Emerging Tiger Headed For The Big Bucks

ERIC ELLIS

04/23/1997

South-central Los Angeles is not known for its golf enthusiasts. Gang wars, riots and grand-scale urban decay are more the stuff of this seething part of the metropolis. That was until a fortnight ago at Augusta when 21-year-old Californian golf genius Eldrick "Tiger" Woods blitzed the world's best players to become the youngest ever Masters champion.

Now on some of the same street corners where you can score a crack hit for $US10, the biggest threat to the 'hood yesterday seemed less a life snuffed out by heroin than by flying golf balls. "I'm Tiger Woods, I'm Tiger Woods," chorused a foursome of black kids clad smacking a ball as best they could around a park.

"He's kewwwwlll," they said, about as big a compliment you can get from this lot.

Firmly middle class, Woods didn't spring from the ghetto but that doesn't matter to these youngsters, no more than 10, mimicking an advertisement now being run on US television, where Tiger joins a bunch of street kids on a lush course somewhere in Middle America.

Shot in grainy focus with the flavour of MTV, its a departure from the white-bread marketing usually associated with golf, where overweight pros-with-personalities, like Craig Stadler and Mark O'Meara, laud this set of clubs, that ball, those golf shirts.

But this ad is clearly not pitched at the "good ole boy" golfing heartland or wealthy Florida retirees.

Its targeting consumers like these kids in South-Central Los Angeles, or New York's Harlem, as well as the trendy mostly white domains of LA's Melrose Avenue, or Miami's South Beach, where one is more likely to see rollerbladers than putters.

Or Chapel and Oxford Streets for that matter. Indeed anywhere where there is a thriving, energetic youth culture.

Golf is suddenly fashionable and Tiger Woods is a big reason why.

And for marketers, that's good news. Our South-Central heroes all wore something from Nike, the sportswear giant which signed Woods for a $US40 million five-year-deal as he turned pro last September.

It seemed a huge gamble at the time. Now it seems like Nike captured this Tiger on the cheap.

Golf gear makes up less than 1 per cent of Nike's turnover. The company now expects it to double and double again this year and next, as it launches Tiger Woods signature apparel and golf shoes.

Tiger Woods is a cross-over marketing bonanza, cool and articulate in a world of check-panted bores and boors, the black kid that whites can like, a role model for the black ghettoes and a statement that the black middle class has moved from the Cosby Show to arrive in Middle American sensibilities.

And then there is untapped Asia, where golf has a "designer" status that ranks it up there with Chanel, Louis Vuitton and a Mercedes Benz in the regional consumer necessities.Tiger's mother is Thai (his Green Beret father met her on R & R from Vietnam) and you can rest assured Nike, the Planet Hollywood chain and any number of equipment makers will be flogging his Asian credentials for all they are worth, another "emerging Tiger" to rank alongside Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Tiger's success and appeal has put him not only on the cover of the sports media but there he is, beaming out of GQ and Businessweek, neither usually the preserve of golfers, and the latter by virtue of the $US80 million in contracts and endorsements he has already signed BEFORE he won the Masters.

Woods seems set to re-write the book in sports business, which in 1995 was a $US300 billion enterprise in the US, according to a Georgia Institute of Technology study.

Sports stores report a tripling in golf-related paraphernalia since his Masters win, from consumers they've never seen before. CBS, which televised the tournament, reported ratings that only ER can match, again triple golf's usual audience.

The Georgia Tech study calculates that US sport was the 11th largest industry in the country in 1995, supporting $US52.1 billion in wages and salaries and more than 2.3 million jobs.

Despite the obvious attractions, Tiger said that he had "no desire to be king of the endorsement money". But sports businessmen can barely contain the saliva escaping from their collective mouths at Woods' marketing potential.

"In terms of sports marketing, his impact is enormous," said Phil Knights, Nike's chief executive officer. "Its the greatest contribution from this sport and we are very happy with our investment." So are suffering Nike shareholders, who saw their stock jump $US1.50 to $US56.50 the Monday after the Masters, reversing an 18 month downward spiral. "They have obviously picked the most visible icon in the world of golf," Dallas sports marketer Nye Lavalle told the Chicago Tribune recently. "The value to Nike is they will benefit from increasing interest from young kids who hated golf, who found golf boring and an old fogey's sport."

"Nike definitely has a stake in how the industry responds," he said.

The only contemporary model for Woods in endorsement potential is the basketballer Michael Jordan, who is approaching his use-by date.

Jordan earns around $US40 million a year by endorsing Nike, the t-shirt maker Hanes, Chevrolet cars and the sports drink Gatorade among others.

But Sean Brenner, who edits a sports marketing trade magazine, believes Woods has the potential to expand the range of products open to sports personalities, to include credit cards, air travel and food.