It certainly felt like a door-opening day for Andy Walker. A day that changes lives, ambitions and perspectives.

Tiger Woods, at age 30, has amassed 10 major championships, including four Masters titles. His 2005 earnings on the PGA Tour topped $10 million. (Annette M. Drowlette/Staff)

On April 13, 1997, Walker scored the biggest tournament victory of his young life - medalist honors in the West Coast Conference golf championship. On any other day, it might have earned a headline in something other than The Graphic - Pepperdine's student newspaper.

But this wasn't any other day. At least not in golf.

Before this Sunday was over, Walker would not simply be defined as the first black golf champion in the WCC.

Walker would be defined as much that day by a tournament on the other side of the country. When Tiger Woods obliterated the field and long-standing stereotypes as the first black golfer to win a major championship at the Masters Tournament, Walker and a few talented peers inherited the most unfair comparison in the history of sports based solely on the color of their skin.

"If another player is good, he just goes out and plays," said Walker, now one of the top players on the Grey Goose Gateway Tour at age 30. "If we're good, it's, 'Can you be Tiger?' Can anybody?"

In the 10 years since Tiger Woods turned professional, nobody has really caught up with him. Most conspicuously, nobody else of African-American heritage.

Neither Walker nor any black professional has walked through and onto the PGA Tour since Woods' landmark win inspired the most intense initiative to introduce more minorities to golf, and the number of African-American golfers at the highest level remains at one.

"Am I disappointed? Yeah," Woods said at last year's U.S. Open. "I thought there would be more of us out here."

It's been nearly 10 years since Earl Woods said his son "will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity."

A decade into his professional career, Tiger Woods' dominion over the game is undeniable. He's a 10-time major winner at age 30 on pace to rewrite all of the records in golf's history book.

Shepherd Archie III (left) practices at the First Tee range in 2003. Archie, now 15, is a junior at Richmond Academy and plays on the golf team. "I probably would be playing another sport if the First Tee didn't come along," he said. said. (File/Staff)

While his mark on the game is astonishing, some - including Woods - say it's too soon to measure his social impact since his first major triumph. Establishing exactly what his social impact is can be equally as difficult to define as he is - an athlete whose ancestry includes Thai, Chinese, Native American, African and European bloodlines.

It's entirely a matter of perspective.

Some say that inspiring more juniors of all colors in all corners of the world to be interested in golf is impact enough.

Others see it as a function of race and contend that his legacy won't be complete until more African-Americans join him on the PGA Tour.

Woods, much like his father, sees it from a human standpoint, far beyond the context of golf.

"I'd like to say I have made a little bit of difference in this game as far as accessibility into our sport - kids, minorities participating in the game," Woods said. "I'd like to do more. I would love to do more."

The flash point

Youth. Power. Charisma. Dominance. Any one of those elements made what Woods did at the 1997 Masters a defining moment.

It was the color of Woods' skin, however, that turned one of golf's great moments into a social moment. Nobody who looked like him had ever won one of golf's major championships - much less a tournament in which the first black golfer hadn't even been eligible to compete until 1975, the year Woods was born.

Suddenly, in his first major as a professional, a 21-year-old Woods broke through the door and carried golf into an entirely new era.

The Tiger Woods Learning Center opened in February in Anaheim, Calif. The center prepares children from fourth through 12th grades for career options in math, science, language arts and character development. (Associated Press)

"You don't have opportunities like that very often in one's life to inspire others," said Woods of the first of his four Masters victories. "Especially people who never, ever thought they would do something like embark in golf."

The seed of social significance which sprouted that April afternoon at Augusta National Golf Club was planted months before in a bustling banquet hall.

"He will transcend this game and bring to the world a humanitarianism which has never been known before," Earl Woods told the guests at the 1996 Fred Haskins Award dinner honoring his son as the nation's top collegiate player.

Woods' father didn't stop there. When pushed further by a Sports Illustrated reporter, the former Green Beret never flinched.

