Stephen A.

This is a transcendent athlete that came onto the scene.

95 96 97 wins the Masters.

So you've been around with what he's done in his career, Not only within the game of golf, but it in the world of sport.

What is your reaction when you hear this latest setback for Tiger?

Were you devastated?

Devastated?

For him, your heart goes out to him and his family, obviously, is Children.

You wanna make sure that everybody is okay?

You wanna make sure that he's okay?

Um uh, in terms of his, you know, his excellence, how great he was and how great he is is a golfer.

I mean, the man won the Masters five times for crying out loud in 1997 when he burst onto the scene, shot 18 under to win the Masters in 1997 we knew he had arrived because his father told us Here he comes and he will be on the scene and he will be a huge, huge individual for many, many years to come.

He will be a transcendent figure transcending the world of golf and going beyond that.

Obviously, when the masses again in 2000 and 1, 2000 and two did it again in 2000 and five.

But what he did in 2000 and 19 was absolutely Herculean, considering all the obstacles that he had faced, uh, since his personal issues and then obviously subsequently back injuries, knees and things of that nature.

To see him come back and toe win 1/15 major, uh, end up having, you know, you know, tying Sam Snead and winning 82 PGA Tour.

But you just can't say enough about how great and phenomenal he was.

I know that as a black man, I was never really interested in golf.

Tiger Woods came along, and that's really, really where resonates when you talk about him being a transcendent figure because he came into your home, he came into your living room.

He competed in a world that a lot of black folks felt with distant and apart from themselves, and they weren't really invited to be a part of per se.

And then you saw a tiger burst onto the scene and then all of a sudden everybody was interested in golf.

You had guys in the world of football and basketball and beyond, wanted to get themselves from custom made clubs.

Wanted to get some, get their hands on some clubs just to go to the driving range over going to courts to be a Tiger Woods.

So he's definitely a transcendent figure.

We know, despite the trials and tribulations he's endured, he's truly, truly one of the great ones on.

We wish him nothing but the best.

To be quite honest with you.

I'm sitting here today and I'm not, you know, trying to talk about it.

Epitaph, for trying to eulogize him or anything.

I'm happy he's alive.

I'm happy that what we're hearing about is that leg injury.

Obviously, his career is a huge question mark right now, considering the recent back surgery that he had etcetera.

But in the end, when you hear that, its legs that it's his legs that are injured and you're hearing that it's not necessarily fatal, that this is not something that that took his life.

You're very, very relieved, particularly considering the fact that we're a little bit more than a year removed from losing the great Kobe Bryant.

Um in that tragic fatal helicopter crash and what have you?

Just what this year has entailed.

You're just relieved that Tiger Woods is alive and then surgery.

And they're talking about surgery on his legs.

A supposed to him having lost his life.

Thank God that doesn't appear to be the case.

Yeah, I had mentioned that when Ramona Shelburne was on with us and it's you're 100% right.

The fact that he is in surgery and he is alive there was so much your eerily similar situations with the helicopter footage and and seeing this destruction around one of our great pro athletes.

And in fact, Tiger Woods, uh, taken out of the car, put in surgery will continue to update.

It is we know.

But Stephen A.

You touched on something that I want to get to because if we're being honest pre 97 the game of golf was a stuffy old white guy sport Tiger is raised and you confined video clips of him saying it.

As a young boy, it is a teenager.

He knew that he was tasked with breaking the racial barrier of a sport at clubs and golf courses where he was not allowed to play in a 1997 when he learns that Masters and Jim Nance makes the call and he calls it a win for the ages.

Not only did that mean that we had this new Phanom in Gulf, but Stephen A.

It meant that people that looked like him could you go to a golf course, could play golf, could succeed it.

Golf.

How much is he meant to the black community in a sport that for so long it was like, You know what?

This is a country club.

Stay away.

This is not your sport.

Oh, I meant everything.

I mean, you're you're talking to an individual right now that that has been a journalist for over 27 years covering the world of sports.

Um, and I've never even known anybody that participate in the Gulf.

Nor did I care until Tiger Woods came along.

It's just that simple.

A za black man.

We didn't feel invited per se.

Obviously you had the right to compete.

You have the right to participate.

But when ah, sport appears to have ostracized disenfranchised communities, at least it gives that impression.

Uh, the bottom line is that you're not going to see yourself gravitating towards that, Um, you could look at the sport of tennis.

Arthur Ashe participated.

But when Venus and Serena Williams came along, all of a sudden, you have black folks paying attention more than ever before to the world of tennis.

Well, the same is applicable to the sport of golf.

That wasn't the case with football.

It certainly isn't hasn't been the case with basketball, but in a sport like golf.

You know, you definitely got that impression.

And then Tiger Woods came along and you found everybody rooting about Tiger.

They didn't even know who that is.

Competitors were.

They didn't know about Jack Nicholas and his 18 majors, and they didn't care about all of that stuff.

What they cared about was what Tiger Woods was doing.

And you ultimately became or informed because you saw a guy that was nothing short of great that looked like he was going to shatter records and you were looking at the records to see what records he would ultimately shatter.

That was the mentality that it was.

If it were not for Tiger, you wouldn't have cared about all of those other things you would have cared about Sam Snead and and what he had accomplished with, you know, his 80 or 81 PGA Tour.

When you were a kid about Jack Nicklaus's 18 majors, when they cared about those things, you cared about it because you knew that Tiger was coming for all of those records and a black man was gonna knock him down.

That was the mentality that you had.

That was how you viewed it as a black person coming out of, ah, black community.

And that's the way it has always been.

And no matter what you know, you look at Tiger Woods with an incredible level of pride because you think about how to score how to sport has grown before.

I very eyes how popularized it has become the money, the revenue that has been generated by the sport, tigers that you know he's at the front of the line with all of that making that happen.

If it wasn't for Tiger Woods, one could easily argue there's no way on Earth that the sport would have generated the same kind of revenue is generated over the years and certainly would not have gotten a ratings.

The television ratings that it had received.

It wouldn't have the interest, you know, emanating from various communities throughout this nation, not just the white community, even the black community, the Hispanic community, the Asian American community.

The list goes on and on.

When you are a transcendent figure stint, you know, just, you know, just touched with greatness.

Uh, everybody's going to support you, and that's the way it was for Tiger was.

That's the way it has always been, and we're hoping that we'll get an opportunity to continue to root for and cheer for him as time moves forward.