 1: reclaiming his identity on his own terms. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: encouraging everyone, including white people, to see themselves in him,
Speaker 1: was a savvy strategy, even if it wasn't consciously a strategy.
Speaker 1: If Hello World was a challenge, are you ready for me.
Speaker 1: Then I am Tiger Woods was an embrace. I am you,
Speaker 1: you are me. Let's all wear Nike. So back to Milwaukee, Thursday,
Speaker 1: August twenty ninth, Round one. The atmosphere around Tiger was
Speaker 1: vibrating with hype, and some of the other pros that
Speaker 1: the GMO had started to grumble.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that's when probably players sat up
Speaker 4: a little bit. Why was this kid getting so much
Speaker 4: more attention than some other star coming out? But again
Speaker 4: I can't speak for everybody, but there was Chadder. I
Speaker 4: will say this, there was enough attention that I played
Speaker 4: like two or three groups behind him on Thursday mid morning,
Speaker 4: and when he went to the first two, there was
Speaker 4: eight or ten. I was putting, getting ready to go off.
Speaker 4: You know, we will go off one in ten two
Speaker 4: people around and everybody stopped to watch this guy ta off.
Speaker 4: And that speaks volumes when you know about the tour.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, Curtis Strange was a well respected
Speaker 1: forty one year old pro in the latter stages of
Speaker 1: his playing career. He was seven years removed from his
Speaker 1: back to back US Open victories, and although he still
Speaker 1: had some game, he was preparing for his next step.
Speaker 1: In addition to playing at the GMO, he was helping
Speaker 1: out with ABC's coverage and he figured he had the
Speaker 1: connections to land the biggest one on one interview of
Speaker 1: the week.
Speaker 4: So I had the same agent as Tiger and Susan
Speaker 4: Norton and so, and I know Tiger pell. I played
Speaker 4: with Tiger in the Masters when he was still an
Speaker 4: abler in the second round, kind of knew him and
Speaker 4: knew a little bit of him and knew the lead up.
Speaker 4: And I was in my third or fourth year at ABC,
Speaker 4: and I don't know why they agreed to this, but
Speaker 4: I went to my producer since I knew Tiger a
Speaker 4: little bit, I wanted to do the interview, and so
Speaker 4: they said okay, and then Tiger and his people said
Speaker 4: sounds good to us. So it came together in the
Speaker 4: last couple of days. In fact, I saw Tiger on
Speaker 4: Tuesday and I ran over to him. I said, Hey,
Speaker 4: can you do a Can you work with us Thursday
Speaker 4: night after you finished planning, I'm going to do the interview.
Speaker 4: When we talked to us, he sees Sharon Op. That's
Speaker 4: probably the last time he ever answered an interview request
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 1: In spite of all the excitement around Tiger, Strange was
Speaker 1: by no means certain that he was about to sit
Speaker 1: down with the greatest golfer since Jack Nicholas.
Speaker 4: But I didn't know much about him, I tell you,
Speaker 4: if it wasn't for we had the same agent back
Speaker 4: at that time, and if it wasn't for me knowing
Speaker 4: him and through some other really close people in the
Speaker 4: amateur game, I wouldn't have known he'd won three juniors
Speaker 4: and three ameters in a row. And I suspect more
Speaker 4: than half of the PGA tour players didn't know that either,
Speaker 4: and the other half probably didn't care because that's just
Speaker 4: the way the tour is, and it's a hard game
Speaker 4: out there, and you got enough to take care of
Speaker 4: in your own self worry about some other kid coming out.
Speaker 4: But they all knew Tiger was going to be good.
Speaker 4: How good, we had no idea, And as I said,
Speaker 4: most players didn't know he was such a phenomenal ameterur player.
Speaker 4: So I guess what I'm saying is it just wasn't
Speaker 4: much talked about, was much said about him until maybe
Speaker 4: that particular week at the GMO.
