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Tiger Woods

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Tiger Woods giving a driving demonstration aboard the USS George Washington

Tiger Woods (born December 30, 1975, Cypress, California), is considered one of the greatest golfers of all time.

Woods, who is of mixed race, is credited with prompting a major surge of interest in the game of golf, especially among minorities and younger people in the United States.

Background and family

Woods is from a comfortable social background. His father Earl Woods, is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, of mixed African American, white and Native American ancestry. He is now the chairman of his son's charitable "Tiger Woods Foundation", which is discussed below. Woods' mother Kultida Woods is an Asian American whose parents were immigrants from Thailand.

Woods' original forename was Eldrick. He was nicknamed "Tiger" after a war comrade of his father's and became generally known by that name. By the time he was achieving national prominence in amateur golf, he was always called "Tiger" Woods, and he has now legally changed his first name to Tiger.

In 2003, Woods became engaged to Elin Nordegren, a Swedish model. They were introduced by Swedish golf star Jesper Parnevik, who had employed her as a nanny. They married in a sunset ceremony at the Sandy Lane Hotel and Golf Club on Barbados amid armed security before approximately 200 family and friends on October 5, 2004.

Amateur career

Woods was a child prodigy who began to play golf at very young age. While still a small child, he demonstrated his golf skills in a television appearance with Bob Hope. In 1984 he won the 9-10 boys' event at the Junior World Golf Championships. He was only eight at the time, but 9-10 was the youngest age group in those days. He went on to win the U.S. Junior Amateur title in 1991, 1992 and 1993. He remains the youngest ever winner and the only multiple winner. He followed this with three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles the next three years. With his first US Amateur win in 1994, the year that he graduated high school, he became the youngest man ever to win that event. He attended Stanford University and won one NCAA individual championship. Woods decided to leave Stanford after two years as he felt that he was ready to succeed as a professional.

Professional career

Woods became a professional golfer in August 1996, immediately after the last major tournament of that season. He won two events in the three months of the 1996 season that he played as a professional. The following April he won The Masters by a record margin of 12 shots, and he has been by far the highest profile golfer in the world since then. In the summer of 1997 Woods went to number one in the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time.

Woods formed a close friendship with leading PGA Tour professional Mark O'Meara, who was almost twenty years his senior. O'Meara acted as a mentor to him for a time, and the two men won the World Cup together. The inspiration of working closely with a brilliant young talent was widely regarded as a catalyst for O'Meara's own career year in 1998, when he won the only two majors of his career.

Despite suggestions that the other players would only be competing for second place from now on, Woods' form began to fade in the second half of 1997, and in 1998 he only won once on the PGA Tour. At this time he was working on modifications to his swing to adapt to the maturation of his physique, and to address concerns that the extremely vigourous and elastic swing he had used in his youth might cause long term back problems and truncate his career. Woods was careful to avoid using this as an excuse and instead responded to questions about his wavering form with reminders that he was still very young, and was hoping to do better in the future.

In June 1999, Woods won the Memorial Tournament. This was the beginning of a sustained period of dominance of men's golf. He won seventeen PGA Tour events in two calendar years, and 32 in five, both of them achievement that hadn't been rivaled for several decades, and golf in Woods' era is generally seen as having much more strength in depth than in earlier periods. He won seven out of eleven major championships starting with the 1999 PGA Championship and finishing with the 2002 U.S. Open.

The next phase of Woods career was relatively disappointing. He did not win a major in 2003 or 2004, and fell to second in the PGA Tour money list in 2003 and to fourth on 2004. In September 2004, Woods' record streak as the world's top-ranked golfer - 264 consecutive weeks - came to an end at the Deutsche Bank Championship when Vijay Singh won the tournament and overtook Woods in the rankings. At around this time Woods let it be known that he was once again working on changes to his swing, and hoped that once the adjustments were complete he would get back to his best.

