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      in Golf

      No Longer a ‘Tigress,’ Amari Avery Will Try to Make Augusta Roar

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      Avery, 17, and her dad once drew attention for their Tiger-and-Earl Woods aspirations. They hope to make a different sort of splash at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.It’s been eight years since Amari Avery made her first “splash” — her word — in golf. A 2013 Netflix documentary on elite grade school golfers introduced an 8-year-old Avery cruising her Riverside, Calif., street on her bike, pink handlebar streamers blowing in the wind, as Notorious B.I.G.’s “Going Back to Cali” blared in the background.What “The Short Game” showed came to define the perception of Avery on the junior golf circuit. Much of the documentary centered on how her dad, Andre, had appointed her “Tigress” after she won a junior world championship at 6 years old and was trying to navigate the expensive territory of junior golf by following Earl Woods’s handling of Tiger. Amari’s story arc in the film ends with both her and her father in tears after a disappointing finish at the United States Kids Golf World Championship.Now 17, Amari Avery will roll down Magnolia Lane with the chance to make a different splash at golf’s most recognizable venue.“It’s definitely going to be slightly overwhelming,” she said of walking out onto the course at Augusta National, where she is one of 85 invitees to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. “But I think that me just being there could be inspiring for girls like me. I’m going to be out there to play for myself and just show people that people like me can be out there, we can be at that high level and play.”That venue’s history with both African-Americans and women — an African-American man did not play in the Masters Tournament until 1975 and the club did not add its first two female members, the former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and the financier Darla Moore, until 2012 — is not lost on Avery. The daughter of an African-American father and a Filipino mother, she is one of a scant few Black female golfers on either the amateur or professional levels of the sport.“I didn’t think that I would see any woman playing competitive golf at Augusta National,” said Renee Powell, who in 1967 became just the second Black woman to join the L.P.G.A. Tour. “Let alone a Black woman.”Powell never had the opportunity to play Augusta National and emailed its chairman, Fred Ridley, to commend him for hosting the women’s amateur event, first played in 2019. As the captain of the United States team for this year’s Junior Solheim Cup — which pits the 12 top young amateurs in the United States against their European counterpoints — Powell monitors the top junior women’s players and occasionally checks in with Andre to keep tabs on Amari’s development.“She seems to be the real deal,” Powell said.Amari Avery and fellow golfer Bailey Davis posed together during a practice round at the Houston’s Mack Champ Invitational in mid-March. “I’m going to be out there to play for myself and just show people that people like me can be out there, we can be at that high level and play.”Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesThis is just the second edition of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, following the event’s cancellation last April in the earliest months of the coronavirus pandemic. But even Avery’s invite does not guarantee that she will spend much time on the hallowed course. She’ll play a practice round there early in the week but because the tournament’s first two rounds are held at the nearby Champions Retreat, Avery will need to make the cut to play on the course where her idol, Tiger Woods, has made so much history.“I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like getting to play Augusta National,” Avery said in her typically deliberate and measured way. The final round of the amateur tournament will be played in front of a limited number of patrons, just like this year’s Masters, and broadcast by NBC Sports. “Obviously being the only Black person there, hopefully I can do something out there and make some upsets, some roars.”She’s ready to make a mark on golf on her own terms, a far cry from the reputation the Averys earned in the Netflix documentary, that of a helicopter dad and his prodigy, driven by pressure to win rather than fun.“We want to speak it into existence,” Andre cut in. “We’re going to play Augusta in the tourney. That’s going to happen.”As father and daughter grew together, Andre gave up on the “Tigress” nickname, stopped trying to impose elements of Tiger’s swing onto Amari and yielded to a coach’s instruction. Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesTo get to this point, Amari chased Woods’s ghost around California’s junior golf circuit and her own household. Andre tried to follow Earl Woods’s book “Training a Tiger” to the letter, compelled in part because Amari and Tiger share the same birthdays, were born in the same county, have similar mixed-race backgrounds, made holes-in-one on the same course, and both won junior world championships around the same age. Andre even once entered her into a junior tournament as “Tigress Avery.” He says it was a joke after being egged on by a friend and he quickly chided himself when there was confusion in scoring over her name.But Amari has not faded against the comparisons even as a Tiger-inspired wave of young golfers failed to crest. She won the prestigious 2019 California Women’s Amateur Championship. In her debut at the U.S. Women’s Amateur, she made it out of the cutthroat stroke play portion of the week and then advanced to the round of 32 in match play. She has won on the Cactus Tour, a women’s mini circuit with fields full of professionals. Last August, she verbally committed to join the powerhouse women’s golf program at the University of Southern California in 2022.The Averys credit her mother, Maria, as the one who makes the family golf pursuit possible, keeping an eye on the pressures and costs and serving as the final judge of when to pull the plug if either mounts. Andre can remotely work as an information technology consultant while on the road with Amari and Alona, 14, also a highly rated junior golfer. Of her four siblings, Amari is closest to Alona, who was on the bag for Amari’s debut U.S. Women’s Amateur last summer when big sis posted a calamitous 40 on the front-nine of her opening round, but steadied herself to rally for the second-best score of the second round to easily make the match play bracket.Of her four siblings, Amari, right, said she is closest to Alona, 14, who was on the bag for Amari’s debut U.S. Women’s Amateur last summer.