7,016-yard Thai Country Club course. The crowd roared as he sank his final birdie on the 18th hole. So do expatriates. Of the 4,000 people who turned up Friday at the Thai Country Club to watch Woods, perhaps a quarter were Japanese. But most Thais are subsistence farmers whose only experience with golf is when their land is expropriated to build links.
Public courses are few, as are the chances for most people to learn the game.
They want to give honors to someone who is basically a foreigner, while they do nothing to support our local athletes. Thaweep's favorite sport is takraw, a popular game where players kick a rattan ball over a net. Gen. Charouck Arirachakaran, secretary-general of Thailand's Olympic committee, told The Nation newspaper that Woods was no Somluck Kamsing, a boxer who won Thailand's first gold medal last year in Atlanta. He takes part in every tournament as an American national, and there is little positive publicity Thailand can derive out of it. Only his mother is Thai.