Tiger Woods is a professional golfer, who redefined the sport of golf with his characteristic precision and persistence.He is tied for first in the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Tour wins, ranks second in men’s major championships, and holds numerous golf records. Woods is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time. He is an inductee of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Following an outstanding junior, college, and amateur golf career, Woods turned professional in 1996. By 1997, he had won three PGA Tour events, his first major, the 1997 Masters and reached No. 1 in the world rankings. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, Woods was the dominant force in golf. He was the top-ranked in the world from August 1999 to September 2004 (264 weeks) and again from June 2005 to October 2010 (281 weeks).
He has been the number one player in the world for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks of any golfer in history. He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record 11 times and has won the Byron Nelson Award for lowest adjusted scoring average a record eight times. Woods has the record of leading the money list in ten different seasons.
He has won 15 professional major golf championships and 82 PGA Tour events. Woods has won 18 World Golf Championships. He was also part of the American winning team for the 1999 Ryder Cup. In 2019, Woods was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Birth, Growth and Family
He was born Eldrick Tont Woods on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California, to Earl and Kultida “Tida” Woods as their only child. Earl was a retired US Army officer and Vietnam War veteran. Woods's first name, Eldrick, was chosen by his mother because it began with "E" (for Earl) and ended with "K" (for Kultida). His middle name Tont is a traditional Thai name. He was nicknamed “Tiger” in honor of his father's friend, South Vietnamese Colonel Vuong Dang Phong, who had also been known as Tiger.
Woods grew up in Orange County, California and was introduced to golf even before the age of two by his father. He had playing privileges at the Navy golf course beside the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos. At 3, he shot a 48 over nine holes at the Navy course. At 5, he appeared in Golf Digest and on ABC’s That’s Incredible!
Before turning 7, Woods won the Under Age 10 section of the Drive, Pitch, and Putt competition, held at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress. At 8, he first broke 80 and won the 9–10 boys’ event, the youngest age group available, at the Junior World. He went on to win the Junior World six times, including four consecutive wins from 1988 to 1991.
Tiger first defeated his father at 11.Woods first broke 70 on a regulation golf course at 12. At 13, he played in the 1989 Big I, which was his first major national junior tournament. Woods was 15 and a student at Western High School in Anaheim when he became the youngest U.S. Junior Amateur champion.
He was named Southern California Amateur Player of the Year and Golf Digest Junior Amateur Player of the Year in 1991. He defended his title at the US Junior Amateur Championship, becoming the tournament’s first two-time winner in 1992. He also competed in his first PGA Tour event, the Nissan Los Angeles Open, and was named Golf Digest Amateur Player of the Year, Golf World Player of the Year, and Golfweek National Amateur of the Year.
In 1993, Woods won his third consecutive US Junior Amateur and remains the event’s only three-time winner. In 1994, at the TPC at Sawgrass in Florida, he became the youngest winner of the US Amateur. He was a member of the winning American team at the 1994 Eisenhower Trophy World Amateur Golf Team Championships.
Woods graduated from Western High School at 18 in 1994 and was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” among the graduating class. He starred for the high school under coach Don Crosby. He enrolled Stanford University in 1994 under a golf scholarship and won his first collegiate event, the 40th Annual William H. Tucker Invitational. He selected a major in economics.
In 1995, he successfully defended his US Amateur title at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island and was voted Pac-10 Player of the Year, NCAA First Team All-American, and Stanford’s Male Freshman of the Year. At 19, Woods participated in his first PGA Tour major, the 1995 Masters. At 20 in 1996, he became the first golfer to win three consecutive US Amateur titles and won the NCAA individual golf championship. In winning the silver at The Open Championship, he tied the record for an amateur aggregate score of 281.
Woods married Elin Nordegren, a Swedish former model on October 5, 2004. Their first child was a daughter, Sam Alexis Woods (b.2007). Woods chose the name because his own father had always called him Sam. Their son, Charlie Axel Woods, was born in 2009. After six years of marriage, they divorced in 2010.
