It’s always interesting when old footage of athletes is dug up, whether it’s video of them playing their respective sport or doing interviews as kids. Time machines don’t exist yet, so this is often the only way we can watch superstars before they made it to the big time, outside of witnessing them with our own eyes.
Tiger Woods has been a sensation since he was a very small child, and his success was anticipated from the time he was young, so plenty of this footage exists. By now, you’ve probably seen the video of Woods appearing on the Mike Douglas Show as a toddler to showcase his incredible golf skill in its very early stages, but plenty of other young Woods footage is out there. In fact, new videos are still surfacing to this day.
In the 25-year-old video you see above, Woods talks to Trans World Sport about golf, his heroes, and being a 14-year-old phenom in the game. But arguably the most interesting portion of the unedited interview comes when the interviewer asks Woods, who is half-black, if he has dealt with any racial discrimination on the golf course.
“Every time I go to a major country club, I can always feel it. Always sense it. People always staring at me. ‘What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.’ When I go to Texas or Florida, you always feel it. They say, ‘What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here.’ And that’s probably because that’s where all the slavery was.”
It’s not exactly shocking that Woods had to deal with this issue coming up in golf, a game that’s notably racist in its history, but hearing him talk about how much he was pre-judged, even as a 14-year-old kid, is kind of jarring. Woods also said that he thought he could change the racial landscape of golf if he were to make it big in the game.
“Since I’m black, it might be even bigger than Jack Nicklaus. I might be even bigger than him. I may be like a sort of Michael Jordan in basketball.”