Tiger relives Nike’s first Tiger Woods commercial, the one in which he flatly declared “there are still courses in the United States that I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin.”
The ad stirred controversy at the time, for so boldly playing the race card and perhaps not being perfectly true on the merits: Tiger Woods probably could’ve played any course he wanted in 1996. But just because it wasn’t 100% true to the letter didn’t mean it wasn’t true in spirit. It would’ve been entirely true for any other black golfer at the time. Just six years before the ad aired, in 1990, Hal W. Thompson, the founder of Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama, the venue for the 1990 PGA Championship (one of pro golf’s four majors), said “we don’t discriminate in every other area except the blacks.”