"He's qualified through his ethnicity to accomplish miracles," he added.

"I don't know yet exactly what form this will take, but he is the chosen one," he continued.

"The world is just getting a taste of his power."

It was an introductory volley most people would never live down, much less ever live up to.

Yet, like his father, Tiger Woods never flinches at its retelling. If the words of his father have ever been a burden, he never lets on.

"He was being truthful and honest about how he felt his son could do in life," Woods said. "I certainly understand that."

At the time, the audacity of the paternal pride and praise heaped upon a 20-year-old rookie seemed laughable no matter how promising the prospect. It seems very different as Woods prepares for his 10th Masters as a professional.

"I laughed too," said Mark O'Meara, Woods' oldest and closest friend on the PGA Tour. "I thought (Earl) may think that and believe in his son that much, but I'm not so sure I'd have said some of those things.

"But you know what? Tiger has lived up to those things. Oh my gosh. Everything Earl said is kind of coming to fruition. It's unbelievable."

From a competitive and marketing standpoint, Woods has erased any doubt that his father knew what he was talking about. Along the way to becoming the richest and most recognizable sports figure in the world, he's helped usher in changes in everything from television to money to fitness to fashion and architecture.

Trying to quantify his social impact and responsibility, however, is much trickier.

"I can't speak for social ramifications I'm not aware of," Woods said. "But junior golf I am directly aware of, because I work through my foundation with these kids and all these kids started playing post-Augusta. For me, that was a big moment."

Social euphoria

Of the millions who watched Woods' 1997 march to victory at Augusta on television, it was the black segment of the audience that was most moved. Woods is typically labeled African-American, even though he's as much Asian-American.

"That was great for black people for a black man to win the Masters," said Charles Barkley, who watched the Sunday round from an NBA locker room after a restless night's sleep. "I am never going to forget. ... If you know golf and golf history, it's not been very kind to the brothers."

Joe Louis Barrow was glued to the television watching Woods, much like blacks generations before him were perched in front of their radios in 1937 listening to his father, Joe Louis, win the heavyweight title of the world from James J. Braddock.

"I felt an extraordinary sense of pride to be able to have in my lifetime witnessed the opening of Augusta with Lee Elder to ultimately having someone of color win it," said Barrow, now the executive director of The First Tee program. "Because of the nature of Augusta, and for so many years with African-Americans not being able to play, it was the ultimate accomplishment in golf.

"Part of me said, 'We've arrived. We've overcome.'"

Elder, who still vividly remembers seeing many of Augusta National's black caddies standing around the 18th green to welcome him home after his first Masters round in 1975, was filled with pride and awe as he stood where they once did to see Woods "open the door" with his victory.

"After today," an emotional Elder said as he surveyed the scene surrounding Woods, "no one will turn their head when a black man walks to the first tee."

Woods - who says "I owe my career" to the black pioneers whose sacrifices opened the door for him - understands that his father's generation was most affected by his victory. They were the ones who understood more intensely the social ramifications because they had lived through some of the worst of it.

"I didn't grow up in a time when blacks were treated different than whites, but he did," Woods said of his father, Earl. "He was called a lot of different things when he was growing up. I was to a certain extent but nowhere near what he was. ... For him having gone through all that and seeing what I accomplished at Augusta, it was monumental for him."

Like America?

Woods' first Masters victory prompted many proclamations of social change. The champion himself said he wanted the PGA Tour to one day look more like him and more like America - a melting pot nation where a young man of his diverse heritage could rise to the pinnacle of his sport.

Peers and fans predicted a building wave of black involvement in the game that would eventually deposit reinforcements on the PGA Tour.

Lost in that myopic interpretation was the global impact. Woods didn't just awaken latent enthusiasm for the sport in black quarters. He awakened it in Asia, the Americas, Australia, Africa, Europe and white America, too.

