One ball bounded across the green and dived to the bottom of the cup. Similar scenes play out in Los Angeles and Chicago and New York each day, featuring children of all sizes, shapes and colors. Grandmothers are trading in knitting needles to watch him on weekends, record crowds are turning up to view PGA Tour events, and the game's television ratings are higher than ever. The fairways at tournaments are lined with children no taller than the gallery ropes. Merchandise racks are being emptied by the weekend rounds.
Children are as apt to try swinging a cut-down golf club as a baseball bat.
Golf, the lily-white sport once reserved for doctors on Wednesday afternoons at the stodgy club, has become so, well, cool. One man has ushered the game into society's mainstream. With seven PGA Tour events left on the '96 schedule, there was speculation he was going to have a difficult time earning enough money to finish among the top 125 players and earn a tour card for 1997. In one year, Woods has won six PGA Tour events in 25 starts. By April, he had scaled his way to the top, slipping on the prized green blazer worn by the champion at the Masters Tournament.