Professional Career
Woods turned professional at 20 in 1996 and immediately signed advertising deals with Nike, Inc. and Titleist that ranked as the most lucrative endorsement contracts in golf history. Woods was named Sports Illustrated’s 1996 Sportsman of the Year and PGA Tour Rookie of the Year. On April 13, 1997, he won his first major, the Masters, becoming the tournament’s youngest winner at 21. Also, he set the record for the fastest ascent to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
After a lackluster 1998, Woods finished the 1999 season with eight wins, including the PGA Championship. In 2000, Woods won six consecutive events on the PGA Tour, which was the longest winning streak since 1948. One of these was the US Open, where he broke or tied nine tournament records in what Sports Illustrated called “the greatest performance in golf history,” in which Woods won the tournament by a record 15-stroke margin and earned a check for $800,000.
At 24, he became the youngest golfer to achieve the Career Grand Slam. At the end of 2000, Woods had won nine of the twenty PGA Tour events and had broken the record for lowest scoring average in tour history. He was named the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, the only athlete to be honored twice.
When Woods won the 2001 Masters, he became the only player to win four consecutive major professional golf titles. This achievement came to be known as the “Tiger Slam.” He rebounded in 2005, winning six PGA Tour events and reclaiming the top spot dominantly in 2006, winning his first two PGA tournaments. Following the death of his father in May, Woods took some time off and ended the year by winning six consecutive tour events. At the season's close, Woods had 54 total wins that included 12 majors; he broke the tour records for both total wins and total majors wins over eleven seasons.
Woods continued to excel in 2007 and the first part of 2008. In April, he underwent knee surgery and returned for the 2008 US Open, where he struggled the first day but ultimately claimed a dramatic sudden death victory, calling it “my greatest ever championship.” Woods had a much anticipated return to golf in 2009, when he performed well. His comeback included a spectacular performance at the 2009 Presidents Cup.
Woods returned at the 2010 Masters. In 2011, he rebounded to No. 5. In 2012, Woods won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, his first win on the PGA Tour since September 2009. Woods notched his 73rd PGA Tour win at the Memorial Tournament in June. Woods surpassed Jack Nicklaus with a win at the AT&T National, to trail only Sam Snead, who accumulated 82 PGA tour wins.
The year 2013 brought a return of Woods’s dominating play. He won the Farmers Insurance Open as well as the WGC-Cadillac Championship, for the seventh time. Two weeks later, he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, winning the event for a record-tying 8th time. The win moved him back to No. 1 in the world rankings.
In 2013, Woods won The Players Championship, notching his fourth win of the season. It was the quickest he got to four wins in any season of his professional career. At the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, he recorded his 5th win of the season and 8th win at the event in its 15-year history.
Woods's victory at the 2013 Players Championship also marked a win in his 300th PGA Tour start. He also won golf tournaments in his 100th (in 2000) and 200th (in 2006) tour starts.
After a slow start to 2014, Woods returned at the Quicken Loans National in June. Woods had back surgery in 2015. Woods underwent back surgery in 2016 and spent the next 15 months off the Tour. He made his return to competitive golf in the Hero World Challenge.
In 2018, he finished one-shot back and tied for second at the Valspar Championship in Florida, his first top-five finishes on the PGA Tour since 2013. At the last major of the year, the 2018 PGA Championship, Woods finished second. It was his best result in a major since 2009 and moved him up to 26th in the world rankings. His final round of 64 was his best-ever final round in a major.
Woods returned to the winner’s circle for the 80th time in his PGA Tour career on September 23, 2018, when he won the season-ending Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club for the second time and that tournament for the third time. He shot rounds of 65–68–65–71 to win by two strokes.
On April 14, 2019, Woods won the Masters, which was his first major championship win in eleven years and his 15th come through the portals of the hallowed educational institution major overall. At age 43, he became the second oldest golfer ever to win the Masters.