Speaker 1: Strange, like many of his fellow pros, since to mismatch
Speaker 1: between how little he knew about this twenty year old
Speaker 1: and how much attention he had attracted. So going into
Speaker 1: the interview, Strange was determined not to be another fanboy.
Speaker 1: He was going to ask real questions.
Speaker 4: And I worked hard.
Speaker 11: I was playing that week, so I was trying to
Speaker 11: do that as well. I worked with Trico, work with
Speaker 11: Jack Graham, our producer, on getting the questions right, getting
Speaker 11: them in sequence, getting them in order. Of course, a
Speaker 11: lot of it is ad lib going off his answer,
Speaker 11: and we found out how that can be during the interview.
Speaker 1: It took place in a darkened room with Curtis Strange
Speaker 1: and Tiger Woods sitting across from each other. Here's the
Speaker 1: key moment.
Speaker 8: What would be a successful week here at Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: To two things.
Speaker 6: I think if I play four solid rounds, went off
Speaker 6: to a good start today. If I can do that
Speaker 6: for three more days, and I'll be very happy. And
Speaker 6: a victor would be an awesome nice too.
Speaker 8: A victory do you think to me that comes off
Speaker 8: as a little cocky or brash, especially talking to the
Speaker 8: you know, the other guys on tour that have been
Speaker 8: out here for years and years and years and you know,
Speaker 8: certainly an incredible I'm in a record, But what do
Speaker 8: you say to those guys, Well, when you come out here,
Speaker 8: you're first, you know what I'm saying, your first pro tournament,
Speaker 8: as you say, you know I can win.
Speaker 6: I understand that. I've always figured that why go to
Speaker 6: a term if you're not going there to try and win,
Speaker 6: There's really no point in even going. That's attitude have
Speaker 6: had my entire life, and that's attitude I will always have.
Speaker 4: As I would.
Speaker 6: Explain to my dad's second sucks, the third's even worse.
Speaker 6: It's just a feeling on.
Speaker 1: Tour that's not too bad.
Speaker 6: Sometimes that's not too bad.
Speaker 1: But I want to win.
Speaker 6: That's just my nature.
Speaker 4: You'll learn. I'm just kidding. I'm sorry.
Speaker 12: I had to say that.
Speaker 4: My job that evening was to get inside tiger Woods
Speaker 4: a little bit, not so much as golf game, but
Speaker 4: get inside you this young man who's getting ready to
Speaker 4: embark on a long, difficult career in golf. And I
Speaker 4: tried to listen really hard to come back with some
Speaker 4: good follow ups, and then he came out with you know,
Speaker 4: the shocking answer to a question of mine is that,
Speaker 4: you know, I expect to win, Second sucks, and third
Speaker 4: is even worse. Well, quite frankly, how this all came
Speaker 4: about when that When I heard that, it shocked me,
Speaker 4: and I think you can see it on my face
Speaker 4: that well, that's a little cocky, I'm thinking. And I
Speaker 4: asked him, I said, do not think that that sounds
Speaker 4: a little brash to all the other tour players? Yes,
Speaker 4: I do, but that's the way I think, which was
Speaker 4: a fair enough answer, and then we all chuckled and
Speaker 4: I said the infamous You'll learn, and what I meant
Speaker 4: by that is you'll learn that sometimes second doesn't suck,
Speaker 4: because if you play your ass off and somebody else
Speaker 4: on tour plays a little bit better, then I always
Speaker 4: looked at it as well, you can't beat yourself up
Speaker 4: for that. If you finish second by not finishing well
Speaker 4: or not performing well sometime in the tournament where you
Speaker 4: really kind of messed up, then you can get upset
Speaker 4: at yourself. But if you play your best golf, and
Speaker 4: which you can do on tour, and get beat by
Speaker 4: one or two by a better player that week, I
Speaker 4: don't think you should beat yourself too badly because you're
Speaker 4: going to be able to have that opportunity plenty in
Speaker 4: the company years on tour to beat yourself up. So
Speaker 4: that was my point, and it was also a little
Speaker 4: bit of just and also a little bit that you're
Speaker 4: going to learn that it's a little bit harder than
Speaker 4: you think it is, pal and that was the end
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 1: Periodically, the interview resurfaces on the Internet, and the replies
Speaker 1: aren't always kind to the interviewer. Here's a sampling, and that, kids,
Speaker 1: is what we call putting Curtis Strange in a body bag,
Speaker 1: clear case of you don't know who the f you're
Speaker 1: talking to, open mouth, insert foot Curtis. What we forget, though,
Speaker 1: is that the tiger Woods sitting in front of Curtis
Speaker 1: Strange that day wasn't yet the tiger Woods we now know.