"Tiger came to golf with a level of energy, excitement and enthusiasm, and he increased the level of interest all across the board," said Barrow.

That's why limiting the focus of diversity on the PGA Tour to African-Americans is short-sighted in an era when foreign-born players make up roughly 30 percent of the tour's all- exempt roster, and the pool of talent trying to get in runs deeper than ever.

"It's a function of numbers," said Barrow. "The more you get (blacks) interested in the game of golf, the more it will trickle down whether it be one, two, three or four who have that drive, ambition and skill sets to compete at the highest level. But for that to be the ultimate standard in measuring Tiger's success, that's the absolute, unequivocal wrong standard. Those who say that are not giving Tiger's impact just due."

Woods agrees.

"Time and the tools - the pyramid effect," Woods said of what it will take to ultimately change the face of the PGA Tour with more black pros. "You need to have a bigger base. Yes, I've seen a bunch of junior golfers that have a lot of skill. But as you grow up through the ranks from local junior golf to state and national and college and amateur golf, at each level you think this guy is a can't-miss, and he doesn't make it. Then you go on the mini tours and progress up to our tour and the elite level to our tour. That process, you need to have a bigger base. If you only have 10 guys, what are the chances of those 10 guys versus a million?"

Call to action

The impact of Woods' 1997 Masters victory was never more intense than in its immediate aftermath. Television ratings increased when he played. Purses skyrocketed. Visibly diverse galleries followed him around the course.

"There were a lot of golf courses that I had gone to where I had not seen many blacks," said Elder. "All of a sudden, almost every golf course I went on, especially public facilities, they arrived in such large numbers. It was so wonderful. It had certainly created an onslaught as far as the golfing world is concerned."

Despite a dearth of competitiveness in the final round, as Woods expanded a nine-stroke lead to a record 12-stroke winning margin, more people watched that round of golf than any before or since.

It was up to golf to take advantage of that interest, and various governing bodies stepped up.

The First Tee was established later in 1997 with the support of the PGA and LPGA tours, PGA of America, USGA and Augusta National Golf Club. With a mission to provide affordable golf access to those - particularly kids - who otherwise might not have the opportunity to play, the First Tee has grown to more than 250 facilities in the U.S. and five other countries and brought the game to more than 670,000 since 2000.

Of the First Tee's participants, Barrow says 26 percent are black and nearly 50 percent come from diverse backgrounds.

"Ever since (Woods) came on, the overall interest in golf has grown and certainly that interest has grown in areas of the population where it needed to grow," said PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, one of the biggest benefactors of Woods' iconic largesse. "With Tiger, you also struck a nerve with kids. When the First Tee got out there, this interest among kids to play golf was because of Tiger. ... They needed a role model to create interest, and Tiger became the role model that stimulated the interest."

Barrow agrees: "He has an entire generation of young people who have golf on their radar screen because he is such a recognizable athlete. You can't motivate people to make behavioral changes or participate if they have no awareness. Tiger increased the overall awareness."

Some numbers support that. According to the National Golf Foundation, participation among black golfers grew 145 percent from 1986 to 1999, when more than 882,000 were playing golf. The number increased another 67 percent from 1999 to 2003, with 1.301 million black golfers representing nearly five percent of the black population and six percent of America's golfers.

The foundation also tracked a marked increase in junior golf participation from 1996 to 2000, labeling it on a recent industry report as "possible Tiger effect." Those numbers have declined slightly and tapered since, though they're still above pre-Woods levels.

"When I was growing up and I'd read the storybook of the Pied Piper, he was always white and came from Germany," Earl Woods said last year. "Those were the stories I read. I have seen Tiger in Scotland, in Bangkok, in the Philippines, all over and kids gravitate to him like the Pied Piper."

Adults, too. According to an ESPN sports poll, black and Hispanic Americans comprise the fastest growing segments of the tour's fan base from 1999 to 2004.

