COMMENTARY : On the Playing Fields of Social Conscience, Most Golfers Bogey

Payne Stewart is a royal pain, and so are almost all of his fellow touring pros as they enjoy the lily-white environs of Birmingham’s Shoal Creek at this weekend’s PGA Championship. When it comes to having a social conscience, mark these guys down for a triple bogey. If the PGA is looking for a tour symbol, why not an ostrich?

But wait, that’s an insult to ostriches. After all, even an ostrich takes its head out of the sand once in a while. There is little evidence the players of the pro golf tour ever do.

In the wake of the verbal firestorm lit by Shoal Creek founder Hall Thompson’s published comments that the country club didn’t have any black members and didn’t feel the need to have any--comments that eventually caused several corporate sponsors to pull their TV ads and forced PGA officials to reconsider holding tour events at all-white private clubs--the silence from most of the touring pros has been deafening. For most of them, the only comment has been “no comment.”

There are many who speak no evil. And there are some who see or hear none.

On the eve of Thursday’s first round, Stewart, the defending PGA champion, blasted the news media for making an issue of Thompson’s comments.

“I think the whole thing got blown way out of proportion,” Stewart said. “That’s something you guys are pretty good at, blowing things out of proportion.”

Right, Payne. The thing everybody really should have focused on is how pretty the course looked and all that wonderful Southern hospitality.

Nobody is asking Stewart and his fellow millionaires to boycott their sport until blacks and other ethnic minorities are adequately represented at the clubs that host tour events. Nobody is blaming them for golf’s lily-white traditions. They weren’t there at the creation.

But how insensitive are men like Stewart that they believe racist comments such as Thompson’s should be swept under the proverbial rug and ignored? What kind of men are they that they would rather get hit over the head with an 8-iron than speak out against institutionalized racism?

Unfortunately, they are like many men. They are onto a good thing, and they are not going to say a word that would rock the boat. You sit in your living room and see touring pros like Stewart presented with big checks on Sunday, but what about the big checks they receive every week that aren’t presented on TV?

I’m talking about the hundreds of thousands of dollars guys like Stewart make for playing exhibitions, for showing up at a private club and playing a few rounds and sitting around the 19th hole with the corporate high rollers.

Chances are, the people who pay guys like Stewart to hang out with them at their private club like their club just fine the way it is, thank you. Chances are, they wouldn’t look too fondly on one of their favorite touring pros running his mouth and publicly protesting the institutionalized racism of clubs such as theirs. It’s never wise to bite the hand that feeds you.

People do it, of course, and some get away with it. Athletes in other sports get away with it all the time. It seems a day never goes by without some baseball, basketball or football player saying something that leaves his employers red-faced.

But so what if 76ers management views Charles Barkley as a royal pain? He’s also their best player and one of the greatest players in the NBA. He can afford to be a pain because both he and his team know it can’t afford to be without him.

Many golfers are as rich as Barkley, rich enough to speak their minds without ever worrying about failing to meet the mortgage payment on one of their three homes. But then, how many people ever feel rich enough?

It’s not just money that keeps Stewart and his fellow pros from speaking out; it’s their background. Many of them grew up playing at country clubs that practice the same racially exclusionary policies Shoal Creek practices. They don’t stop and question institutionalized racism, not just because it’s always been the way of the world, but because it’s always been the way of their world. What civil rights supporters see as evil, they see as normal and natural.

Worse, Stewart and some of his fellow pros see the whole controversy as being funny. That’s how out of whack their values are.

Not only are the players not deeply concerned about the controversy, Stewart said, “The players have probably made more jokes about it than anything else.”

Not all of them.

“I don’t think that’s a joking issue,” Jack Nicklaus said.

He’s got that right.