Woods played in his first 2020 PGA Tour event at the Zozo Championship in 2019, which was the first-ever PGA Tour event played in Japan and the victory was Woods’s 82nd on Tour. On December 23, 2020, Woods had microdiscectomy surgery on his back for the fifth time. Woods returned to play in his first professional tournament since his 2021 motor vehicle accident at the 2022 Masters Tournament.
He was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2009, Woods was named "Athlete of the Decade" by the Associated Press. He was named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year a record-tying four times, and is one of only two people to be named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year more than once.
Since his record-breaking win at the 1997 Masters, Woods has been the biggest name in golf and his presence in tournaments has drawn a huge fan following. Some sources have credited him for dramatically increasing prize money in golf, generating interest in new PGA tournament audiences, and for drawing the largest TV ratings in golf history.
Legacy
When Woods first joined the PGA Tour in 1996, his long drives had a large impact on the world of golf, but he did not upgrade his equipment in the following years. He insisted upon the use of True Temper Dynamic Gold steel-shafted clubs and smaller steel club-heads that promoted accuracy over distance. Many opponents caught up to him. During 2004, Woods finally upgraded his driver technology to a larger club-head and graphite shaft, which, coupled with his club-head speed, again made him one of the tour's longest players off the tee.
Despite his power advantage, Woods has always focused on developing an excellent all-around game. His iron play is generally accurate, his recovery and bunker play is very strong, and his putting (especially under pressure) is possibly his greatest asset. He is largely responsible for a shift to higher standards of athleticism amongst professional golfers and is known for utilizing more hours of practice than most.
Woods worked almost exclusively with leading swing coach Butch Harmon (1993 - 2003). Then, Woods was coached by Hank Haney (2003 - 2010) and Sean Foley (2010 – 2014). Woods's had four caddies, Fluff Cowan (from the start of his professional career until 1999), Steve Williams (1999 - June 2011), Bryon Bell (interim) and Joe LaCava.
During the first decade of his professional career, Woods was the world's most marketable athlete. Shortly after his 21st birthday in 1996, he signed endorsement with General Motors, Titleist, General Mills, American Express, Accenture, and Nike.
In 2009, Forbes confirmed that Woods was indeed the world's first professional athlete to earn over a billion dollars in his career. The same year, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $600 million, making him the second richest in the United States, behind only Oprah Winfrey. As of 2017, Woods was considered to be the highest-paid golfer in the world. In 2022, Woods was the first golfer to have a net worth over one billion dollars.
The TGR Foundation was established in 1996 by Woods and his father Earl as the Tiger Woods Foundation with the primary goal of promoting golf among inner-city children. The foundation has conducted junior golf clinics across the country and sponsors the Tiger Woods Foundation National Junior Golf Team in the Junior World Golf Championships.
The foundation operates the Tiger Woods Learning Center, a $50-million, 35,000-square-foot facility in Anaheim, California, providing college-access programs for underserved youth. The TWLC opened in 2006 and features seven classrooms, extensive multi-media facilities and an outdoor golf teaching area. The center has since expanded to four additional campuses: two in Washington, D.C.; one in Philadelphia; and one in Stuart, Florida.
The foundation benefits from the annual Chevron World Challenge and AT&T National golf tournaments hosted by Woods. In October 2011, the foundation hosted the first Tiger Woods Invitational at Pebble Beach.
Woods wrote a golf instruction column for Golf Digest magazine from 1997 to 2011. In 2001, he wrote a best-selling golf instruction book, “How I Play Golf,” which had the largest print of 1.5 million copies. In 2017, he published a memoir, “The 1997 Masters: My Story,”(with Lorne Rubenstein), which focuses on his first Masters win. In 2019, Woods announced he would be writing a memoir book titled Back.
In 2009, Woods delivered a speech commemorating the military at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial and visited the White House while promoting his golf tournament, the AT&T National.
(The author is an Associate Professor, International Scholar, winner of Presidential Awards and multiple National Accolades for Academic pursuits. He possesses a PhD, MPhil, and double MSc. His email is [email protected])