"Tiger Woods made golf cool," said Stephen Hamblin, the executive director of the American Junior Golf Association for 22 years. "There's a lot of spinoffs from that concept. Kids who never considered golf an athletic endeavor now did."

Count Augusta's Shepherd Archie III among those kids. He was 7 when Woods won the Masters and unaware of what was happening at Augusta National.

But Archie, who is black, was aware of golf. He watched his father dabble in it at Gordon Lakes Golf Club. By 2001, when he was 11, Archie was leaning toward more common recreational outlets when The First Tee Augusta opened and changed his focus.

"It kept me into golf," said Archie, now 15 and a junior on the golf team at Richmond Academy. "I probably would be playing another sport if the First Tee didn't come along. I was playing a lot of basketball and baseball, but when the First Tee opened I was able to play golf any time I wanted to."

Archie represented Woods in a 2003 CBS promotion featured during the Masters, and he qualified for The First Tee Opens in 2004 and '05.

"It afforded him a good chance to meet good people and do a lot of things and go places I wouldn't be able to take him," said his father, Shepherd Archie Jr., a battalion fire chief at the Savannah River Site.

Slow progress

The sad irony is that the PGA Tour was never more infused with black players than in an era when racial barriers to the game were still high.

For more than a decade that stretched from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, professional golf was experiencing its pinnacle of black involvement.

In the mid-1970s, as many as a dozen black golfers played on the tour at the same time. From 1964 to 1986, five black pros - Charlie Sifford, Pete Brown, Lee Elder, Calvin Peete and Jim Thorpe - won a total of 23 PGA Tour events. Woods is the only black golfer to win since, more than doubling that historical take with 48 career victories in 191 career starts as a pro.

In the 1976 season, which started only weeks after Woods was born in California, 12 black golfers combined for 199 starts on the PGA Tour. In the 1976 Los Angeles Open - where Woods would eventually make his tour debut as a teenage amateur - seven black golfers played, and four made the cut.

When Joe Dey became the PGA Tour's first commissioner in 1969, he looked over this evolving landscape and saw a future that would look very different than its present.

It wasn't what you might think. In a conversation with James Black, an immensely talented black pro struggling to make a living on the recently integrated tour, Dey made a sadly prescient prediction.

"By the turn of the century, there may not be one black playing the tour," Black says Dey told him. "He said the system (of how players would qualify for the tour) was changing."

Dey, it turns out, wasn't too far off. The only thing he didn't foresee was Tiger Woods.

Comparing the modern era of golf to its loosely integrated roots is as fruitless as comparing apples and oranges. Gone are the days when players could travel the tour and Monday qualify with a limited number of other itinerant pros for spots in the fields.

Since implementing the all-exempt tour in 1983, only two African-American golfers have ever gained first-time entry into the fraternity. The first was former South Carolina State golfer Adrian Stills, who lasted one season after making it through qualifying school in 1985.

The other is Tiger Woods.

"One torch, one hand, one lonely stretch of history," golf writer Pete McDaniel concluded in a chapter of his book, Uneven Lies: The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf.

Tim O'Neal, a 33-year-old black pro from Savannah, missed getting his PGA Tour card by one stroke in the 2004 Qualifying School. In the past 10 years, O'Neal and Walker are the only black pros to reach Q-school's third and final stage, which garnered them status on the developmental Nationwide Tour.

The pace for restocking the pool with reinforcements has proven frustrating, though not for a lack of effort.

"There have been shifts, and change is never fast enough for some people," said Barrow. "We have to always keep pushing to create opportunities for people to make a conscious decision about something. The industry legitimately wants to be diverse and we have to continue to be diligent and letting people from all walks of life know how to do it."

Higher stakes

While Woods turned the heads of black America to golf with his meteoric rise, they weren't the only ones to notice.

Golf's increased notoriety brought escalating purses and a worldwide wave of young golfers hoping to cash in on the bounty. Consequently, the PGA Tour is tougher to reach now than it ever was when Elder and his contemporaries were trying to break through.

