Tiger Lionized in His Hometown

For Don Crosby, the final leader board was no shocker. The man who coached Tiger Woods for four years at Western High School in Cypress recognized the swing he saw on Sunday.

“When he has his A game, he always has a chance to win, always,” said Crosby, who watched Woods’ stunning victory at the Masters tournament in Augusta, Ga., on Sunday. “He pretty much had his A game most of the way.”

When Woods flashed his increasingly famous grin after several key shots, Crosby said he found himself getting misty thinking about the young man’s path to success.

“I was so proud of him it brought a tear to my eye,” Crosby said. “Proud for his family and all the people along the way. It’s not like this is a fluke. He worked his whole life to do what he has done these past few days.”

Somehow it seemed fitting, in the same week that the nation stands poised to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one man breaking the color barrier, that another barrier would come tumbling down.

That, at least, is what many of the old-timers at the clubhouse at Chester L. Washington Golf Course just southeast of Inglewood were saying as they exuberantly celebrated.

“This is big, this is really big,” said Malcolm Vest, a 42-year-old golfer. “It’s like Jackie Robinson playing in the major leagues. It’s bigger.”

Around golf courses in the Southland, it was Tiger Woods Day.

In Cypress, Woods’ hometown, television sets in homes, sports bars and golf clubhouses were tuned Sunday to the unfolding rout in Augusta and the talk was about just how far the local prodigy can go.

“I’ve been following him for 10 years, since he was in high school, and I knew he was good, but I never thought he would be this good,” said Eric MacArthur, a 35-year-old Cypress resident who watched the end of the Masters after a visit to a local driving range.

MacArthur, like many others, has seen Woods’ meteoric rise create a surge of youthful golfers into an “old man’s game.”

“You see all these kids coming out and you think, ‘Maybe there’s the next Tiger.’ ”

At Cypress Golf Club, the growing legend of Tiger Woods is documented by a scorecard and autographed golf ball in a tall glass case--the evidence of Woods’ course record, set in August 1996 when the phenom dropped by to practice for the U.S. Amateur Open, which he won.

On Sunday, the club staff and weary golfers traded Tiger stories and whistled in awe as they watched the serene Woods power through Augusta National with seeming ease.

“He is just awesome, just unbelievable,” said Cameron Lee, a 17-year-old varsity golfer at Woods’ alma mater, Western High. “I was here when he set the course record and he comes back to our school a lot. It’s great for us. He makes me want to play more, to try to get as good as he is.

“Tiger is just the best golfer around.”

And well on his way to becoming the most famous one too.

Cypress Golf Club general manager Norio Fujii gushes about his meetings with Woods, “a fine young man,” and points out that in his native country of Japan, “it’s just Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, everywhere.”

“He’s global,” Fujii said. “All the high school and college kids who come here want to see Tiger. He’s already a legend.”

At Chester L. Washington golf course, golfers crammed the clubhouse, not the fairways, to watch history unfold.

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Normally, the players would be out on the putting green, but on this bright sunny day the clubhouse was packed. Nobody wanted to miss a milestone in the making, when a young golfer who less than four decades ago would have been prohibited from the Masters course ran away with the title in a record-setting performance.

“No one will have a Tiger by the tail today,” yelled out one golfer viewing the TV in the restaurant/bar and throwing his fist in the air. This was not just Tiger’s day, it was a moment to be shared and savored by old-timers who remember the days when blacks were limited to caddying for white golfers.

“This is the greatest thing that ever happened to golf,” exclaimed Mike Williams, 50, a golf pro who is an African American. “This was the next step.”

Williams, a self-taught golfer, said Woods’ victory helped ease the pain of the days when he was caddying in the segregated country club courses of Joliet, Ill.

“Tiger has built his own bridge and crossed over a river of prejudice,” said Maggie Hathaway, a pioneer in forcing Los Angeles public golf courses to open their doors to blacks in the early 1960s.

Woods, whose mother is Asian and whose father is African American, is no stranger to the Washington golf course, members said.

“Tiger’s father would ask us to play with him when he was younger, about 16, just to make him tougher,” Williams recalled, adding: “He could beat us then.”

Woods, he said, never forgot them. He has returned to the golf course several times and helped teach young players in the Western States Golf Assn. training program.

To this day, veteran golfers at Washington marvel at Woods’ clean-cut nature.

“You don’t see him wearing earrings or baggy pants, and he speaks with respect,” Bernard Samuels said.

As more than 30 golfers sat intently watching the tourney, it was a day of comparisons.

This was like Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics, like Bob Beamon’s incredible long jump, like Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon and like countless Joe Louis fights.

Golf “was one of the last places to change,” said Chuck Wallace, 73, who began playing golf in 1958 but said he has been hanging around courses since he was 12 in Texas.

“Back then, being a caddy was the best you could do,” he recalled. “This is a real victory.”

It was a time to relish, even a time to joke, as players toasted the champion and talked about what this would mean for the future of golf and about what exactly is Woods’ secret of success.

“Maybe it’s in his tongue,” Vest said, smiling. “He sticks his tongue out like Michael Jordan. Maybe I need to work on my tongue. Maybe that will help my game.”

As he pondered Woods’ feat, Crosby, the Western High golf coach, had a message that might send chills through the ranks of professional golf. “I figure he has, what, 34 more years of Masters before the Senior Tour?”