Woods played well in the 2004 off-season and at the start of the 2005 PGA Tour season. On 6 March he won the Ford Championship at Doral and returned to Number 1 in the World Rankings. The true test of whether he is back to his dominant best however, will come when 2005's majors are played.

As of 7 March 2005, Woods has won 42 official money events on the PGA Tour and 15 other professional titles. He is one of only five players (along with Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player) in the history of golf to have won all four professional major championships in his career. At the 2003 TOUR Championship, he set an all-time record for most consecutive cuts made, with 114, and by early February 2005 he had extended this streak to 135.

Woods is the only two-time winner as an individual of Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award (1996, 2000).

Major Championships

Woods' major championship victories are as follows:

With his victory in The Masters in 2001, he became the only man to have held all four professional majors at once, although this did not occur in a calendar year, and is therefore not recognized by some as a true Grand Slam. The achievement has been nicknamed "The Tiger Slam".

Woods holds at least a share of the record for lowest 72-hole score in relation to par in all four majors, and at least a share of the low-72 holes record in two of them. The "to par" and "low 72-holes" records are not always the same because while most championship golf course have a par of 72, or 288 for four rounds, some have a par of 71 or 70:

  • The Masters: -18 (270), 1997 (outright to-par and low 72 holes record)
  • US Open: -12 (272), 2000 (outright to par record)
  • The Open Championship: -19 (269), 2000 (outright to-par record)
  • PGA Championship: -18 (270), 2000 (to-par record shared with Bob May)

PGA TOUR career summary

YearMajorsOther winsPGA TOUR winsEarnings ($)Rank
1996022 790,59424
19971342,066,8331
19980111,841,1174
19991786,616,5851
20003699,188,3211
20011456,687,7771
20022356,912,6251
20030556,673,4132
20040115,365,4724


Woods was only a professional for around one third of the 1996 season. In addition to his PGA Tour wins, he has won a number of events on foreign professional tours, and several professional events which were not part of an official tour schedule.

Woods makes most of his income from endorsement contracts. He is one of the two highest earning sports people in the world, alongside Formula One driver Michael Schumacher. In 2004 Forbes Magazine estimated that the two men both had an annual income of $80 million.

PGA Tour wins

Major championships are shown in bold.

Other professional wins

  • 1997 Asian Honda Classic (Asian Tour)
  • 1998 Johnnie Walker Classic (co-sanctioned by Asian Tour and PGA European Tour), PGA Grand Slam of Golf (United States - unofficial event)
  • 1999 Deutsche Bank Open-TPC of Europe (PGA European Tour), World Cup of Golf:individual (unofficial event), World Cup of Golf:team (unofficial event - with Mark O'Meara)
  • 2000 Johnnie Walker Classic (co-sanctioned by Asian Tour and PGA European Tour), World Cup of Golf:team (unofficial event - with David Duval)
  • 2001 Deutsche Bank-SAP Open TPC of Europe (PGA European Tour), Williams World Challenge (United States - unofficial event), PGA Grand Slam of Golf (United States - unofficial event)
  • 2002 Deutsche Bank-SAP Open TPC of Europe(PGA European Tour), PGA Grand Slam of Golf (United States - unofficial event)


Woods' golf game

When Woods burst onto the golf scene one the things which made the biggest impact on fans was his long driving. However, while he remains a long driver, he is by no means the longest, and does not attempt to be. He has instead focused on developing an excellent all-around game. His driving is generally accurate, his approach play accurate, his recovery and bunker play sometimes brilliant, and his putting is usually reliable. He is largely responsible for a shift to higher standards of athleticism amongst professional golfers, and is known for putting in more hours of practice than most.

Early in his professional career Woods's worked with the leading swing coach Butch Harmon, but since around 2003, he has effectively been his own coach. He was involved in a media spat with Harmon, who also works as a golf broadcaster, when Harmon suggested that he was in "denial" about the problems in his game, but they publicly patched up their differences.