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesTo balance her own drive against the disappointments that can come during a tough round, Amari worked with Jay Brunza, a psychologist whom she credited with steadying her mental approach ahead of last year’s women’s amateur. “He was saying, ‘Stay stable out there. Just try to hit fairways and greens,” Amari recalled. “He tells me a whole bunch of different things that help out. You can go out there and shoot a 40 and the next nine a 33 and you’re not out of it.”It helps that Brunza worked with teenage Tiger Woods, caddying for him during all three of Woods’s men’s amateur titles.Andre will be on the bag for Amari at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, hoping to make a different impression than when he cursed during arguments with Amari when she was 8, and was depicted as the “mean parent,” a portrayal he admits was fair.“It’s not me wanting to caddie because I want the spotlight,” Andre said. “It’s all the stuff we’ve gone through. Now it comes full circle. I think that’s the best way for us, with her going off to school next in a few months for us to play in this thing together.”“Training a Tiger” was published in 1997, well before the full impact and collateral costs of Earl Woods’s approach on his son could have been known. But for a nonwhite parent-prodigy team navigating junior golf, the Woodses’ account was the primary road map available to the Averys.Still, Andre said he’s learned to grow along with Amari. He’s given up on the “Tigress” nickname, stopped trying to impose elements of Tiger’s swing onto Amari and yielded to a coach’s instruction. Before Amari’s 2019 California Women’s Amateur title, the team went through a revolving door of swing coaches, so many that father and daughter lost count.Amari and Andre shared a laugh on the course.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York Times“We were just kind of bouncing around trying to find that one key thing that will turn things around instead of just trusting a process and letting it handle itself,” she said. “I had just come to the understanding that things aren’t going to come fast all the time.”Amari has learned to push back on her father, too. “When we’re out there on the course and I’m struggling or I’m working on something and he’s trying to constantly tell me to do something, I’m like, ‘Dad, get off. I just want to do it myself.’”Both Averys have confidence that she could be a potential superstar on the L.P.G.A. Tour, and has the Tiger trifecta: entertaining golf, winning golf, and a marketable persona. Andre will still admit to his belief in a bond with the Woodses. “We’re so tied to that Tiger Woods-Earl Woods thing,” he said. “There is a connection, I truly believe. It is divine.”As Amari has grown, she’s improved her approach to golf and managing the relationship with her most ardent fan. Whatever stigma Andre may carry, he is a parent who has committed substantial time and money for instruction and travel to keep Amari progressing in the game.Those required resources are still a massive challenge to diversifying the game. The Averys are often the only Black family at high profile amateur events, just as they were on the junior circuit, just as Earl and Tiger Woods were.“I just don’t feel like there’s much of a push for them to be out here,” Amari said, adding, “that’s kind of what I want to bring into the game a little bit, influence some of these kids that look like me, like ‘Hey you can be out here. You can make a splash out here.’”She has been watching video from the 2019 Augusta National Women’s Amateur and traveled to Augusta for the first time in her life in early March to play the Champions Retreat course. Just days before she left, Andre discovered in conversation with the father of Zoe Campos, who finished in a tie for fifth in 2019, that Champions Retreat was actually a 27-hole facility. He needed to figure out the 18-hole routing on which they would play the event. There was scouting work to do in the final month.Amari Avery won the Mack Champ Invitational in the lead-up to playing the Augusta tournament. She’s committed to join the U.S.C. golf team in 2022.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesLike all teenage athletes during the coronavirus pandemic, Amari’s schedule and prep work has been abnormal. She said it’s been slow since a quick run of high-profile amateur events last summer. This year she made a few starts on the Cactus Tour, showing well and finishing runner-up in a February field with both pros and amateurs. In late March, she went to Houston and cruised to a win in the inaugural Mack Champ Invitational, an event for junior golfers from diverse backgrounds started by Cameron Champ, one of the few Black players on the PGA Tour.The Averys met Lee Elder, the first Black man to play in the Masters and an honorary starter for this year’s tournament, but they have never met Woods. Amari dreamed of one day meeting — and maybe beating — him, figuring a chance meeting at Augusta would probably be the closest she was going to get.Then when she first learned of his February car accident, she had what she termed a “Kobe moment” and feared the worst. “I don’t even know if I could keep playing golf,” she said, considering the worst case scenario on the day of his accident. “He’s been the main guy that’s driven my entire career,” she added. “I’ve been compared to Tiger and I kind of want him to see my career grow and see it progress.”A visit to Augusta National is a significant milepost in that progression, but the Averys have distinct memories and associations with the course and the Masters, especially when it comes to Woods’s history there. Andre has imparted lots of it via YouTube clips, but Amari’s first real opportunity to closely watch Woods dominate in real time was during his historic 2019 win.The Augusta National Women’s Amateur gives her a chance to make history of her own at the club. More

