As I watched Tiger Woods complete the first round of the rain-delayed Masters Golf Tournament on Friday morning, it occurred to me that I would be watching the WNBA this summer.
What does the greatest golfer of my generation have to do with women’s basketball? Nothing, really.
Clark’s fame may be short-lived. We’re going to have as much fun as we can and bounce back from the photo moment where she’s kneeling in solidarity with Megan Rapinoe.
But my 27-year fascination with Tiger on the golf course pretty much guarantees that I won’t be able to easily shake off my fascination with Caitlin Clark. Sports fans love history. we want to witness it. We want to be a part of that too. We want to pass on what we have seen to the younger generation. It makes us feel important.
Tiger Woods knew he had no real chance of competing at this year’s Masters. He was too injured and too inactive. Besides, he is too old at 48 years old. ESPN started watching me because I wanted to see Tiger make a little bit of history. He was fighting for his 24th consecutive cut at Augusta National Golf Course. He shared the all-time record of 23 with Fred Couples and Gary Player.
Woods qualified and added history to one of sports’ most compelling stories.
This weekend, as I continued to watch Tiger and the Masters, I kept asking myself why I fell in love with golf. why? Probably the most boring sport known to man. It’s hard to see the ball. The golf swing of anyone other than Charles Barkley doesn’t look all that different from anyone else’s golf swing.
Is golf more exciting than women’s basketball? No, it’s not.
What Caitlin Clark does on a WNBA court will be 10 times more challenging and interesting than Tiger Woods walking around a golf course and swinging a club once every three or four minutes.
My admiration for Tiger stemmed from my belief that he would make history, and I wanted to be a witness to it. I wanted to see him shake up the golf world and analyze his impact.
The same goes for Caitlin Clark. She has a chance to become the greatest women’s basketball player of all time. The WNBA establishment (mainly a group of angry lesbians) hates Clark. They want to see her fail. I want to see her succeed.
I’m going to watch Monday night’s WNBA Draft. I’m looking forward to it even more than the NBA draft.
Clark has the greatest power in the sports world. A woman has never been America’s most interesting athlete. I think she was also close to Serena Williams. But she was so much more physically gifted than her peers that her dominance in tennis was as likely as a white girl from Iowa’s dominance in basketball. It wasn’t something that wasn’t there. Moreover, for the most part, everyone celebrated Selena’s rise. She did not face much resistance from her colleagues. The media exaggerated her resistance to Serena. The booing of the media at Indian Hills left Williams with a scar for the rest of her life. From the moment the league invited paying spectators, players have been booed by fans.
No, Caitlin Clark is one of them. She is the sports world’s greatest attraction, walking a fine line between love and hate. Many of her peers hate her out of pure jealousy. Much of the corporate media hates her because of her racial idolatry. And a significant percentage of fans don’t like her for the same reasons as the corporate media.
Clark is a true pioneer.
This weekend, she appeared on “Saturday Night Live.” She visited the news desk and joked with Michael Che. Her appearance was celebrated across social media. But it also raised a warning flag for me.
The moment she adopts the actions of her WNBA peers, her status at the top of the sports world will be diminished. Tiger Woods continues to fascinate people because he remains very different from his peers on the PGA Tour and most other black athletes.
Like Michael Jordan before him, Tiger has had little to do with politics. He never knelt down to the Black Lives Matter trend. He never acted as if his life depended on the vote.
At the end of her SNL appearance, Clark rambled on about Sheryl Swoopes, Cynthia Cooper, Dawn Staley, Lisa Leslie, Maya Moore, and other WNBA legends to whom she is indebted. She only mentioned the names of Black WNBA players. Maybe all her heroes were black women? That’s a possibility. Or maybe she was pandering.
The WNBA is as woke a sports league as any on the planet. Mr. Clark will be under immense pressure to co-sign the false narrative that the WNBA promotes in support of the Democratic Party and the BLM-LGBTQ Alphabet Mafia. She will be asked to pretend that WNBA players are underpaid because of systemic sexism.
Will Clark relent and become the archetypal angry feminist athlete?
She wore a Nike jacket on “Saturday Night Live.” That’s our first clue. Clark’s fame may be short-lived. We’re going to have as much fun as we can and bounce back from the photo moment where she’s kneeling in solidarity with Megan Rapinoe.
