It's just another June day, just another tee time, on just another of the nearly 17,000 golf courses across the United States. The only thing that makes the scene at City Park any more interesting is that the men in the fairway are all African-American. And so are the men on the tee box, and a couple others back on the practice green.

It's not unusual at City Park, set in one of Denver's most ethnically diverse neighborhoods, where about 35 percent of the players are African-American. But it's not a common scene elsewhere. Because blacks, even with a monumental push to get them involved and with Tiger Woods carrying their torch, make up just 3.3 percent of the country's 26.4 million golfers.

Just a couple miles away, on Sunday, the Tiger Woods Foundation will host a golf clinic geared to reach out to minority and inner-city children and invite them into what has stubbornly been a white man's game.

Woods and other minority golf professionals - a phrase still bordering on the oxymoronic - will instruct about 100 kids at nearby Park Hill Golf Club. Then Woods will perform an exhibition for about 2,500 inner-city children. Many have never been near a golfer, much less the best golfer on the planet.

He is the athletic Pied Piper of our time, crossing generations, races and genders. But Woods - born to a black father, a Thai mother - has had the biggest impact on African-Americans.

"He made it OK (for blacks) to play golf," says Jay Tafoya, coordinator of the Denver Junior Golf Program, of which 35 percent of participants are minorities.

Woods, then 21, crushed the Masters' field in April 1997, the first African-American to win a golf major. A few people noticed. A stagnant sport that had for years seen 2 million new players (and 2 million quitters) each year saw 3 million beginners in 1997.

"Within two days of the Masters there was a tremendous influx of men trying to teach their sons to play golf," says Geoff Greig, the senior director of instruction at the Nike Golf Learning Center at Park Hill, at Torrey Pines in San Diego. "I had between a 25- and 40-percent increase in teaching income those few months."

Woods was an instant saint for an already rising movement trying to link minorities and golf. That hasn't changed.

"Oh, God," says Barbara Douglas, president of the National Minority Golf Foundation. "I don't know how you measure it, he's had such an impact."

Progress takes time

Like a volcano, Woods' impact was explosive at first. But the revolution since has been more of the lava-flow variety, moving quietly, slowly, steadily. But moving.

The good signs are these: The number of African-American golfers has more than doubled in 10 years, from about 360,000 to 882,000 today, according to the National Golf Federation. Since 1996, the growth has been about 30 percent while the number of golfers as a whole hasn't changed. Interest from black youths, nonexistent a few years ago, is growing. Ten years ago there were 85 junior golf programs in the country aimed at inner-city and minority kids, says John David, executive director of the Multi-Cultural Golf Association of America. Today there are nearly 500. They seem to be reaching their target; more than 50 percent of the kids in Park Hill's youth program are black.

The bad signs: Fewer than 1 percent of those employed by the golf industry - pros, managers, executives, etc. - are black. There are more African-Americans in the NHL than on the four major golf tours combined. Colorado has one black PGA professional. At Jackson State University, Eddie Payton (Walter's brother) has spent 14 years building the best golf program among historically black colleges, but still could find just four black high-school players worthy of recruiting this past year.

"We're just past the starting line," Douglas admits.

Pay to practice

There have always been hurdles for minorities. Some are tangible, such as the PGA waiting until 1961 to strike a "Caucasians only" clause from its bylaws, and the first African-American not playing in the Masters until 1975. Only 10 years ago Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., hosted the PGA Championship despite a no-blacks membership policy. Amid controversy, several clubs took themselves off the list of possible PGA venues rather than change similar member rules.

But access has long been a problem on a local level, too. Inner cities are notorious for their dearth of golf facilities. For decades, most golf courses were private, not friendly places for minorities or children.

"First and foremost, it has to be a welcoming facility," says Judy Thompson, spokeswoman for the National Golf Foundation, a research group for the industry. "Kids haven't had access. Minorities haven't had access. That's the biggest drawback. You can give them the appetite, give them the instruction, but where are they going to play?"

Money's an issue, too. The average greens fee for a U.S. municipal course is $30, and for all public courses it's $36. Even a bucket of balls on the range will cost a few bucks.

"Compare it to basketball," says Tom Woodard, Denver's director of golf and one of the few African-Americans who have spent time (three years) on the PGA Tour. "Golf is one of the few sports you have to pay to practice."

But the hurdles are being lowered, and it's not because of Tiger Woods. Seventy percent of courses today are public, and the number is growing. The city of Denver, which hands 25 cents from each of the 440,000 paid greens fees each year to its junior golf program, provides free or low-cost instruction to low-income children. It also has a warehouse of clubs kids can use. The junior program is based at City Park rather than one of the city's other six courses because of the diversity of the surrounding neighborhood.

More importantly, perhaps, there has been a national push to get minorities involved. Tiger Woods might have made golf cool for minorities, but his is just the face on a well-orchestrated movement.

"Ten years ago you could not find an organization trying to get minority and inner-city kids on the golf course," Woodard says. "Now they are everywhere."

Clubs for kids

The Multi-Cultural Golf Association of America was founded in 1991, with the Clintonesque mantra of trying to put "a textbook and a golf club in the hands of every child in America." The group has developed 250 youth programs across the country, and is sponsoring a Drive, Pitch and Putt competition for 10,000 kids in 110 cities July 24. "The largest one-day single golf competition in the world," David says.

The National Minority Golf Foundation was established in 1995 as an advocacy group, pushing for minorities in, "both the game and the business of golf," Douglas says.

"Tiger Woods is a great inspiration to people, and that's great," she says. "But equally I'd like to see the vice president of human resources at Titleist be an African-American, or the next general manager of a golf course. That's more realistic than hoping for the next Tiger Woods."

The first key is introduction. Many point to the First Tee, a program founded in 1997 with the support of the PGA, USGA, LPGA and others. It aims to create 100 sites, mostly in inner cities, with driving ranges and at least three holes of golf. The group has nearly 25 sites open, and will be halfway to its target by year's end. The idea is to introduce the game to people - kids - who might otherwise never have the chance, then usher them through the early learning stages.

"The beauty of golf right now is that there are 40 million people who have expressed interest in playing the game, and 50 percent who watch golf on television don't play," says First Tee national director Joe Louis Barrow, the son of boxer Joe Louis and one of golf's great crusaders. "Golf has a tremendous opportunity. And how we convert that opportunity is by providing access to the facilities."

Staying the course

The age-old problem is retention. Tiger Woods brings his show to four or five cities each year for a weekend. There are thousands of smaller-scale clinics across the country every year.

"The problem with the inner city is that we introduce them to golf and then we leave," says Jackson State's Payton. "We give them a hunger for the game, then we leave. It needs to be ongoing - not a clinic in July, then another clinic next July."

It's a never-ending battle, and has little to do with race. But, in contrast to white males, more minorities (including women) are taking up the game than dropping out. Introduce enough kids to the game, make it accessible and affordable and fun, and some are sure to stick.

"Kids play what their friends play," says Thompson, of the National Golf Foundation. "If their friends don't play, it's a cinch - kids won't go out on their own and take up golf."

But if just some of the 2,500 children watching Tiger Woods perform his exhibition this weekend take interest, maybe it will become like the old shampoo commercial. They'll each tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on.

It's a start. It may take years - decades - before the work pays off.

"The finish line, and it's a never-ending line," Douglas says, "is when you can no longer name the minorities employed in the golf industry, when you walk into an NCAA golf event and the minorities are just a matter of course, or when you look at the PGA Tour and don't think about how few minorities are on it."

For now, Tiger Woods stands tall. But he won't always stand alone.