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      in Golf

      A Black Architect Is Transforming the Landscape of Golf

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      Brandon Johnson developed a love of golf and course design at an early age. He has mastered a field that has historically lacked diversity.Brandon Johnson picked up his first golf club at age 12 and knew right away that he was hooked on the sport. By high school, he recalls, he wanted a career as a golf course architect.Today, 35 years later, he is the senior golf course architect and a vice president for Arnold Palmer Design Company after a stint at First Tee, a nonprofit that teaches children life skills through golf.Although golf consumed him at an early age, he grew up in Charlotte, N.C., in a family where music and art were intertwined. He was drawn to the cello, the drums and the piano early in life and was inspired to sketch and draw by his sister, whom he described as the artist in the family. Golf course design captured his attention in part because of a coffee-table book his parents bought him and seeing the work of the golf course designer Pete Dye on PGA Tour telecasts.Brandon Johnson has been involved in the design of 30 courses all over the world, many of which are in developments with golf homes.He was accepted to North Carolina State University, where he majored in landscape architecture — with a minor in music — and later went on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where, he said, he “fell in love with large-scale master planning,” which is, after all, what being a golf course architect entails.In a field that has historically lacked diversity, Mr. Johnson stands out. “There have definitely been other Black golf architects who broke down the barriers for me, but I’m still an exception to the norm,” he said.“I was also the only Black player when I played competitively in high school.”Mr. Johnson said that he has been inspired by Black golf course architects such as Leslie “Les” Clayton, whom he worked with when he was at First Tee, and Joseph Bartholomew, who was introduced to golf when he caddied at a segregated private club and subsequently went on to have a successful career as a designer. Mr. Bartholomew was barred from playing on the very courses he designed because of segregation laws.Mr. Johnson has held his current position for almost a decade and has been involved in the design of 30 courses all over the world, many of which are in developments with golf homes.In the earlier years of golf communities, the sport was an amenity to the real estate, Mr. Johnson said, but now, the course matters as much as and even more than the homes. “A great golf course associated with a community increases the value of the properties in that community,” he said.The following interview has been edited and condensed.What does a golf course architect actually do?We prepare the game board for golf. We take a raw piece of land and figure out creative ways that the game can be played out in that topography. Any one course takes between three to five years from the design phase to when it’s actually completed. I’m involved every step of the way and work with a team of engineers; agronomists, who study the soil; landscape architects; golf course builders; and golf course shapers, who are experts at sculpting the land to my design concepts.Practicing golf course architecture is a combination of balancing the technical and artistic sides of the job.Mr. Johnson, center, at work on a site.Do you have a philosophy when designing courses?Yes. My philosophy is to design courses that are fun and engaging and interesting strategically for players.Given that you have a minor in music, do you ever listen to music when you design?Absolutely. It’s jazz when I am trying to solve a really tough problem and Romantic-era classical other times, like Brahms and Beethoven.Why do you think that there so few golf players and architects who are Black? Is that changing at all?In my opinion, it’s a combination of interconnected and sometimes complex issues and circumstances that become one big deterrent for entry and participation into the game and its supporting industry: the country’s segregated racial history and golf’s historical participation in that, awareness, access (equipment, facilities, instruction, peer playing companions), money, education, time, lack of introductions to the game, just to name a few.Change is taking place. There are numerous programs both national and local that are focused on growing participation and access to the game such as First Tee, Bridging the Gap, Black Girls Golf. On the competitive player development level, the United Golfers Association and the Advocates Professional Golf Association are making huge strides in developing the next generation of elite professional golfers. All of these programs are focused on reaching African-Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans and underrepresented groups in hopes of making the game much more inclusive and diverse.Many of the courses you design are in developments or resorts where people can buy golf homes. How does the design of a course interplay with these residences?In an ideal setting, they coexist seamlessly by having the golf course be spread over the prime pieces of land, whether that’s water features such as streams, ponds or the ocean, or terrain with rolling hills where you get views. The homes are on the periphery of these properties with generous setbacks away from the course.The 11th hole of the Commander Course.Matthew MajkaBut what you don’t want is an 18-hole course with homes jammed on either side of it, which was often the case in the ’80s and ’90s when many communities were being built. Living in a golf community is about having space and breathing room from other homes and the course.In your experience, how have golf course communities changed over the last 10 years?Communities used to be only about the golf. Today, they have a diversity of amenities such as resort-style pools, dog parks, tennis courts, bocce courts, spas, top-of-the-line gyms, great restaurants, horseback riding and more.New communities are more multifaceted, and older ones are renovating.These changes are broadening the demographic of the residents, who used to be mostly retirees. You see nongolfers and a lot more younger people who aren’t just buying second homes but moving in full time with their families. They want to raise their children there.Are golf communities making a shift to be more sustainable?Sustainability matters today more than it did ever before. Golf courses now have features that promote water conservation and design elements that touch the natural land as little as possible. Some communities even create new ecosystems. In Lakewood National Golf Club, in Sarasota, Fla., for example, I designed two golf courses. My team and I started with a cleared and barren flat landscape and transformed it into a setting with lakes and rolling topography. We added tons of vegetation such as pines, oaks, red maples, magnolias and native palms. Today, the property is a wildlife-rich ecosystem with a variety of birds, fish, alligators, and the occasional wild boar and deer.Some golf homeowners want a property right next to the course while others prefer homes that are farther away. In your opinion, what are the drawbacks and benefits of each?Being near a course means you get great views and a backyard that is well maintained with natural landscape. The people watching is also a plus. But you might get the occasional golf ball in your yard from other players. There’s a misperception that you lack privacy if your home is too close to a course, but in a well-planned community that shouldn’t be an issue because there is a vast amount of open space.If your house is further away from a course, you might be more secluded, but, especially in large communities, the course won’t be as accessible.One setting isn’t more prestigious than the other. It boils down to personal preference.In your opinion, what are the next emerging golf destinations?Asia for sure. India, for example, has a long history with the game, but the golf courses there are still developing all over the country. It’s on my wish list to work on a course there.Vietnam and Thailand are also very up and coming with new courses in upscale resorts with real estate.In Africa, Morocco, Kenya and Nigeria have budding golf markets, and our company has seen interest in new courses from these countries. More

