By Damon Noisette
The summer of 2020 was a moment in the United States when sports were sidelined as mere entertainment, trifles in the face of blatant cruelty. Mass demonstrations against the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and the shooting of Jacob Blake led to a broad realization that, at the very least, the words of condemnation needed to be stronger and much more specific this time. And although that obligation rests with all of us, it sits particularly heavy on the media charged with covering these tragedies and racial inequality more broadly.
So as the boiling pot of American race relations spilled over again, as it always does, golf looked immediately to players like Harold Varner III, Cameron Champ, Tony Finau (curiously), and of course Tiger Woods to contextualize the moment and provide a well-meaning statement — the understanding being that whatever was said would generally absolve the PGA Tour and golf, quickly addressing and dismissing all of that nasty, uncomfortable stuff, and allowing a return to business as usual.
And it was business as usual in every way for golf, from the social media slacktivism to the sports network putting big heads on a television screen to argue over whether Tiger’s statement was “Black enough” and whether his team took too long to workshop it before its release. Being a catalyst for the viewer who unironically trots out the “stick to sports” line to experience an existential crisis is bad for business; remixing the criticisms of a conflicted “Cablinasian” man is a content farm that always provides abundantly.
Now, nearly a year later, Black History Month 2021 has come and gone, and the golf media’s latest efforts feel perfunctory at best.
Where were the stories asking professional golfers who aren’t Varner, Champ, and Tiger what they’ve learned and what they did during Black History Month?
That's not said to denigrate the work of the organizations working to make the game more inclusive and the writers who told the stories of the Advocates Pro Golf Association, LPGA caddie Taneka Mackey, course designer Joseph Bartholomew, hard luck pros Willie Mack III and Kamiau Johnson, and how Cameron Champ is using his golf bag to highlight Black-owned small businesses at the tournaments he plays.
Unfortunately, that just seems to be where the stories start and end.
The golf media sure seems to relish the opportunity to ask hard questions about the implications of teeing it up in Saudi Arabia and the slur Justin Thomas was caught uttering on a hot mic. That same energy is missing when it comes to addressing the longstanding inequities in the game — and in society — for Black people. The closest we came was when Kirk Triplett was interviewed about the Black Lives Matter logo he put on his golf bag for the Senior Players Championship and a follow-up article about how he will be partnering with a diversity-focused nonprofit.
To be sure, confronting racial inequality is uncomfortable. The questions that begin those conversations are tough. But it wasn’t long ago that the media and their readers promised to make space for those conversations. This Black History Month was one such space, and golf's media coverage missed the opportunity.
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Damon Noisette is a Northeast Florida-based writer and photographer.