IN
WELCOMING GM Maurice Ashley to Barbados recently, Allan
Herbert recounts the story of how golf super star Tiger
Woods inspired the man who became the first African-American
Grandmaster. Herbert, who is Chairman of the FIDE Commission
for Assistance to Chess Developing Countries, gave a brief
account of the acclaim that Ashley has won in his column,
Caribbean Chess Round-Up, which appears in the Barbados
Advocate newspaper.
Then he quotes from an interview which the Åmerican
GM gave to Contemporary Black Biography. “Chess is
a sport,” said Ashley. “It’s competitive,
it’s work, it’s pressure, it’s tension,
it’s pain, it’s guts and glory and disappointment
and defeat. All the classic sports metaphors are in chess,
so it was easy for me to transfer many of the ideas that
I found in the sports world to the chessboard.”
Often called the Tiger Woods of chess, Ashley names Woods,
Arthur Ashe and Jackie Robinson as his inspiration and
role models, Herbert wrote.
In speaking about the influence of Woods on his quest
to become a Grandmaster, Ashley recounts: “I had
been dreaming about being a grandmaster for over a decade,
but life seemed to be constantly pulling me in different
directions. I was a national championship coach, a commentator
and a designer of my own ÇD-ROM. I was married
to a beautiful wife and I had a little girl who was daddy’s
pride and joy.
“Still,
I was depressed because the dream that I felt should surely
have been mine had remained elusive as ever. There was
not a day that went by I didn’t think about the fact
that I was not a grandmaster. I was getting older and
I thought my chance might never come. Then Tiger Woods
arrived onto the scene.
“Tiger’s
passion for excellence was clear. He had won amateur tournaments,
but it was his historic win in April of 1997, at the Masters,
by an unheard of 12 strokes that captivated my imagination.
“Here
was a man dominating at the highest level of a sport that
had once kept out his kind. He had literally smashed all
the barriers with his greatness, making it look easy in
the process. It took four days for him to change the world
of golf. He showed that a person of colour could excel
in anything.”
Herbert concludes: “Sadly this story is one shared
by many of the English-speaking Caribbean’s top players
who obviously have the talent, but see their dream drifting
elusively away as each year goes by. This is why, in Black
History Month, Ashley’s visit to Barbados is such
a treat for the local chess community and the public.”