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      in Football

      Black N.F.L. Players Want New Advocate in Concussion Settlement

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      Players said the lawyer for the N.F.L. retiree class knew that race-based criteria were used to deny Black players’ dementia claims. A review of eight such rejections seems to support their argument.Two retired N.F.L. players who have filed dementia-related claims in the N.F.L. concussion settlement, and have accused the league of discriminating against Black players, want their own representative to attend a mediation aimed at addressing the use of race-based benchmarks to determine eligibility for payouts.Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport argued in a lawsuit that the separate scoring curves — one for Black athletes, another for white players — used by neuropsychologists to evaluate dementia-related claims “explicitly and deliberately” discriminated against hundreds if not thousands of Black players. But last week, Judge Anita B. Brody of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania dismissed their lawsuit and ordered a mediator to address her concerns about the practice.The players are seeking a new representative because they said Christopher Seeger, the lawyer for more than 20,000 former players in the class action settlement, knew about the abuse of race-based benchmarks as early as 2018 and did not address the issue.“It is not realistic to expect that concerns about race-norming will be addressed effectively by parties who do not view the current use of race-norming as a problem,” Henry and Davenport’s lawyer wrote in their request.The players say that Black former players may have had their claims denied because the benchmarks used to assess rates of cognitive decline deliberately make it harder for them to receive payouts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, an accusation Seeger denied in a phone interview on Tuesday with The New York Times.Seeger said he was aware of a handful of objections to race-norming in the past few years. He said he intervened in at least one case and that the player received a $1.5 million payout as a result. However, “there has not been a systemic attempt to mistreat Black players in the settlement,” he said.To remove any ambiguity, though, Seeger said he would fight to have race-norming entirely stripped from the settlement.“I need the players to believe in me, I need them to believe in the settlement and I need them to believe they are treated fairly,” he said.Suspicions remain. As the representative for all 20,000 players in the settlement, Seeger signed off on the use of race-based benchmarks in 2014, when the settlement was being approved. The N.F.L. and Seeger note that the use of race norms is not mandatory, though Seeger acknowledged that some doctors charged with evaluating players may be under the misguided perception that it is.Kevin Henry, a longtime defensive end for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is one of two Black players who have petitioned for a new representative for retired players in the N.F.L.’s landmark concussions settlement.Matthew Odom for The New York TimesThe New York Times reviewed the confidential records of eight Black former players whose claims of dementia were denied. In the cases, which date to 2018, diagnoses made without regard to race showed significant enough decline in function for the players to be eligible for payouts.But a second doctor tossed out those diagnoses because the initial doctors had not used the race norms developed by Dr. Robert Heaton that have been standard in settlement claims.“The NFL guidelines are very specific in requiring the use of the Heaton norms for several tests,” an appeals doctor wrote in denying a dementia diagnosis for a player whose career spanned the 1990s and 2000s. To illustrate the point, the doctor listed the player’s test scores after race-based benchmarks were applied to show there was no “evidence of significant cognitive decline.”Lawyers who represent dozens of Black former players said that Black players with similar test scores as white players have been disqualified after racial benchmarks were used, a violation of their civil rights.“Unlike many civil rights cases, the use of Heaton’s race-based norms is discriminatory on its face,” Justin Wyatt, a lawyer for more than 100 players, wrote in a confidential filing in 2019 after one of his clients had his dementia diagnosis overturned. “By definition, Heaton’s race based norms have the effect of treating blacks differently than whites.”It is unclear how many Black players may have been misdiagnosed or had their diagnoses overturned. Cyril Smith, a lawyer for Henry and Davenport, claimed that white players are getting their dementia claims approved at two to three times the rate of Black players.But Smith was unable to substantiate his claim because, he said, Seeger and the N.F.L. have not shared any data on the approval rates of dementia claims by white and Black players.Seeger said this week that he will release that data once his investigation into the use of racial benchmarks in the settlement is completed in the coming weeks and that any claim that was “improperly affected by race-norming” will be reviewed.Smith and Wyatt said the only way to ensure that Black players’ claims have not been mishandled is to have every one of their neuropsychological exams rescored without the use of racial benchmarks. More than 7,000 former players took free neuropsychological and neurological exams offered in the settlement. Some of them were told they did not have dementia and may be unaware of how their exams were scored.It is unclear whether the N.F.L. will approve having every player’s exams rescored because the payouts that could result would be worth potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars each. More than $800 million in claims have already been approved for a range of neurological and cognitive diseases, and Seeger expects that amount to top $1 billion.The N.F.L. said in a statement that there is “no merit to the claim of discrimination,” citing the use of demographic adjustments as common practice in such examinations. It contended that the number of players potentially affected by the use of race-based benchmarks is a fraction of what has been alleged because, among other reasons, “many claims were denied for reasons that have nothing to do with the norms and any rescoring would have no impact on those denials.”The league added: “The N.F.L. nevertheless is committed to helping find alternative testing techniques that will lead to diagnostic accuracy without relying on race-based norms.”To assess cases of dementia, doctors must estimate what a person’s cognitive skills were years ago and compare them to the patient’s current condition. In theory, race-norms are designed to help doctors approximate the cognitive skills of Black and white people in the past.But using race to estimate one’s cognition is fraught because it does not account for factors like a person’s health, education or economic background. Many people — such as those who come from biracial families — do not fit neatly into a single racial category. N.F.L. players are also a unique group because almost all have attended at least three years of university. Comparing players to larger pools of white and Black Americans could be misleading, experts said.“Among the scientific community, it is now widely recognized that race/ethnicity represents a crude proxy for lifelong social experiences, and biologically based racial differences in I.Q. have been debunked,” Dr. Katherine Possin, of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California San Francisco, wrote in the journal JAMA Neurology in December. “Even with the best norms, the diagnosis of cognitive disorders should not be decided based on a plug-and-play formula of cognitive test scores.”The debate over the use of race norms is not unique to the N.F.L. settlement. In the past, their use has led, intentionally or not, Black patients being denied treatment for many medical conditions, Darshali Vyas, Leo Eisenstein and David Jones wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in August.The doctors said that problems with race-norming also exist in the criminal justice system, where it is used to help determine police intervention in communities and prison sentences. Some members of Congress want to eliminate algorithms that discriminate against women and people of color by deciding everything from the type of advertisements people see online to how their applications for jobs, credit cards and other products are treated.“Prior forms of racial discrimination based on human biases are now being embedded into algorithms that appear to be race-neutral but aren’t because they are based on data and racial profiling that went on in the past,” said Dorothy Roberts, a professor of Africana Studies, law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the use algorithms. “Technology can be used to promote equality or perpetuate inequality. It depends on who’s in control of it and what data they are putting into the algorithms.” More

