Golf: Young, gifted and black: Tiger's talent burning bright: Two African-Americans are poised to make an impact in traditionally white middle-class sports

Not everybody has heard of Tiger Woods. 'Tiger Woods?' Sandy Lyle said.

'I've never played there.' All being well, people will be playing golf by the year 2000 with Tiger woods and irons. When he turns professional Tiger is going to make some agent very happy.

Apart from the fact that he has a name with obvious appeal to a golf club manufacturer, the teenager can play. The other thing, of course, is that he is black and, in a predominantly white collar, white man's game this makes him even more attractive to the marketing world.

It has been suggested in America, where the vast majority of blacks at a golf and country club will be there as caddies rather than members, that the lack of a role model is the inhibiting factor. 'That's absolute rubbish,' Woods said. 'In the inner cities black people just don't have the opportunity to play golf. It's hard enough for a poor white but blacks don't have a chance.'

Woods, though, seems destined to be a role model and he and his father, Earl, have been spreading the gospel, giving clinics in major cities.

'Look,' Earl Woods said. 'There are two colours in America. White and not white. Tiger has been taught the realities of race since he was a tiny kid.

He's been raised to be proud of who he is.'

A handful of black professional golfers have made the grade on the US Tour, notably Lee Elder, Jim Thorpe and Calvin Peete and they did not have the advantages of formal junior competitions and college golf scholarships which Woods has enjoyed. Earlier this year Jack Nicklaus, asked about the lack of black Americans in professional golf (apart from the Fijian, Vijay Singh, there are no black players on the European Tour) replied: 'Blacks gravitate to basketball over golf, because they have different muscles from whites.' A Canadian newspaper, who reported his remarks, implied he was a racist. The Golden Bear responded by pointing out that, at the request of the late Arthur Ashe, he declined to play in South Africa and that minorities were welcome at his own club, Muirfield Village in Columbus, Ohio.

The prodigy's mother, Kultida, a Thai, named him Eldrick. Earl, who met his wife in Bangkok, gave him the nickname Tiger as a tribute to Nguyen Phong, a South Vietnamese infantry officer who was addressed as Tiger. He went missing in action. Earl retired as a lieutenant colonel after 20 years in the army, including two stints in Vietnam with the Green Berets. Earl was introduced to golf on a public course in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. He vowed that if he had another child he or she would be introduced to golf. At the age of six months Tiger had a putter in his hands; by the time he was three he had broken 50 for nine holes; by the age of five he had appeared on the television show That's Incredible; at eight he was club champion of the nine-hole Heartwell Golf Park near Los Angeles.

After winning countless age group events in California he became the first player to win the US Junior Amateur Championship twice and this year he won it a third time for good measure. Tiger followed that by becoming the first black player to win the US Amateur Championship, staging a magnificent recovery after his cause appeared to be lost. His reward is that he will play in the Masters at Augusta next April and the Open Championship at St Andrews in July. He will almost certainly also play in Wales, representing the United States in the Walker Cup at Royal Porthcawl.

When Tiger, who will be 19 in December, played in the Johnnie Walker Asian Classic in Phuket, Thailand, last February he was paired with Bernhard Langer in the first two rounds. 'He's got a great talent,' the German said.

'He's got an old head on young shoulders. The only problem is that sometimes he's way off line with his long game but he's got a superb short game. He's probably another Phil Mickelson.'

Woods was awarded a golf scholarship to Stanford University in California this year and he does not intend to turn professional for four years.

'There's more to life than golf,' Tiger said. 'I've always had to finish my homework before playing.' His bedside reading is a book not on golf but on calculus. Tiger is tall, 6ft 1in, slim, quietly spoken, similar, in fact, to a young Arthur Ashe. The earthquake in Los Angeles at the beginning of the year broke a water pipe at his home and woke him up. 'I hate earthquakes,' he said, 'especially when they wake me up. It gets me kind of irritated.'

The temptation for Tiger to turn professional now is immense. He has already been offered dollars 5m (pounds 3.1m) and there are those who believe that he should take the money and run. The argument is that he will not find it easy to make money in the professional game and that, spectacular amateur career or not, he is not as good as Phil Mickelson, who also won the US Amateur Championship and is regarded in America as the next home banker. But Earl Woods says: 'Quality education, not golf, is the number one priority in our house.'

Meanwhile, the pressure is on Tiger to make the grade, academically and on the golf course where he will be required to help Stanford in the inter-collegiate championship. Three years ago Tiger was the warm-up act for a clinic given by Jack Nicklaus at the Bel Air Country Club in Los Angeles.

The two had never met. When Woods finished Nicklaus tapped him on the shoulder. 'Nice swing,' he said. 'When I grow up I want to have a swing as pretty as yours.'

(Photograph omitted)