This months Al Sharpton Award for idiocy in race baiting goes to Charles Barkley, who appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing gauzy pajama bottoms and a set of broken shackles.

Seems Barkley’s upset that Augusta National (the Georgia course that hosts the Master’s golf tournament) lengthened its holes — proof, in Barkley’s mind, that the southern white country club set is out to get Tiger Woods, who’d routinely been outdriving the Augusta fairways.

Woods, for his part, isn’t buying it:

‘I spoke to [Augusta club chairmen Hootie Johnson] about the changes, and the changes are not for me,’ he said.

‘They’re for the kids that are coming up in the future. I’m not that long, anymore. I kind of dink it around. There are a lot of kids out there now in college golf and high school golf that hit the ball farther than I do. They’re getting bigger and stronger, and the new technology is helping out.

‘I guess they went ahead and took a step to prevent players in the future from shooting low scores.’

Of course, this is far too convenient an explanation for Barkley — no fan of Ockham’s Razor, it seems, and a man who believes General Mills is racist because his Cheerios are never black.