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      in Football

      NFL's Concussion Settlement Will Look at Racial Bias in Payouts

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.F.L. Asked to Address Race-Based Evaluations in Concussion SettlementMediation in the case could force a reopening of hundreds of denied dementia claims from Black players if race-based evaluation benchmarks are thrown out.Najeh Davenport is one of two retired N.F.L. players who brought suits alleging that the race-based benchmarks for evaluating dementia claims in the league’s concussions settlement were discriminatory.Credit…Jeffery Salter for The New York TimesMarch 9, 2021Updated 8:08 p.m. ETThe judge overseeing the landmark N.F.L. concussion settlement ordered a mediator to look into concerns about the league’s use of separate scoring curves — one for Black athletes, another for white players — used by doctors to evaluate dementia-related claims that retired players say “explicitly and deliberately” discriminated against hundreds if not thousands of Black players.The mediation between the N.F.L. and the lawyers representing the 20,000 or so retired players covered in the settlement comes after two retired Black players, Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport, filed a civil rights suit and a suit against the settlement in August that called for an end to the practice of race-normed benchmarks to assess their claims of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Both cases were dismissed but lawyers for the two players are planning to appeal.Their allegation of systematic discrimination shined a harsh light on the settlement reached in 2015. The payouts from the settlement have since been plagued by delays, predatory lenders, accusations of fraud and a lack of transparency. Criticisms of the race-based evaluation policies come at a critical time for the N.F.L., as it seeks to address racial inequity and social concerns raised by Black players, who make up about 70 percent of active players on the league’s rosters.After the suits were filed, four members of Congress requested data from the N.F.L. to determine if Black players were being discriminated against. (The N.F.L. declined to share.) Last month, an ABC News report included correspondence between doctors hired to evaluate retired players in which the neuropsychologists raised concerns that race-norming discriminated against Black players. This month, more than a dozen wives of Black retired N.F.L. players sent the judge a petition with nearly 50,000 signatures calling for an end to race-norming.For now, the mediation keeps their complaints alive.The judge overseeing the settlement, Anita B. Brody of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, dismissed the lawsuits because they were an “improper collateral attack” on the settlement. Brody expressed concern about the race-based benchmarks the league’s doctors use, but provided no specifics to guide the mediator, who must “address the concerns relating to the race-norming issue.”A magistrate judge will serve as mediator between the N.F.L. and Christopher Seeger, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs who represents the entire class of 20,000 or so retired players. There is no timeline for the sides to reach any agreement.Lawyers for Henry and Davenport, as well as the wives of former players, expressed doubt that Seeger will fairly represent Black players’ interests in the mediation. The N.F.L. and Seeger, they said, introduced the use of race-norming into the settlement agreement in 2017 and have no incentive to admit now that it is flawed.“We are deeply concerned that the Court’s proposed solution is to order the very parties who created this discriminatory system to negotiate a fix,” said Cyril Smith, a lawyer for Henry and Davenport. “The class of Black former players whom we represent must have a seat at the table and a transparent process, so that we are not back in the same place four years from now dealing with another fatally flawed settlement.”Christopher Seeger, left, is the lead attorney for about 20,000 former N.F.L. players who reached a settlement with the league over concussions. Some players are now questioning whether he can advocate on behalf of Black players.Credit…Matt Rourke/Associated PressAmy Lewis, whose husband, Ken Jenkins, played in the N.F.L., was equally skeptical. Leaving the N.F.L. and Seeger to work out an agreement is “giving the fox another chance to guard the hen house,” she said in a letter to Judge Brody sent on behalf of more than a dozen other wives of N.F.L. players. “How can any of us have any faith that the violating parties are not going to, once again, bury this and deny civil rights to our husbands?”Lewis said the group would ask the Department of Justice and Congress to launch an investigation into “civil rights violations and possible collusion” between the N.F.L. and Seeger.In a statement, Seeger said he has “not seen any evidence of racial bias in the settlement program,” but “continues to review claims to determine if any claim was inappropriately denied as a result of application of these adjustments.”But he said that race-based demographic adjustments should be scrapped and players who had their claims denied because of race-norming should have their tests scored again without the race-based adjustments if there was evidence of discrimination.“This means eliminated and gone from the settlement,” Seeger said in a statement. Some lawyers remain skeptical that Seeger, who previously denied the existence of any discrimination, will push the N.F.L. hard enough to re-evaluate the scores of the thousands of Black players who have been tested and may not even know why they were excluded, a process that could lead to hundreds of players eventually qualifying for payments each potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.“It’s not hard to do, but it could be expensive for the N.F.L.,” said Justin Wyatt, who represents more than 100 retired players in the settlement. “We need to search for where people have been discriminated against, and that means rescoring every African-American player. It’s incumbent on us to make sure this process is discrimination-free.”Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and two members of the House asked the N.F.L. for data on race-norming, said, “The league has failed to produce a shred of scientific evidence supporting the absurd claim that using this race-based formula somehow helps Black former players, instead of unfairly preventing them from getting benefits.”He added: “The N.F.L. is out of excuses — it needs to drop this racist formula immediately.”Thus far, the N.F.L. has paid more than $765 million to 1,189 players with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive and neurological diseases. However, far more players have had their claims denied, audited or withdrawn, including about 70 percent of the claims for dementia.In a statement, the N.F.L. said it was pleased with the judge’s decision to dismiss the cases and looked forward to working with the mediator, Magistrate Judge David R. Strawbridge, “to address the Court’s concerns.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Irv Cross, First Black Network TV Sports Analyst, Dies at 81