Speaker 1: Amateur success, even amateur dominance, didn't always translate to the
Speaker 1: PGA tour, and the pros tended to believe that you
Speaker 1: had to earn your bravado.
Speaker 4: Every player on tour that heard that or saw that
Speaker 4: agreed with me. You know, Jesus is just you know,
Speaker 4: of course nine's one eighty two tournaments. So he proved
Speaker 4: us wrong. You know, at the time of the place
Speaker 4: he hadn't hit, but he hadn't played but run round
Speaker 4: of golf in his life professionally. So give me a
Speaker 4: fucking break. What they what they lose in these twenty
Speaker 4: some odd years is that this was a young man.
Speaker 4: He'd been professional four or five days, and we didn't
Speaker 4: know how good he was, and we were soon to
Speaker 4: find out. But being honest, and he was being honest,
Speaker 4: and it wasn't any disrespect whatsoever. I'm proud of it.
Speaker 4: I'm proud that I got the interview. I'm proud that
Speaker 4: we did it. I think we at ABC did a
Speaker 4: nice job putting it together. And if somebody takes it
Speaker 4: out of context twenty three years later, then they're not educated.
Speaker 4: It's as simple as that. I guess it wasn't a
Speaker 4: bad thing if they're still talking about it.
Speaker 1: Strange. Also acknowledges that what he experienced is brashness in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six turned out to be a key to
Speaker 1: Tiger's greatness.
Speaker 4: That attitude did taking the just unbelievable heights, not accepting
Speaker 4: anything but perfect, not accepting anything but a win. You know,
Speaker 4: I dare say that he won tournaments and wasn't happening.
Speaker 4: That's what made him so good to have that attitude,
Speaker 4: but you also had to back it up with tremendous
Speaker 4: ability too. So and as well as he showed us
Speaker 4: he can play in the next couple of years, the
Speaker 4: second really probably does suck to this.
Speaker 14: Kid, you know.
Speaker 4: And so what I thought he didn't understand was out
Speaker 4: how good the tour players were. What we didn't didn't
Speaker 4: understand is now actually good and better than anybody else
Speaker 4: he was.
Speaker 1: In the end, According to Haimi Diaz, Tiger didn't really
Speaker 1: take offense to Stranger's questioning.
Speaker 7: Well, I know he had a lot of respect for Curtis,
Speaker 7: but I also I think he knew John Cook has
Speaker 7: a saying about Tiger.
Speaker 5: It's very simple, but he knows who he is.
Speaker 7: He's fully aware of how great he is and what
Speaker 7: his capacity is, and how that to some people is
Speaker 7: a little bit incomprehensible. Uh that there, you know, he's
Speaker 7: ahead of the curve, and he understood why Curtis was skeptical.
Speaker 7: But I think it just the way the way he
Speaker 7: answered those questions, I remember it was he didn't do
Speaker 7: it in a connoisanting way, but it was almost like
Speaker 7: he just don't understand you don't understand how good I am,
Speaker 7: and I'm not going to brag about it, but this
Speaker 7: is why I believe I can do it every week,
Speaker 7: because I am that good.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's hard to take.
Speaker 7: If you're a pro who's hardened and know that the
Speaker 7: game is mostly about defeat, to see that kind of
Speaker 7: seems like brashness.
