Golf failed its own racism test

Now we know: Golf is a sport where you can aim a racial slur at Tiger Woods in front of a room of people and not get punished for it. In fact, in certain company, when the audience is in a party mood and thinks the world is not watching or listening, you might even get a few laughs.

If golf really and truly had "no place for any form of racism," which is what the heads of the PGA and European tours said, then Steve Williams wouldn't be working this week. Instead he would be suspended or lying low somewhere.

If golf really had no place for racism, then the sport would have required that the caddie sacked by Woods in July do more, far more, than simply apologize, which he has done both to Woods in person and to the wider world in a begrudging, three-line statement. Why not, for starters, insist that he attend courses on race relations and respect before next stepping onto a fairway?

If golf had zero place for racism, there would be fewer apologists for Williams quickly turning the page. There would be more golfers like Fred Couples who were not prepared to dismiss Williams' comment at a caddies awards party as an ugly attempt at humor that failed. The U.S. captain for the Presidents Cup was reported as saying that if Williams was his caddy, he'd have fired him.

Woods said he and Williams "met face to face and talked about it, talked it through" Tuesday. Greg Norman, captain of the Presidents Cup International side, employed Williams in the 1980s. Both golfers said the New Zealand caddie is not a racist. "No doubt about that," Woods said. "No, not at all," Norman said.

Which is somewhat reassuring but also irrelevant here. That Williams, as far as ex-colleagues can actually know these things, does not hate people because of their skin color or ethnic background does not erase what he said. Suggesting it was out of character, that Williams doesn't habitually say such things, that the comment was reported out of context or that those who weren't there aren't qualified to have an opinion, does not make such slurs right or less painful to people who have long been on the receiving end of them. Woods called the remark "hurtful" and "a wrong thing to say."

 Some said Adam Scott, his employer, should have sacked Williams. But Scott was a victim here, too, unwittingly placed in the middle by something hateful someone else said.

This was a problem for the whole of golf, represented by top administrators, to take a stand on. The sport needed to make it loud and clear that racial slurs will have punitive consequences, to dissuade others from making them, too.

Golf has myriad rules to govern the minutiae of what to do, say, when the wind blows the ball or when it lands in water. But on this issue that mattered, it let itself down.

PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and European Tour chief executive George O'Grady condemned Williams' slur as "entirely unacceptable in whatever context."

But they took no action.

Golf has no place for racism, they said.

Williams put that to the test.

Golf failed.

— John Leicester

Associated Press