How To Spot A Leader

Filed in archive Golf Wanderings on March 12, 2008

The governor of New York State has been caught with his pants down, metaphorically speaking.

In fact, he had his pants down practically speaking a number of times, according to the FBI when it uncovered his involvement as a client in a high-priced prostitution ring.



Eliot Spitzer - husband and father of three - is purported to have spent as much as 80 thousand dollars on some very expensive bedroom talent.

The man won office by campaigning against corruption and sleaze, a sure-fire way to get votes.

But we've seen it all before - that all too common failure of leadership. Once upon a time, it was contained within the profession of politics.

Alas, now we can find it in the domain of sports, too.

I covered global sports for a decade for Newsworld International and I would always tell people that the reason sports is such a binding and necessary element in human society is because it is so simple and clear to comprehend; there are defined winners and defined losers.

There is no "grey" as there is in the abortion issue, gay marriage issue, the war in Iraq, public health care in the United States, child pornography, Islam versus Christianity, etc.

Sports is like confession in the Roman Catholic Church; it washes things clean. It provides stability and it makes us feel that the world is not really spinning madly off into space, that heroes DO exist.

But we know that's not true, don't we? Just look at Olympic sports, professional baseball, international cycling - sports heroes are unmasked on a regular basis.

How refreshing, how oxygenating it is to discover that, in golf, there are still at least two figures who maintain their heroic stature.

While John Daly parties with rowdies at the PODS Championship, contributing nothing to the game or to society but getting a nice, fuzzy feeling from being "one of the boys", Ernie Els and Tiger Woods work hard to make life better for those who are under-privileged.

I have to thank Golf Digest; their November issue contained an article on a South African golfer of color who fought against discrimination in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s.

John Barton, who authored the story, writes about South Africa's efforts today to rid itself of its apartheid past in the game of golf. He writes about Ernie Els who contributes time, money and plenty of effort to the Ernie Els and Fancourt Foundation.
This foundation offers under-privileged black South African kids the chance to learn golf at a world-class facility that Els helps to finance and visits four times a year in person. The kids live at the academy and go to school nearby.

That chance to learn golf could be a ticket to self-discovery.

Tiger Woods has his Tiger Woods Foundation which endeavors to do the same thing: offer under-privileged kids the opportunity to learn a game while developing as human beings capable of leading and worthy to lead.

Last year, according to Barton's fine piece, teams from the two foundations played in the inaugural Friendship Cup in Chicago. You can clearly sense the spirit behind this event.

Els put it succinctly- and I doubt that Tiger would change a word - when he said "Golf changed my life and now I'm in a very good place. I wanted to give that dream to other people."

What marks Ernie Els, who revealed this past week that his own five year old son has autism, and Tiger Woods as special is not their talent. It is their willingness to leverage that talent for leadership in a way that empowers lives.

If Eliot Spitzer had given 10 thousand of those 80 thousand dollars he spent banging call girls to the YM/YWCA for youth programs, for example, he might not be such a waste of molecules.

And he might be recalled one day as a man who, for a moment or two, was a leader.