Speaker 1: So, all things considered, the interview was quite revealing, not
Speaker 1: only about Tiger's mindset, but also about how other pros
Speaker 1: on tour felt about him. There was plenty of laughter
Speaker 1: between the two men, but there was also some tension,
Speaker 1: some awkwardness, some doubt about what they would say next.
Speaker 1: In future years, we'd hardly ever see Tiger in a
Speaker 1: media situation as unpredictable or as honest.
Speaker 5: You know, I just think it was an extension of
Speaker 5: extreme fame.
Speaker 7: I don't think he had any sort of, as I said,
Speaker 7: an innate dislike of the media, but the media machine
Speaker 7: became something he couldn't control, and the more famous he got,
Speaker 7: the less control he had. Obviously, the questions got more
Speaker 7: and more probing as he became a bigger celebrity and
Speaker 7: a bigger figure ofuriosity, and with that he felt his
Speaker 7: private life. He had an innate sense that losing your
Speaker 7: private life was dangerous, so he was cautious.
Speaker 5: In that regard.
Speaker 7: And remember doing a story for him, a story on
Speaker 7: him for a travel on.
Speaker 5: Leisure Golf, and he talked about his core.
Speaker 7: He had to keep his core private and you know,
Speaker 7: inward and not let too many people see that or
Speaker 7: touch it. And some of the media was part of that.
Speaker 7: But anyway, I'm saying a lot of things that probably
Speaker 7: just add up to one thing, which is basically, as
Speaker 7: he got more famous, he got less willing to open
Speaker 7: up his life.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's part of why when Strange came up
Speaker 1: with the idea of doing a sequel interview twenty years later,
Speaker 1: it never came together. He did follow up with Tiger,
Speaker 1: but not in front of the cameras.
Speaker 4: About eight or ten years later, we were having a
Speaker 4: beer somewhere and it was just he, I think it
Speaker 4: was he and I and his agent, and I said,
Speaker 4: you know, I won't tell you something. Remember that interview.
Speaker 4: I see we all learned. I just so you didn't
Speaker 4: learn we all learned. And he kind of smiled and said, yeah.
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning of this episode that this
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a story about what happened on the golf
Speaker 1: course at the ninety six GMO, but there are a
Speaker 1: few things we should remember. Before the Wednesday pro am,
Speaker 1: Jerry Dematto of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was standing by
Speaker 1: the first tee at brownd Ear Park golf Course and
Speaker 1: he saw Tiger arrive almost late for his tea time.
Speaker 9: I remember Tiger started rushing to the first tee for
Speaker 9: his pro am and on the way his caddy, Fluff Cowen,
Speaker 9: ran out of the Brown Deer Clubhouse with a brand
Speaker 9: new Titleist staff bag still wrapped in plastic, and Tiger
Speaker 9: and Fluff sort of hurriedly ripped the plastic golf and
Speaker 9: transferred his clubs from a I think it was a
Speaker 9: Stanford carry bag to a Titleist staff bag. I was
Speaker 9: standing there white with maybe four other people, in the
Speaker 9: shade of a tree, and I thought, I honestly thought, boy,
Speaker 9: this is sort of the symbolic moment where he has
Speaker 9: just become a professional golfer.
Speaker 1: The motto was back at the first t the next
Speaker 1: day when Tiger hit his first shot as a professional.
Speaker 9: You know it was a special vibe. It was a
Speaker 9: crowd of five deep where typically a newly minted pro
Speaker 9: on the first p it during the Greater Milacke Open
Speaker 9: might attract you know, his family and twenty curious spectators,
Speaker 9: Tiger obviously had. It was different. He had a huge gallery,
Speaker 9: you know, four or five deep, many of whom I
Speaker 9: believe followed him for all eighteen holes, probably just to
Speaker 9: say that they, you know, witnessed his first round as
Speaker 9: a professional. So there was definitely an excitement and a
Speaker 9: vibe in the atmosphere, in the air that that typically
Speaker 9: wouldn't be on the first pe for almost any group
Speaker 9: death Greater in Wachie Open.