"Back when we was coming up, you didn't have the crop of youngsters coming out of college who had the game to compete," Elder said. "It's definitely much harder today."

Woods expects it to get even more competitive.

"Eventually you'll see some kids who have that athletic talent and have the prowess to have been all-Americans in other sports now playing golf," he said. "That's going make it even more difficult to make it on the PGA Tour."

Mark O'Meara says the difference between the PGA Tour today and the one on which he embarked 25 years ago is striking. It all works against anyone trying to break in.

"When I started on tour there were hardly any foreign players on tour full time," O'Meara said. "Now, a third of the tour is foreign players. With Tiger's foundation and trying to get more minority people involved in the game, all those things help. But once again, the competition is so tight it's tough for anybody to break through whether it's a Caucasian person or African-American person or anyone. There are so many players."

Bill Dickey certainly knows that. He's been trying to assist black kids through the game of golf since the mid-1970s, doling out more than $2 million in college scholarships through his National Minority Junior Golf Scholarship Association since 1984.

"If you look at Division I golf, you see very few African-Americans particularly," said Dickey. "There are a number out there, probably more than have been in the past, but it's a slow process in getting more kids involved."

The American Junior Golf Association, trying to squelch criticism that it catered to too much affluence, has evolved over the past 10 years into a network of tournaments simultaneously run all over the country to make it more accessible.

The association also implemented the ACE Grant program - Achieving Competitive Excellence - to offer financial assistance to qualified players who need it.

"I didn't want kids to go to The First Tee and get excited about golf and get passionate and then go to the next level and find out everything is closed because of finances," Hamblin said. "Hopefully we're doing our part and The First Tee is doing its part. Time will tell."

The next step

The higher degree of difficulty in just making it to the PGA Tour is what worries some about the future of black golfers at the top level.

"I would love to see more blacks on the PGA Tour," said Barkley. "This is a great time for golf with Tiger being black. We just have to get more black kids playing golf. Golf is a very expensive sport. They didn't want blacks out there first of all and then it was economics. We have to find a way. We have to."

While everyone applauds the initiative of first-step programs such as The First Tee, they point out that there is nothing out there to help disadvantaged golfers take the last step.

And that last step is a doozy.

"The preparation for golf and The First Tee programs and (Tiger's) foundation are great," said Elder. "But that's for the future. I'm talking about the present. Let's see if we can't help the young Afro-Americans who are in those colleges who want the chance to play on the tour but don't have the economics to afford to do it."

Woods says that's just part of the process that he and everybody else had to get through.

"At the junior level there are some (black) players with some talent," Woods said. "But as you continue throughout golf and continue to move up in levels, the process of screening kind of weeds them out. It's hard to make it out here."

Walker, the first black member of an NCAA Division I championship team at Pepperdine in 1997, says doing it the "Woods way" is hardly realistic for anyone else.

"Our opportunities are a little bit different," Walker said. "I didn't tee it up my first day of professional golf with $60 million. I started out my pro career with probably $600. I can't really relate to him on those terms. You can go at any pin you want and you're never going to leave a putt short when your income doesn't come from golf."

Walker knows that as well as anyone. Financial support has been his biggest obstacle since turning pro in 1998.

"It does go back to financial," Walker said. "Can we play every week? Are we 100 percent prepared coming to Q-school or have we had to spend everything we have for Q-school and half-stepped the weeks and months prior to it.

"I've talked to hundreds of people - athletes and celebrities who have millions of bucks and they're watching the 62s and 63s I shoot all the time, and it's real tough to get help. Luckily the last couple of years I've played well enough to do it on my own, but kids coming out of college can't do that. It's tough to see someone who should be playing not playing just because of a lack of finances."

Walker, 30, now competes on a mini-tour in Arizona where the entry fees alone to compete a full season are $40,000.

"This is the purest form of golf there is," he said. "You're playing for your own money."