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIrv Cross, First Black Network TV Sports Analyst, Dies at 81After playing defensive back in the N.F.L., he made history when he joined CBS Sports’ pregame show, “The NFL Today.”Irv Cross in 1985. He had a 15-year run as an analyst on “The NFL Today.”Credit…George Rose/Getty ImagesMarch 1, 2021Updated 7:48 p.m. ETIrv Cross, a Pro Bowl defensive back with two N.F.L. teams who later made history as the first Black full-time television analyst for a network television sports show, died on Sunday in a hospice in North Oaks, Minn. He was 81.The cause was ischemic cardiomyopathy, a heart disease, said his wife, Liz Cross. He also had dementia, which he believed had been caused by concussions he endured in his playing days. He had arranged to donate his brain to the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center.By 1975, after nine seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams and four years as a game analyst for CBS Sports, the network hired Mr. Cross to join the cast of its pregame show, “The NFL Today,” beginning a 15-year run as a high-profile commentator. He, Brent Musburger and Phyllis George — and, starting a year later, the betting maven Jimmy Snyder, who was known as the Greek — previewed and analyzed the day’s coming games and gave half-time scores.The cast was unlike others in N.F.L. television programming, with Mr. Cross in a job that no other Black sports journalist had held before, and Ms. George, a former Miss America, becoming one of the first female sportscasters. With entertaining banter and byplay, the combination of personalities proved extremely popular.“Irv was a very smart, hardworking, hugely kind person who always had a warmth about him,” Ted Shaker, the former executive producer of CBS Sports, said in a phone interview. “He had built up his credibility as a player and game analyst, and he was our anchor at ‘The NFL Today.’” He added, “Like Phyllis, Irv was a true pioneer.” (Ms. George died in May at 70.)In 1988, CBS fired Mr. Snyder over widely publicized comments he had made in an interview about the physical differences between Black and white athletes. His comments, Mr. Cross said at the time, “don’t reflect the Jimmy the Greek I know, and I’ve known him for almost 13 years.” (Mr. Snyder died in 1996.)After CBS fired Mr. Musburger in a contract dispute in 1990, the network overhauled “The NFL Today,” ending Mr. Cross’s long run on the program. He returned to being a game analyst at CBS for two years, but after his contract was not renewed he did not work in network television again.“I didn’t have an agent, and I didn’t search for a TV position as aggressively as I should have,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1996.“I just quietly faded away.”His broadcasting work was honored in 2009 when he received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.Mr. Cross in 1976 with his “NFL Today” colleagues Brent Musburger and Phyllis George.Credit…CBS ArchivesIrvin Acie Cross was born on July 27, 1939, in Hammond, Ind., the eighth of 15 children. His father, Acie, was a steelworker; his mother, Ellee (Williams) Cross, was a homemaker.Mr. Cross said his father, a heavy drinker, had beaten his mother. “It tears me up,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 2018. “It was frightening. You could tell it was coming. We tried stopping him a few times. We’d jump on his back. It’s absolutely raw for me.”Ellee Cross died in childbirth when Irv was 10, leaving him to wonder whether the beatings had worsened his mother’s health problems.After excelling at football at Hammond High School — which earned him a place in its hall of fame — Mr. Cross was a wide receiver and a defensive back at Northwestern University under Coach Ara Parseghian. As a junior, he caught a 78-yard touchdown pass during a 30-24 Northwestern victory over Notre Dame.“We didn’t have much depth, but Parseghian was great at moving guys around and getting the most of them,” Mr. Cross told a Northwestern online publication in 2018. “His teams beat Notre Dame three straight times from 1958 to 1961.” Mr. Parseghian left Northwestern after the 1963 season to begin a storied run as coach of Notre Dame.As a senior, Mr. Cross was named Northwestern’s male athlete of the year.The Eagles chose him in the seventh round of the 1961 N.F.L. draft. He intercepted a career-high five passes in 1962 and played in the Pro Bowl in 1964 and 1965. The Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown once said, “No one in the league tackles harder than Cross.”After five seasons with the Eagles, Mr. Cross was traded to the Los Angeles Rams in 1965 and played there for three years. He returned to the Eagles in 1969 as a player and a defensive backs coach. After retiring as a player at the end of the season, he continued to coach for one more year.Mr. Cross when he played for the Philadelphia Eagles in the early 1960s. He was a two-time Pro Bowl defensive back before becoming a sportscaster.Credit…Philadelphia EaglesMr. Cross began planning for a television career while he was with the Eagles, working as a radio sports commentator and a weekend TV sports anchor in Philadelphia during the off-season. Though tempted by the Dallas Cowboys’ offer of a front office job in 1971, he chose to work for CBS Sports instead.Joining “The NFL Today” came with a certain amount of pressure. He recalled in the Northwestern interview that in 1975 “the TV landscape was much different, much whiter.”“I never focused on that,” Mr. Cross said, “but I was keenly aware that if I failed it might be a long time before another Black person got a similar opportunity.”When the cast of the show was changed in 1990, Greg Gumbel, who is Black, was hired to work alongside the former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw.After Mr. Cross left CBS he changed course, working as the athletic director at Idaho State University in Pocatello from 1996 to ’98 and at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., from 1999 to 2005.In addition to his wife, Liz (Tucker) Cross, he is survived by his daughters, Susan, Lisa and Sandra Cross; his son, Matthew; a grandson; his sisters, Joan Motley, Jackie McEntyre Julia Hopson, Pat Grant and Gwen Robinson; and his brothers, Raymond, Teal and Sam. His first marriage ended in divorce. He lived in Roseville, Minn., outside the Twin Cities.When Mr. Cross played, concussions were usually not taken seriously. He sustained several in his rookie season, enough for his teammates to nickname him Paper Head. One of the concussions knocked him unconscious and sent him to the hospital.To protect himself, Mr. Cross had a helmet made with extra padding.“I just tried to keep my head out of the way while making tackles,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2018. “But that’s just the way it was. Most of the time, they gave you some smelling salts and you went back in. We didn’t know.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bill Wright, Who Broke a Color Barrier in Golf, Dies at 84

