Interview: Earl Woods

What about alcohol?

With alcohol, I'm not a teetotaler. I feel that it's the individual's choice. And my responsibility as a parent was to teach him how to drink responsibly. So I use a story of when I used to live in Brooklyn. A friend of mine had his son visiting him, and we were having a New Year's Eve party. His son proceeded to sample each bottle of liquor. He got as sick as a dog, right there. I cited this as an example to Tiger. See, you can't mix scotch, rum, vodka, bourbon, Kahlua — it don't work. And stay away from those exotic drinks that shield everything with sugar and sweetness and stuff. You don't feel it until it's too late. Learn to drink good-quality booze. It'll pay off dividends if you drink too much. And he listened and he learned.

And the funniest thing: He left for Stanford — Tiger had never had a drink in his life — and he came home for Thanksgiving and I was lying in bed watching television, and he said, "What are you drinking, Pop?" I said, "A Coke. Why?" He said, "Give me that." And he built himself a drink and built me a drink — he knows what I drink — and then he came back into the room and said, "Pop, let's go for a walk."

We walked over to the park and we sat down and Tiger said, "I just want to share this first drink with you. This is the first drink we've ever had, the two of us."

And we sat there and talked and talked and talked. One of the most beautiful moments of my life.

We've covered drugs and alcohol. How about swearing? In the Golf Digest Interview in May, Tiger's former teammate at Stanford, Casey Martin, said that the one thing that kept Tiger from being truly great was profanity. Yesterday [at the Western Open] he broke his wedge and cursed a couple of times. Do you wish he would tone it down a bit?

Tiger's not perfect. I'm not perfect. You can't have it both ways with Tiger. You can't have charismatic abilities to execute the marvelous shots and then chastise him when that same passion causes him to overload when he hits a bad shot. Specifically about swearing, it's a ... I won't say a cultural thing; it's a family thing. My father could swear for 30 minutes and never repeat himself. He was that good. And I inherited it. It took some time before I could bring it under control.

So of the three of you, who has the hottest temper — you, Tida or Tiger?

Tiger, by far. Because Tiger is the most competitive of the three of us. He'll compete in drinking a glass of water.

You were competitive yourself. How did you get started in sports?

I was always in sports. They always put the best athlete at catcher, and I was always the catcher. I was small, very small, so I wasn't a power hitter by any stretch of the imagination.

A funny story: I wanted to increase my power, and I looked at the power hitters that I knew, and they were in the black leagues, and all of them had one common denominator: They all had a big, fat derrière. So I began to exercise with the intent of building up my derrière. You can only imagine that in the context of a young kid, because they think they can do this. I did increase my power, but I don't think it was because of my derrière, but because I had built up my whole body.

You grew up in Manhattan, Kan. Was it difficult to find places to play baseball in the late '40s and early '50s?

There was not plenty of access. Annually they would pick an all-star team, and move on to the state tournament. I was the only non-white on the all-star team, and I was the only non-white at the state tournament, and this is when I became fully aware of prejudice. All the other kids and their teams stayed in a hotel. I had to stay in a private home with a family.

You've mentioned that you met Joe Louis when you were a kid. Who was your hero when you were 10?

There was no hero. In my era, the closest thing to a sports hero was Joe Louis, but I couldn't have Joe Louis as my hero, because he was not educated. He was athletically excellent, but that wasn't good enough, by virtue of what my mother thought. You had to have an education.

You were a good enough baseball player to earn a college scholarship.

My American Legion coach happened to be the baseball coach at Kansas State University, and he got me a scholarship to play there. I was the first — and only — non-white in the whole conference. There's that loneliness.

With your mother stressing education, what would have happened if you hadn't gotten that scholarship?

I was good enough in baseball that it never dawned on me that I couldn't get a scholarship. But I knew that it was a dead-end street, because there was nothing after college for me in baseball. Because of my race, I wasn't eligible to play in the major leagues.