To interested observers such as Dickey and Elder, talented black golfers in this era are caught in an awkward place.

That's why Dickey and Elder have proposed an idea for years. They want a golf academy - on the scale of one run by prominent swing coach David Leadbetter - to provide promising minority golfers with the same tools to hone their games that to date can only be afforded by golfers who come from families with the economic means.

Foreign countries such as South Korea and Sweden have had great successes with golf academies run similarly to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado. In a global game that will be competing for a share of the playing field with growing numbers from untapped markets, Elder thinks responding in kind is the only way blacks can keep up.

"I'm sure that we can start a training program that can afford the young people an opportunity to come there and practice and play and not have to worry about how much they have to spend and how long they can stay," Elder said. "Those are the things you have to eliminate from a young person's mind when he's trying to prepare himself for a professional career in the game of golf."

Elder - who considered buying a course in Duluth, Ga., and starting such an academy with black comedian Chris Tucker - believes a coalition of athletes and corporations could establish a golf academy on the scale of any in the world, with an endowment program to help identify and nurture promising minority golfers who otherwise would never have the means.

"I truly think that if Tiger would voice his opinions along that line, things would change," Elder said.

Dickey concurred: "Whether it be Tiger or Michael Jordan or Charles Barkley, they have to have the passion. The bottom line is, everybody has plenty of money at their disposal but if they don't have the passion for a specific thing such as getting somebody out there, it will never happen."

Broader foundation

Woods has taken a different philosophical approach with his Tiger Woods Foundation. Golf isn't the central mission of his philanthropic endeavors.

"I'm focusing on my foundation right now with our learning center and trying to help kids, not necessarily in golf but just in life and academics," Woods said. "That's been my focus. If we produce golfers, that's fine, but I want to produce good citizens and citizens that will help and give back."

His aspirations garner applause from even the man who once said athletes shouldn't be role models.

"Tiger understands the golf stuff is cool, but you have to make your mark on life," said Barkley. "There are very few great black role models today, and he's a great role model for all kids. We need great role models in the black community today because we're really struggling. Really struggling."

But Woods looks well beyond the black community.

In February, he officially opened his Tiger Woods Learning Center - a 35,000-square foot facility on 14 acres in Anaheim, Calif., adjacent to the H.G. "Dad" Miller Golf Course where Woods played his home matches in high school.

The Learning Center includes seven classrooms, a computer lab, multi-media center, student lounge and a 250-seat auditorium and caf. It also has a Tom Fazio-designed practice facility between the course and the center that includes a 10-acre driving range with 20 teeing stations and a 3-acre, 18-hole putting and chipping course.

Golf is merely a recreational pursuit in Woods' thoughts. The Learning Center's curriculum is designed to orient and prepare kids from fourth to 12th grade in career options in math, science, language arts and character development. They can explore fields ranging from forensic science and DNA lab work to aerospace or digital manufacturing.

At the dedication ceremony in February, former President Bill Clinton lauded Woods' bold ambition "to do this when he was 30 instead of when he was 60."

"It's hard to have great gifts and bring them to bear in the public eye under enormous pressure when you're young," Clinton said. "And it's a tribute to you that somehow you've been able to amass a stunning, unprecedented record and keep holding yourself up to start giving back at this point in your life."

This is the direction Woods is going with his influence.

"We are an educational foundation," Woods said. "We started out as a golf foundation. That's the only way we could get attention from the media and facilitate our ability to impact the local junior golf communities and also our philanthropic organizations in that area.

"We had to become golf-oriented, but now we've expanded and there's enough awareness that we don't have to do that any more and I can get our focus to where it should be, and that's on the philanthropic, educational side and teaching these kids to become leaders."

Woods said this project - whose stated mission is to involve youths from diverse backgrounds in "an interactive learning environment that will enable them to broaden their perspective of the world, explore their interests, and investigate new possibilities for the future" - means "everything" to him.

