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Golf's most intriguing sideshow in the last month has been the Kelly Tilghman affair. She's the anchor for tournament coverage on the Golf Channel and is seen and heard here regularly on Sky broadcasts of PGA Tour events, usually in tandem with Nick Faldo.
During the Hawaiian Open two weeks ago, the two were discussing how other players could end Tiger Woods' dominance of the game. Tilghman, in a light-hearted conversation, suggested players should lynch him in a back alley.
For those five words, she incurred the wrath of African-American activists and was suspended from her job for two weeks without pay.
The word lynch is one not used in polite company in the United States. That's because of the appalling treatment of African Americans at the hands of white vigilante mobs, especially in the south, from the middle of the 19th century until the mid-1960s. It took the civil rights movement to end the dreadful practice completely but it's been reported that 3437 African Americans died at the hands of lynch mobs between 1880 and 1951.
Why Tilghman, university-educated and a former professional golfer, used this sensitive word, we'll never know. But having been a broadcaster in live, ad-lib situations most of my working life, I can understand how sometimes things slip out that shouldn't.
The real wonder is that such a comment, which was barely audible in the discussion with Faldo anyway and which was broadcast on a minority-audience niche channel, should have had such dire consequences. (Her humiliation has been far more severe than that bestowed on the perpetrator of the infamous cheeky darky comment in this country.)
It didn't stop there. In a follow-up to the controversy, an editor of the respected Golfweek magazine ran a picture of a noose on the cover. Editor Dave Seanor was fired but made some pertinent parting shots about golf and race as he was shown the exit.
"There are very few people of colour in the executive suites of the PGA Tour or the USGA. This is a situation where there needs to be more dialogue and when you get more dialogue, people don't want to hear it," he told Associated Press.
Woods himself excused Tilghman's comments. He's known her as a member of the media for most of his professional career and said he regarded her as a friend.
But although Woods is often regarded as a black player, it's well known his ethnicity is half Asian, through his Thai mother. However his explosion on the sporting world at the 1997 Masters was supposed to be the seminal moment after which there would be a flood of African American golfers on the tours of the world.
That has just not happened. There are fewer black players in the upper echelons of the game now than there were in the days of Lee Elder and Jim Thorpe in the 1970s and 80s. There are no reports of any likely prospects either.
American golf is highly sensitive to matters of race. Those who run the game say they want the sport to be totally inclusive. The reality is they're struggling to make a meaningful impact.
In this country, where Maori have played a hugely significant role in the game for more than 100 years, we struggle to comprehend just why Tilghman's comment should have caused such a furore. Maybe her enforced holiday, and the opprobrium heaped upon her, is actually more to do with the guilt American golf is increasingly feeling about its essential white exclusivity, a state it seems unable to change.
