Comprehensive information and links about Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods (born December 30, 1975, in Cypress, CaliforniaTiger Woods is an American golfer widely considered to be one of the greatest golfers of all time. In 2005, at the age of 29, he won his tenth major golf championship, placing him third on the all-time list behind Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen. He has won more times on the PGA Tour than any other active golfer. Woods, who is of mixed race, is credited with prompting a major surge of interest in the game of golf among racial minorities and young people in the United States.

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Background and family

Woods comes from a comfortable social background. His father, Earl Woods, is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, of mixed Black, Chinese and Native American ancestry. He is now the chairman of his son's charitable foundation, the (see section Charity and youth projects below). Woods' mother, Kultida Woods, is originally from Thailand, and is of mixed Thai, Chinese, and Dutch ancestry. This makes Woods himself one quarter Chinese, one quarter Thai, one-quarter Black, one eighth Native American, and one eighth Dutch[1]. He refers to his ethnic make-up as 'Cablinasian' (a portmanteau of ), a term he made up himself.

Woods' actual given name is 'Eldrick'. He was given the nickname 'Tiger' at birth, after a Vietnamese war comrade of his father's, and became generally known by that name. By the time he achieved national prominence in junior and amateur golf, he was simply known as "Tiger Woods".

In 2004, 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 on October 5, 2004, in a sunset ceremony at the Sandy Lane Hotel and Golf Club on Barbados, amid armed security and before approximately 200 family and friends. They currently make their primary home at Isleworth, a community in Windermere, a suburb of Orlando, Florida. They also have homes in Jackson, Wyoming, California and Sweden. On January 25, 2006, they purchased a 10-acre plot in Jupiter Island, Florida, termed one of the richest enclaves in the United States, which has waterfront on both the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River Lagoon. Valued at $38 million (USD), it is believed to be the largest single residential real estate transaction in the history of Martin County, Florida. [2]

Amateur career

Woods was a child prodigy who began to play golf at age 9. While still a small child, he demonstrated his golf skills in a television appearance on the Mike Douglas Show. In 1984, he won the 9-10 boys' event at the Junior World Golf Championships; Tiger was only 10 years old at the time, but 9-10 was the youngest age group available. Overall, he won the Junior World Championships six times, including four consecutive wins from 1988-1991. Woods went on to win the U.S. Junior Amateur title in 1991, 1992, and 1993; he remains the event's youngest-ever winner, and its only multiple winner. He followed this with three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles over the next three years. With his first US Amateur win in 1994, the year that he graduated high school, he became the youngest player ever to win that event. His five USGA Championships before age 20 qualify him for consideration as having the greatest under-20 golf career of all time. He attended Stanford University and won one NCAA individual championship. In 1996, Woods decided to leave Stanford after only two years because he believed he was ready to succeed as a professional.

With the announcement, "Well, I guess, hello world," Tiger Woods became a professional golfer in August 1996, playing his first round of professional golf at the Greater Milwaukee Open. He won two events in the next three months, and was named 1996's "Sportsman of the Year" by Sports Illustrated for the enormous impact he had on the game of golf even as a rookie. The following April, Woods won The Masters by a record margin of 12 strokes, and has been by far the highest-profile golfer in the world ever since. In the summer of 1997, Woods rose to the number one spot in the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time, though he was quickly supplanted by Ernie Els, and then David Duval.

Woods has formed a close friendship with leading PGA Tour professional Mark O'Meara, though O'Meara is almost twenty years his senior. O'Meara acted as a mentor to Woods for a time, and the two men won the 1999 World Cup together. The inspiration of working closely with Tiger's 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 one PGA Tour event. This "slump" was due to the fact that Tiger was working on swing modifications to adapt to the maturation of his physique, and to address concerns that the extremely vigorous and elastic swing he had used in his youth might cause him back problems in the long term and truncate his career. Woods was careful to avoid using this as an excuse, though, 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, a victory that marked the beginning of perhaps the greatest sustained period of dominance in the history of men's golf. He would go on to win seventeen PGA Tour events in the two calendar years that followed, and 32 in the next five, both achievements that had not been rivaled in several decades. Also in late 1999, Tiger embarked on a record-setting streak of consecutive weeks atop the Official World Golf Rankings; he would ultimately hold the top position for the next 264 weeks. During the run, Woods won seven out of the eleven major championships, starting with the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club and finishing with the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. Woods' 2000 season is viewed as the crown jewel of his career to date, and perhaps the most dominating year by a golfer ever. He started off by breaking Old Tom Morris' record for the largest victory margin ever in a major championship, which had stood since 1862, with his 15-shot win in the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. In the 2000 British Open at St Andrews, Woods set the record for lowest score to par (-19) in any major tournament, and he holds at least a share of that record in all four major championships. His major championship streak was seriously threatened at the 2000 PGA Championship, however, when upstart Bob May went head-to-head with Woods on Sunday at Valhalla in Louisville, matching Tiger stroke-for-stroke. Woods only escaped with his third straight major on the second playoff hole, where he made par and May's roller-coaster putt to tie missed by mere inches. The next season, though, Woods went back to dominating: his 2001 Masters win marked the only time anyone had ever won four consecutive majors, a feat which has become known as the "Tiger Slam". His adjusted scoring average of 67.79 in 2000 was the lowest in PGA TOUR history, exceeding his 68.43 average in 1999. His actual scoring average of 68.17 in 2000 was the lowest in PGA TOUR history, exceeding the 68.33 average by Byron Nelson in 1945. Woods' remarkable run from 1999-2003 is that much more impressive when one considers that golf in the modern era is generally considered to have far more depth than earlier periods.

