TIGER WOODS is featured on the cover of the current GQ
titled, "The Coming of Tiger Woods, Sports' Next Messiah."
GQ's Charles Pierce profiles Woods under the header, "The
Man. Amen. In The Book Of Saint Earl Of The Woods, Let Us
Now Turn To The Next Chapter, Verse 1997, In Which The
Presumed Messiah -- Halo, Swoosh And All -- Is Revealed To
Be, Gasp! A 21-Year-Old Kid." Pierce rides with Woods in a
limousine after a photo shoot where Woods tells sexual jokes
about blacks and lesbians. One of the jokes has Woods
putting his shoes together and rubbing them up and down
against each other. Woods asks women at the photo shoot:
"What's this? ... It's a black guy taking off his condom."
When Woods tells Pierce, "Hey, you can't write this," Pierce
responds, "Too late." Pierce: "I was dead serious, but
everybody laughed because everybody knows there's no place
in the gospel of Tiger for these sort of jokes." Pierce, on
Woods: "He's become the center of a secular cult, the tenets
of which hold that something beyond golf is at work here.
Something that will help redeem golf from its racist past,
something that will help redeem America from its racist
past. ... It has been stated -- flatly, and by people who
ought to know better -- that the hand of God is working
through Tiger Woods in order to make this world a better
place for us all." More Pierce: "I do not believe -- right
now, this day -- that Tiger Woods will change humanity any
more than Chuck Berry did" (GQ, 4/97 issue).
RESPONSE: In St. Pete, Bob Harig wrote Woods "did not
intend for the jokes nor his language to appear in print."
Woods issued a statement in response to GQ's article: "It's
no secret that I'm 21 years old, and that I'm naive about
the motives of certain writers ... the article proves that,
and I don't see any reason for anyone to pay $3 to find that
out. ... Thanks to the magazine and the writer for teaching
me a lesson" (ST. PETE TIMES, 3/23). Woods is featured in
TIME as the "heir" to ARNOLD PALMER. TIME's Steve Wulf:
"Woods, after all, carries the hope of both African and
Asian Americans, not to mention Nike, and he must deal with
much more media than Palmer ever did" (TIME, 3/31).