Speaker 1: Throughout the week, Tiger's groups attracted galleries the likes of
Speaker 1: which tournament director Tom Strong had never seen at the GMO,
Speaker 1: which had its positive and negative sides.
Speaker 10: You know, when he went out and played, it didn't
Speaker 10: matter if it was the poem or it was the
Speaker 10: first round. They were seven deep following him, and it
Speaker 10: was every hole. People just wanted to see him. I
Speaker 10: think we all know was something special. But at that point,
Speaker 10: I think the other thing I can tell you that
Speaker 10: that's probably the first time I really saw players get interrupted,
Speaker 10: is Tiger finished putting. He was and there's still people
Speaker 10: to put on the green. All of a sudden they
Speaker 10: started rushing to the next hole, and so then you
Speaker 10: had that that interruption that kind of came around. It
Speaker 10: really wasn't a lot our Marshalls could do at that
Speaker 10: point other than you know, kind of say holp, you know,
Speaker 10: stand please and whatever. But they were just going to
Speaker 10: try and position for the next hole.
Speaker 1: Nowadays, Tiger has been known to mark his ball instead
Speaker 1: of tapping in so that his playing partners don't have
Speaker 1: to deal with the commotion. To tom Strong, though, the
Speaker 1: most remarkable thing about the galleries wasn't there size or excitability,
Speaker 1: It was who was in them.
Speaker 10: What I saw was a lot more kids, a lot
Speaker 10: of peopleeople who didn't even play the game I think
Speaker 10: were out there. It was just it was a mix
Speaker 10: of people that just wanted to come out. You had
Speaker 10: your avid golfers to those just knew this was kind
Speaker 10: of special. You had Bucks players and wanting to come
Speaker 10: out and see him. The interest level and wanting to
Speaker 10: be at the program and just be around him. It
Speaker 10: just kept building an entire week.
Speaker 1: And that emotion came pouring out whenever Tiger did well.
Speaker 10: Just about anything that didn't matter whether he made a birdie,
Speaker 10: whether he made her, people were just flapping and hooting
Speaker 10: and hollering. Like you just it gave you chills at times,
Speaker 10: just with what was all going on.
Speaker 1: So when Tiger did something truly spectacular, the crowds were primed.
Speaker 10: That final round when he made the whole one on fourteen,
Speaker 10: this is six.
Speaker 14: On, they were.
Speaker 4: Right the ninth, all over one.
Speaker 10: So Tiger Woods, and I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 10: been to Brown Ear, but it's a really big park.
Speaker 10: So I was probably a good eight hundred to one
Speaker 10: thousand yards away from that hole because I was back
Speaker 10: at my office, you know that I had the window
Speaker 10: open and stuff like that, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 10: I hear this roar and there was there was only
Speaker 10: one person that they were streaming for at that point
Speaker 10: in time. And then immediately right over the radio comes
Speaker 10: Tiger just aced fourteen, and the place was going nuts.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, Tiger's week at the GMO
Speaker 1: wasn't about extraordinary golf. He played fine, opening with a
Speaker 1: sixty seven, getting derailed by a third round seventy three.
Speaker 1: I never quite finding that extra gear. We would soon
Speaker 1: find out he had. He ended up tied for sixtieth.
Speaker 1: This is where my own memory kicks in. I remember
Speaker 1: watching bits of the GMO telecast and following the scores.