The next phase of Woods' career saw him remain among the top competitors on the tour, but lose his dominating edge. 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. Even though no one has held the number one ranking for more total weeks than Woods, many commentators were puzzled by Tiger's "slump," offering explanations that ranged from Tiger's rift with swing coach Butch Harmon to his recent marriage to Elin Nordegren. At the same time, Woods let it be known that he was once again working on changes to his swing -- this time in hopes of reducing the wear and tear on his surgically-repaired left knee, which was subjected to severe stress in the 1998-2003 version of his swing. Again, Woods anticipated that once the adjustments were complete, he would return to his previous form.

In the 2005 PGA Tour season, Woods quickly returned to his winning ways. On March 6, he outdueled Phil Mickelson to win the Ford Championship at Doral, and returned to the Official World Golf Rankings' number one position in the process (though Singh displaced him once again two weeks later). On April 10, Woods finally broke his "drought" in the majors by winning the 2005 Masters in a tie-breaking playoff, which also assured him the number one spot in the World Rankings again. Singh and Woods swapped the Number 1 position several times over the next couple of months, but by early July Woods had established a substantial advantage, propelled further by a victory in The (British) Open Championship, a win that also gave him his 10th major. Tiger went on to win six official money events on the PGA Tour in 2005, topping the money list for the sixth time in his career. Woods' 2005 wins also included two at the World Golf Championships; he has won in 10 of his 19 career individual World Golf Championships appearances for an incredible 0.526 winning percentage.

To date, Woods has won 47 official money events on the PGA Tour, 18 other individual professional titles, and two team titles in the two-man WGC-World Cup. He owns the lowest career scoring average and the most career earnings of any player in PGA Tour history. Tiger 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 (known as the "Career Grand Slam"). With his win in the 2005 Open Championship, he became only the second golfer, after Nicklaus, to have won all four majors more than once. At the 2003 TOUR Championship, he set an all-time record for most consecutive cuts made with 114 (passing Byron Nelson's previous record of 113), and extended this mark to 142 before it ended on May 13, 2005 at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. The streak started in 1998[3]. Many commentators consider this one of the most remarkable golf accomplishments of all time, given the margin by which he broke the old record (and against much stronger fields than those in Nelson's day) and given that during the streak, the next longest streak by any other player was usually only in the 10s or 20s.

Woods won the "World Sportsman of the Year" award at the Laureus World Sports Awards in 2000 and 2001. He is the only individual two-time winner of magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award (1996, 2000). In many experts' eyes, Tiger's career accomplishments through 2005 (remarkably, all before the age of 30) qualify him for consideration as the greatest golfer of all time.

An interesting fact about Tiger is that he always wears a red shirt on the final round (usually on Sundays) of every tournament in which he plays, as, according to his mother's Thai heritage, the color red symbolizes power. In his series of video games, "Sunday Tiger Woods" is a secret unlockable character; the character has maxed-out stats in every category, and always wears a red shirt. Woods also puts tape on his middle and ring fingers before playing on Sundays, but not for medical reasons.