"That to me is more important to me than winning any major championship," he said. "I have a chance to go to my hometown and make a difference in kids' lives where I grew up and where I played my own high school golf."

Woods - who hopes to spread his learning center blueprint into other communities - bristles at the idea that he should concentrate more on helping elevate blacks into the privileged world of the PGA Tour when there is so much more his wealth, fame and energy can offer the world at large. It illustrates the influence his father spoke about 10 years ago.

"Over time, my attitude has changed about this issue," Woods said in Barkley's book, Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?

"When I was little, it was about trying to help people who were black. As I've grown older, I've come to the decision that I don't want to take that particular approach anymore. I want to help everybody. So my foundation will be done with that in mind. ... I don't care who you are, what race you are, or what your ethnicity is. Don't ask me to care. It's about helping the next generation have a better future. And I will be a leader for everybody. Not just one group."

What's next?

If that's the social consciousness that Woods envisions, where does that leave the future of blacks at the highest levels of golf? Will the grass-roots enthusiasm among blacks hold on as the initial Tiger-mania created by his 1997 Masters victory wanes?

And whose responsibility is it to build the numbers?

"Tiger's done his part," said former AJGA director Stephen Hamblin. "He did it the old-fashioned way - he came up through his state and national junior golf and college golf and amateur golf and now he's the No. 1 player in the world. So he's done his part. Now it's what else can others do."

That passion and drive to succeed in golf ultimately needs to come from the players. If Tiger Woods has taught the world anything, it's that strength of focus, determination and hard work are as important as talent.

"You can't use the race thing as a reason you're not making it or are making it," Walker said. "If you shoot the numbers, they don't lie. The golf ball and the golf course have no idea that I'm a black American. No clue."

Those who hope to see more racial diversity in golf's highest level remain frustrated by the pace of change.

"I've been there and seen what it takes," said Dickey, 78, of his nearly 30-year efforts in this area. "Even though a lot of people say they're in the pipeline, well it's so tough ... the few that are in the pipeline are struggling to get there for whatever reason. It's going to take I don't know how long, maybe I won't be here to see it. It takes two big things - money and a dedicated group or persons who will put the programs together. If you don't have either of those, it looks a little bleak."

Optimists, like Woods, believe that the game is growing just as color blind and that will eventually provide reinforcements.

"While we are very excited about the prospects of some day having a winner on the PGA or LPGA tours say they started at The First Tee, more importantly to us is that we have created a cadre of people who have golf in their life for a lifetime," said Barrow. "It may be a school teacher or reporter or elected official or a doctor and they say, 'But for The First Tee, I wouldn't be where I am today.' To me, that is a better level of accomplishment."

Other observers are somewhere in the middle.

"I'm caught between optimism - there are a number of good, young prospects who have the game and desire to make it - and muted pessimism - there are several prospects who can't get over the hump for some reason and finances aren't the major hurdle," said McDaniel. "Their paths are littered with failed opportunities and false starts. ... I'm afraid they won't come in waves, as we thought in the wake of Tiger-mania, but in trickles."

Twenty more years down the road, when Woods is old enough to either retire from competition or embark on the Champions Tour, his social legacy both in and out of the game should be clearer. Whether it's measured by more diversity at golf's highest levels or more diverse opportunities for children born into less fortunate social stature, Woods hopes it will offer a truer reflection of his impact than the number of major championships he's won.

"When I'm done, I don't need to be remembered as a golfer," Woods said in Barkley's book.

"I want to be remembered for whatever social impact I've had around the world. Some people remember Arthur Ashe because he was a tennis player. But there are people all around the world who don't know that he won Wimbledon but remember what kind of social impact he made, what kind of leader he was.

"That's the kind of role I want to play and be remembered for playing. 'Yeah,' people might say, 'he was a good golfer at one point. You know, he won some tournaments here and there. But what he did socially had a real impact.'"

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.