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBill Wright, Who Broke a Color Barrier in Golf, Dies at 84In 1959, decades before Tiger Woods, Wright became the first Black golfer to win a United States Golf Association event.Bill Wright in the Amateur Public Links Championship in Denver in 1959. His victory there was a singular moment for Black golfers at a time when the P.G.A. bylaws still had a “Caucasians-only” clause.Credit…Denver Post, via Getty ImagesFeb. 25, 2021, 6:56 p.m. ETBill Wright, the first Black competitor to win a United States Golf Association event in an era when African-Americans were not welcome either in segregated country clubs or in the top amateur and professional ranks, died on Feb. 19 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.His wife and only immediate survivor, Ceta (Smith) Wright, confirmed the death. She said he had a stroke in 2017 and had Alzheimer’s disease.Wright was attending the Western Washington College of Education (now Western Washington University) in 1959 when he won the U.S.G.A. Amateur Public Links Championship in Denver.After barely qualifying for match play, he had little trouble in the tournament. His skill on the greens led The Spokesman-Review of Spokane to call him a “slender putting wizard.”Wright’s immediate reaction to being the first Black golfer to win a national championship was to hang up the phone on the reporter who had asked how that felt.“I wasn’t mad,” he said in an interview with the U.S.G.A. in 2009. “I wanted to be Black. I wanted to be the winner. I wanted to be all those things.” But he was struck by how quickly his victory was viewed as one for his race. As he saw it, he said, “I was just playing golf.”Wright’s victory was a singular moment for Black golfers at a time when the P.G.A. of America’s bylaws still had a “Caucasians-only” clause (which would be abolished in 1961).A Black man did not win a PGA Tour event until 1964, when Pete Brown finished first at the Waco Turner Open in Texas. The next two African-American winners of U.S.G.A. tournaments were Alton Duhon (the 1982 U.S. Senior Amateur) and Tiger Woods (the 1991 to 1993 U.S. Junior Amateurs).Victoria Nenno, the senior historian of the USGA Golf Museum and Library, said in an email that Wright’s victory “deserves recognition not just for the challenges he overcame as an African-American golfer, but for the manner in which he won — with skill, precision and, most importantly, sportsmanship.”Winning the public links title earned Wright an exemption to play in the U.S. Amateur Championship later that year at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs. When the white golfers who were to join him for a practice round refused to play with him, Chick Evans, who had won the Open in 1920, invited him to join his group. That group included Jack Nicklaus, then 19 years old, who would win the event.“I have never forgotten it,” Wright once said of Evans’s gesture in an interview for usga.com. “He came over and made it so I could enjoy the most aristocratic hotel. It was just amazing.”William Alfred Wright was born on April 4, 1936, in Kansas City, Mo., and later moved with his family to Portland, Ore., and Seattle. His father, Bob, was a mail carrier and a skilled golfer. His mother, Madeline (Shipman) Wright, was a social worker who also golfed.Wright began playing golf at 14; a year later, he was Seattle’s junior champion. He excelled in basketball and helped his high school team win a state title in 1954. He graduated from Western Washington in 1960 and that year won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics’ individual golf championship. He also played in his first PGA Tour event in 1960, but learned how difficult it was to play a regular schedule without sponsors.“There was really no visible hope for people of color to play professionally,” Wendell Haskins, a former director of diversity for the P.G.A. of America, said in a phone interview. “He showed all kinds of promise, but the opportunities for him were limited.”Because he could not afford to play golf professionally full time, Wright taught sixth grade in Los Angeles for nine years, then owned a car dealership in Pasadena and was the teaching pro at the Lakes at El Segundo, a nine-hole municipal golf course, from 1995 to 2017.According to the PGA Tour, Wright played in at least 17 tournaments from 1960 to 1974 — his best finish was a tie for 40th place — and in nine PGA Tour Champions events (tournaments for golfers at least 50 years old) from 1988 to 1995. He also competed in the 1966 U.S. Open — he didn’t make the cut — and five U.S. Senior Opens.“He was a barrier breaker,” Ceta Wright said. “The sad part is that he hoped his success would open the doors for other Black golfers. But it really didn’t.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tiger Woods and Another Terrible Turn of Fate

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Tiger Woods’s Car CrashWill He Play Again?Sheriff Expects No ChargesGolf Without WoodsA Terrible Turn of FateCareer Highs and LowsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports of the TimesTiger Woods and Another Terrible Turn of FateIt is easy to cling to memories of Tiger Woods at his peaks, but his vulnerability tells as much, if not more, about his powerful hold on sport and culture.Tiger Woods at Augusta National Golf Club in 2019, when he won his fifth Masters title and his 15th major championship.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021Updated 8:08 a.m. ETThe sight of his demolished S.U.V., sitting forlornly on a grassy Southern California hillside, belied the image of Tiger Woods as an invincible force marching across the golf course to certain, thrilling triumph.That was not always the case, and lately his victories have been far from commanding. But so much is embodied in Tiger. And in this period of pandemic and relentless loss, we struggle to confront visions of a crumpled vehicle, of him lying in a hospital bed, of leg bones shattered and questions about whether he will play again — while still dissecting who he is and what he has wrought.What happened to the sterling athlete who so many expected to reshape the game of golf and even, perhaps, the broader culture?Woods’s greatness, once seemingly preordained, has been dimmed over the past dozen years by stunning falls from grace and by betrayal from his body.But many of us still cling to him, even if it means grasping at shards of memory. We remember the prodigy who burst into view on the nationally televised “Mike Douglas Show,” hitting putts at age 2.We remember his Stanford years and the Masters of 1997, the first of 15 major titles, won in history-making fashion at age 21.When you think of Woods, what comes to mind?After his first Masters victory in 1997, Woods received his green jacket from Nick Faldo, the previous year’s winner.Credit…Amy Sancetta/Associated PressIs he the superstar who lived for toppling records? Who grew up with his eyes fixed on breaking Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships? Recall that there was a time when this seemed like an audacious, even arrogant, goal. Then he set about the chase, quickly drawing oh-so-near to Nicklaus, major after major. Is he the golfer whose very presence in a largely segregated, upper-crust sport was not only startling, but also a harbinger of the issues that frame our world today?With his shimmering brown skin, his power and confidence, Woods blew down the doors of the all-white country clubs. Remember the snide and easy way in which the golf veteran Fuzzy Zoeller referred to Woods as “that little boy”? Or Zoeller’s publicly urging Woods not to put fried chicken and collard greens on the menu of the Masters’ champions dinner?That was the golf culture Woods strode into, and took over, as the world watched.But how did he see himself? Here things get tricky. Raised in predominantly white suburbs by a mother from Thailand and an African-American father, Woods was one of the first major sports figures to openly embrace the idea that he represented multiplicity. “Growing up,” he told Oprah Winfrey shortly after that first Masters win, “I came up with this name: I’m a Cablinasian.”In a world that struggles to go beyond placing race in tidy boxes, that comment alienated some of his most ardent supporters. But if he was chided for seeming to keep his Blackness at a distance, it didn’t dent his popularity. No matter how Woods defined himself, he was imbued with a certain power. Forever the trailblazer and talisman. He put a torch to the old order. That was enough.Then came 2009, and a troubling descent. It began with tabloid tales of the married Woods engaging in serial infidelity. Eventually his deepest flaws were exposed: his illicit texts, his trysts, his trips to rehab as he battled addiction.Woods frustrated at a tournament in 2018.Credit…Sam Hodgson for The New York TimesWoods was among the first transcendent sports stars to emerge at the dawn of the digital age. His aura, his race, his swagger and shotmaking, the club twirls and fist bumps and miracle shots — all of it was perfectly suited for YouTube and the rise of sports apps that feast on fleeting moments and sensational emotion.The digital age also magnified his troubles. Each imperfection was there to see, personal and professional. For much of a decade, as the advancing years wreaked havoc on his body and the surgeries piled up, Woods was a shadow of his former self. Heading into 2019, he had not won a major tournament in nearly 11 years.Yet Woods somehow remained swaddled in Teflon. The revelation of his human frailties cost him plenty of fans and endorsements. But a significant portion of his admirers forgave and forgot. The continued embrace was a willful act by a public all too eager to dole out second and third chances to a winner. Especially a winner like Woods.He continued to be a top draw, a global icon, even as he grimaced through season after season, age and injury taking an ever-steeper toll. At one point, he was ranked 1,119th in the world. But then came April 2019, and the Masters. Summoning every remnant of his former self, he surged to victory, legions celebrating his fifth champion’s green jacket.Nobody who watched that tournament will forget it. Not just the stirring comeback, but the sight of Woods wrapping his son, Charlie, and his daughter, Sam, in his arms as he walked from the final green. It called to mind the embrace given by Woods’s father, Earl, after the Masters win in 1997. It spoke, too, of poignant change in the face of time. Woods was no longer the soaring young champion, but he could still reach the highest peaks, if only in short bursts.Woods after winning the 2019 Masters, his first major victory in over a decade. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesApril 2019 feels so long ago, given all that the world has gone through this past year.And now this. On Tuesday we saw the remains of that S.U.V. and waited for the updates. We shuddered, remembering Kobe Bryant’s helicopter, strewn across another Southern California hillside just over a year ago.We listened as a sheriff and his deputies described the wreckage, explaining that Woods was lucky to be alive and that drugs and alcohol did not appear to be involved. They said he had been pried from his vehicle and carried off on a stretcher.“Unfortunately,” said one of them, “Mr. Woods was not able to stand on his own power.”How could such a circumstance befall Tiger Woods, who strode across majestic golf courses with so much purpose? It was a reminder, once again, that heroes are human, full of weakness, unable to dodge the terrible twists of fate that stalk us all.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jaguars' Hiring of Chris Doyle Called 'Unacceptable' by Fritz Pollard Alliance