Although he is considered charismatic, Woods' approach is essentially cautious. He aims for consistency: although he is better than any other golfer when he is in form, his best rounds are not better the other leading professionals' best rounds, but he has fewer bad rounds than them. He plays less tournaments then most professionals (twenty or twenty one a year compared to the typical twenty five to thirty), and focuses his efforts on preparing for and competing in the majors and most prestigious of the other tournaments. He is also notable for playing in more international tourmanents than most top American golfers, although it should be pointed out that this only means two or three a year, besides The Open Championship, and he is said to receive seven figure appearance fees for most of them.

Charity and youth projects

Tiger Woods has established several charitable and youth projects.

  • The Tiger Woods Foundation: The Tiger Woods Foundation was established in 1996 by Tiger Woods and his father Earl. It focuses on projects for children. Initially these comprised golf clinics (aimed especially at disadvantaged children), and a grant program. Further activities added since then include participation include university scholarships, an association with Target House at St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; the Start Something character development program, which had had over one million participants by 2003; and the Tiger Woods Learning Center.
  • Tiger Woods Learning Center: This is a 35,000 square foot educational facility due to open in Anaheim, California in 2005. It is expected to be used by several thousand students each year, with a day program for grades 4-6 and an after school program for grades 7-12. There will also be summer programs, weekend and community outreach programs and online learning programs. The centre's website states, "Our mission is to provide an interactive enrichment program that will improve individual aptitude in reading, math, science and technology". The centre will feature extensive multi-media facilities and an outdoor golf teaching area.
  • Tiger Jam: An annual fundraising concert. 2005's Tiger Jam VIII will be headlined by Stevie Wonder and Counting Crows.
  • Target World Challenge: An annual off-season charity golf tournament. The event also carries generous prize money, but Woods donates his winnings to his foundation.
  • Tiger Woods Foundation National Junior Golf Team: An eighteen member team which competes in the annual Junior World Golf Championships.

Controversy

Woods' success has led to three types of controversy:

  • He has been mentioned in discussion of the role of sport in the aspirations of American youth, especially African American youth, which some consider to be unhealthy. It should be noted that Woods is only one quarter African American, and has said that he does not regard it as his primary identity. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune decried the "racially charged, money-linked sports obsession" fueled by a "fixation in which the riches and fame of such sports heroes as Michael Jordan have caused a wildly disproportionate number of young black Americans, in particular, to focus on the brass ring of professional sports at the expense of more realistic and productive career paths." Woods dropped out of Stanford after two years to pursue his golf career. Page wrote, "That works out fine for his bank account, but, for too many others it only reinforces the wrongheaded notion that academics should take a back seat to athletics." Others see the involvement of Woods in this debate as inappropriate. His main responsibility was to make the right decision for his own career, he had the backing of his parents, who are certainly not feckless, and subsequent events suggest he timed his entry to professional golf appropriately. As mentioned above he has funded university scholarships and is founding a learning centre.
  • The second controversy focuses on the ecological impact of golf as a game, its allegedly negative social justice impact in Asia, and Woods' paid promotions of an SUV (the 2002 Buick Rendezvous) deemed second-most-dangerous by the IIHS, and of mutual funds said to be implicated in ecological devastation. Some would see this as simply opportunism by activist groups eager to gain publicity by discussing a top celebrity, and as saying little or nothing about Woods' personal ethics relative to less well known golfers.
  • The third controversy concerned Woods impact on the competitiveness and thus the public appeal of professional golf. This issue was most prominent in around 2001-02 when he was at his most dominant. "The question has been asked, seriously, and more than once: Isn't Tiger Woods actually bad for golf?" - Bill Lyon, Knight-Ridder. At first, some feared that Woods could drive all spirit of competition out of the game of golf, by obsoleting existing courses, and having no competitors. However, Woods was unable to keep up the winning streak, and the increases in television ratings and prize money which have occurred since Woods arrived on the golf scene have deprived the negative view of his impact of credibility. As of 2005 it is no longer heard. The mainstream view is that Woods' success is one of the most positive things that has ever happened to golf.

See also

External links

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