Speaker 1: I was twelve and a big fan of Wisconsin native
Speaker 1: Steve Stricker, who placed third. But I was intrigued by
Speaker 1: this good looking, cool looking, powerful young player that everyone
Speaker 1: seems so excited about. So when Tiger made the cut
Speaker 1: and shot three rounds in the sixties, I thought, Hey,
Speaker 1: pretty good, he can compete. What I didn't know, What
Speaker 1: no one really knew except maybe Tiger himself, was that
Speaker 1: T sixty was about the worst his talent would allow
Speaker 1: him to do. It would be another nine months before
Speaker 1: he finished that low in another PGA Tour event. Over
Speaker 1: the next thirteen years, he would finish worse than T
Speaker 1: sixty a total of nine times. Now, if you're a
Speaker 1: golf fan, you know the rest of Tiger's trajectory. In
Speaker 1: ninety six and ninety seven, eleventh place at the Bell
Speaker 1: Canadian Open, fifth place at the Quad City Classic, third
Speaker 1: p at the BC Open, and then a win at
Speaker 1: the Las Vegas Invitational, another win at the Walt Disney
Speaker 1: World Classic. In less than a quarter of a season,
Speaker 1: Tiger had qualified for the Tour Championship. Five months later,
Speaker 1: he won the Masters by twelve strokes. Tiger Mania was
Speaker 1: in full effect and a new era in professional golf
Speaker 1: had begun. But history, like memory, is all about point
Speaker 1: of view. When we tell ourselves the story of the
Speaker 1: rise of Tiger Woods, we tend to adopt the perspective
Speaker 1: of the public. That is, a perspective trained on Tiger
Speaker 1: himself wherever he happened to go. And that's reasonable. But
Speaker 1: of course the places Tiger visited and the people he
Speaker 1: encountered went on existing after he left. This is one
Speaker 1: advantage of stopping to examine a single moment in history.
Speaker 1: You can remember some of the things that usually get
Speaker 1: forgotten because they occurred after the spotlight moved on. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Tiger was on his now familiar minimalist
Speaker 1: schedule about twenty events per year, selected with an eye
Speaker 1: to sponsors per sizes in major championship preparation. The Greater
Speaker 1: Milwaukee Open didn't fit and he never returned. Here's Gary Demata.
Speaker 9: It was just one huge here when Milwaukee was sort
Speaker 9: of the epicenter of the golf universe, and then when
Speaker 9: it went back after that very quickly to being just
Speaker 9: another small town stop, one a few remaining on the
Speaker 9: PGA Tour. And I know to this date there's still
Speaker 9: a lot of people around here who are I wouldn't
Speaker 9: say bitter, but I guess disappointed as a better word,
Speaker 9: that Tiger didn't start to repay the GMO's exemption and
Speaker 9: return at least once just to say thank you. I've
Speaker 9: heard that over the years people have griped that he
Speaker 9: never came back. And I asked him in over the
Speaker 9: you know, over the intervening years, if he'd consider coming
Speaker 9: back to Milwaukee. He was also vague, always vague about
Speaker 9: his answer, which was understandable. You know, he'd ask me
Speaker 9: when when the tournament was on this schedule, even though
Speaker 9: he probably knew, and he tried that sort of thing,
Speaker 9: but he got the impression pretty quickly that, you know,
Speaker 9: he really wasn't going to come back.
Speaker 1: Even as Tiger Woods's popularity infused the PGA Tour and
Speaker 1: the sport at large with new energy, the GMO declined.
Speaker 9: As time went on. It sort of sort of lost
Speaker 9: that prestige. The last few years, US Bank sponsored it
Speaker 9: and it was called the US Bank Championship in Milwaukee,
Speaker 9: and by the end of its run for whatever reason,
Speaker 9: whether it was a lack of marketing, muscle or other things.
Speaker 9: On the summer calendar. You know, the Milwaukee Brewers were
Speaker 9: started to be a big draw and built a new stadium,
Speaker 9: and we have a big event called Summerfest in the
Speaker 9: middle of our summer and a lot of a lot
Speaker 9: of ethnic festivals, and I think it sort of got
Speaker 9: lost a little bit on the summer calendar, and by
Speaker 9: the last couple of years it was not attracting very
Speaker 9: big galleries.
Speaker 11: Unfortunately.