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDiversity Group Calls Jaguars’ Hiring of Assistant Coach ‘Simply Unacceptable’The Fritz Pollard Alliance criticized the addition of Chris Doyle, who was accused of mistreatment of Black players at the University of Iowa, to Urban Meyer’s staff in Jacksonville.Chris Doyle in 2018 at the University of Iowa, where he was the football team’s strength and conditioning coach.Credit…Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressFeb. 12, 2021Updated 9:36 p.m. ETAn organization that promotes diversity in the N.F.L. on Friday criticized the Jacksonville Jaguars’ recent hiring of Chris Doyle, who left the University of Iowa’s football staff last year after a number of current and former Hawkeyes players said he had fostered a culture of bullying and racism.A statement from the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is named for the first Black head coach in the N.F.L., said the Jaguars’ decision to make Doyle their director of sports performance was “simply unacceptable.”“Doyle’s departure from the University of Iowa reflected a tenure riddled with poor judgment and mistreatment of Black players,” Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, said in the statement. “His conduct should be as disqualifying for the N.F.L. as it was for University of Iowa.”Doyle, who was Iowa’s strength and conditioning coach, reached a separation agreement with the university in June, ending two decades of work there.The Jaguars announced on Thursday that Doyle had joined the staff of Urban Meyer, who was named Jacksonville’s head coach last month. Meyer, who won two college national championships as the head coach at Florida and one at Ohio State, has not coached since 2018 and has never worked in the N.F.L. before.The hiring of Doyle, who is white, comes at a time of intense scrutiny of the N.F.L.’s hiring practices and questions about whether minority candidates for coaching jobs have equal opportunities to be hired.“I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,” Meyer said on Thursday when questioned about hiring someone who had been accused of mistreating Black athletes. Doyle was the strength coach at the University of Utah in the late 1990s, a few years before Meyer was hired as the head coach there.“Urban Meyer’s statement, ‘I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,’ reflects the good ol’ boy network that is precisely the reason there is such a disparity in employment opportunities for Black coaches,” Graves said in the statement.Neither the N.F.L. nor the Jaguars responded to a request for comment on the Fritz Pollard Alliance’s statement.During a news conference last week, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said that he was not satisfied with the rate at which coaches of color have been hired in the N.F.L., which has 32 teams.“It wasn’t what we expected,” he said of the diversity in the round of hirings after the 2020 season, “and it’s not what we expect going forward.”Of the seven head coaches hired since the end of the regular season, just two were nonwhite. Last year one of five head coaching jobs went to a minority candidate, and the year before just one in eight.Over the last three years 80 percent of head coaching jobs have gone to white candidates, though players of color made up 69.4 percent of the N.F.L. this season, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.After the Jaguars hired Meyer and General Manager Trent Baalke, who are both white, last month, Graves praised the organization for interviewing several minority candidates and for seeking input from the Fritz Pollard Alliance.“I cannot argue that the process didn’t meet the standard of fair, open and competitive,” Graves told The Florida Times-Union.The hiring of Doyle, however, raised issues beyond the N.F.L.’s commitment to diverse hiring.Before Doyle left Iowa, Emmanuel Rugamba, a former Hawkeyes defensive back, gave multiple examples of the coach demeaning players with negative racial stereotypes. Rugamba said in a tweet that one day after a Black player walked away from Doyle, the coach said, “Why you walking wit all that swagger I’ll put you back on the streets.”James Daniels, a Chicago Bears offensive lineman and a former Hawkeye, tweeted over the summer: “There are too many racial disparities in the Iowa football program. Black players have been treated unfairly for far too long.”Doyle also presided over an off-season workout in 2011 that resulted in the hospitalization of 13 players.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More