Speaker 9: I think if you had to put a finger on
Speaker 9: the biggest reason why the tournament went away, it was
Speaker 9: sort of a lack of overall communities for corporate and
Speaker 9: community and civic involvement in the tournament just seem to
Speaker 9: wan in those last couple of years, and certainly the
Speaker 9: economic downturn was a factor.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, Bo Van Pelt won the
Speaker 1: final edition of the Greater Milwaukee Open. After that year,
Speaker 1: US Bank, Withdrewett sponsorship in the event, dissolved. The GMO
Speaker 1: had been part of the PGA Tour for forty two years,
Speaker 1: but today outside of Wisconsin, if people know about it
Speaker 1: at all, it says the answer to a trivia question,
Speaker 1: where did Tiger Woods debut as a professional? Where did
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods say Hello World? Where did Curtis Strange tell
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods You'll learn? Where did Tiger Woods make his
Speaker 1: first professional hole in one? This is the way with
Speaker 1: someone as legendary as Tiger cross paths with him once
Speaker 1: play one small role in his continually retold biography, and
Speaker 1: it may end up being the main thing people remember about.
Speaker 1: You consider Jim Riswold, who by any measure, has had
Speaker 1: an exceptional career as one of the great admin of
Speaker 1: the past thirty years. When I sent him an email
Speaker 1: asking to interview him, he replied, sure, I can talk
Speaker 1: about Hello World for the million time.
Speaker 12: I mean, Garrett, it's hysterical. I you know, I it
Speaker 12: makes me feel old. It's just like, do you know
Speaker 12: who I used to be? That guy that did these
Speaker 12: ads that people are talking more about now than they did.
Speaker 1: When they ran today. Riswold is a full time artist.
Speaker 12: Or I'd like to say, I've gone from a career
Speaker 12: selling things that people don't need to making things that
Speaker 12: they don't want. I eat my art, but it keeps
Speaker 12: me happy. I mean, I had to leave the business
Speaker 12: because I got quite ill, and I was supposed to die,
Speaker 12: and you know, because Lukemi is a killer. And then
Speaker 12: I got another cancer after that. My boss Dan White
Speaker 12: quipped when I finally retired the second time, you can't
Speaker 12: do anything right, including dying. Yeah, So I happily hear,
Speaker 12: you know. And I still freelance every once in a while,
Speaker 12: but advertising a young person's game, and I am not
Speaker 12: a young person.
Speaker 1: I heard versions of that sentiment a lot in my
Speaker 1: interviews for this episode. Man, we were younger back then,
Speaker 1: and boy have we gotten old. It's tried to say,
Speaker 1: mend obvious, but crucial. Those of us who remember Tiger
Speaker 1: erupting onto our TV screens in nineteen ninety six and
Speaker 1: ninety seven are now twenty three years older. Even the
Speaker 1: youngest of us are in our thirties, So recalling the
Speaker 1: Tiger of that time becomes at least partly an exercise
Speaker 1: in nostalgia and recalling not just who Tiger was, but
Speaker 1: who we were and what we've seen and been through
Speaker 1: in the years since. We've all come a long way,
Speaker 1: and so has he.
Speaker 4: I just I'm marvel at noan Tiger all these years
Speaker 4: and work in TV since that first day he played
Speaker 4: golf on tour, watching him and talking about him so much,
Speaker 4: and dissecting everything which we do, which is what unfair
Speaker 4: is held, that's what we do. I marvel at what
Speaker 4: he has been able to achieve in this day and time.
Speaker 4: Pretty phenomenal stuff. Now, how can you dominate the best
Speaker 4: of your sport by that much that it doesn't come
Speaker 4: along very often? And we're just lucky to have that
Speaker 4: guy that came along happened to be a golfer. I
Speaker 4: just don't think you can put it to words, how
Speaker 4: hell big a factor he's been in our game the
Speaker 4: last twenty three years.
Speaker 1: This was the third episode of Frida Egg Stories. It
Speaker 1: was created and hosted by me Garrett Morrison, with mixing
Speaker 1: and engineering from Jay Eric. Our executive producer is Andy Johnson.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.