When Woods burst onto the professional golf scene in 1996, one of the things that made the biggest impact on fans was his prodigious driving. However, when he refused to upgrade his technology in the following years (insisting upon the use of steel-shafted clubs and smaller steel clubheads that promoted accuracy over distance), many opponents caught up to him, a trend that became painfully obvious during the 2002-2003 PGA Tour seasons. During 2004, Woods finally upgraded his driver technology to a titanium clubhead and graphite shaft and, as of 2005, he is back among the very longest hitters on the PGA Tour. Despite his length advantage, he has always focused on developing an excellent all-around game. Although his ability to drive the ball straight is somewhat questionable at times (in the last few years, he has typically been near the bottom of the Tour rankings in driving accuracy), his iron play is generally as accurate as any player ever to play (including Nicklaus), his recovery and bunker play is often brilliant (note, for example, his miraculous 30-foot chip-in at Augusta's 16th during the 2005 Masters), and his putting (especially under pressureTiger Woods is possibly his greatest asset. 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 worked almost exclusively with leading swing coach Butch Harmon, but since March 2004 he has been coached by the less-heralded Hank Haney. In June 2004, Woods 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 one of the most charismatic figures in golf's history, Woods' approach is, at its core, cautious. He aims for consistency: although he is better than any other Tour player when he is in top form, his dominance comes not from posting extremely low rounds (though he has been known to do that from time to time), but rather from avoiding bad rounds. To illustrate, the standard deviations of Woods' 18-hole scores are typically lower than those of most Tour players. Tiger plays fewer tournaments than most professionals (20-21 per year, compared to the typical 25-30), and focuses his efforts on preparing for (and peaking at) the Majors and the most prestigious of the other tournaments. His manner off of the course is cautious as well, as he carries himself in interviews and public appearances with a carefully controlled demeanor. One of the few breaches of Tiger's fan-friendly image occurred during the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, on the 18th tee in the second round. Hitting driver, Woods snap-hooked his tee shot into the Pacific Ocean, then let loose with a rich stream of expletives that NBC's microphones captured in real time. But while the USGA received several calls from offended viewers, Tiger quickly apologized, and the incident was quickly forgotten in the wake of Woods' record-setting performance that weekend.

The following are generally regarded to be the most memorable shots from the career of Tiger Woods.

With his victory in The Masters in 2001, Tiger became the only player ever to hold 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:

Woods is one of the few players to have finished in the Top 5 and Top 10 in All 4 Majors in a year. He has done this twice, first in 2000 and then in 2005.

Including Woods' three U.S. Amateur Championship wins, he and Bobby Jones are the only golfers to win thirteen total majors before age 30.

Woods was only a professional for approximately one-third of the 1996 season. In addition to his PGA Tour wins, he has won a number of events on professional tours outside North America, and several professional events which were not part of any official tour's schedule.

Woods receives the majority of his income from endorsement contracts, and is the highest-earning sportsman in the world. In June of 2005, 2003 Buick Invitational, WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, Bay Hill Invitational presented by Cooper Tires, 100th Western Open presented by Golf Digest, WGC-American Express Championship1998 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), PGA Grand Slam of Golf (United States - unofficial event)2000 Johnnie Walker Classic (co-sanctioned by Asian Tour and PGA European Tour), World Cup of Golf: team (unofficial event - with David Duval), PGA Grand Slam of Golf (United States - unofficial event)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)

Like any major public figure, Woods has been at the center of a number of controversies.

Perhaps the first such instance centered around a 1996 Nike television commercial that aired during a highly-rated NFL game on ESPN, the week of Tiger's professional debut. In it, clips of Woods' three U.S. Amateur victories ran as Woods spoke the words:

Critics pointed out that, throughout his amateur career, Woods had downplayed the race issue, even issuing a press release at the 1995 U.S. Open that stated, "ethnic background andor composition should not make a difference... The bottom line is that I am an American... and proud of it!" But now he was using it to sell shoes. The following week, James Glassman of the called the commercial "discordant, dishonest and even vile," writing: "The ad is telling blacks and other minorities that racism is so virulent in this country that, no matter how good you are, you will be despised and rejected by white [people]. You have to stand up to them (in Nikes, of course)... The only problem is that, in the case of Mr. Woods, it's based on a lie." Glassman went on to challenge Nike to produce a list of courses that Woods could not play; a Nike representative called him a week later and admitted that "Tiger Woods can play on any golf course he wants." Woods finished at seven-under (in a tie for 60th place) in the Greater Milwaukee Open, though, and the controversy was forgotten within weeks.

Also in 1996, Woods drew harsh criticism from the media (and his fellow Tour pros) when he broke protocol and withdrew from the Buick Challenge tournament in Pine Mountain, Georgia. But worse than the withdrawal from the tournament itself (which would lose revenue from the hundreds of fans who were showing up just to see Tiger), was the brush-off Woods gave to a dinner that was being held in his honor the evening before the event. The day before, Woods gave the tournament director his word that he would attend the dinner honoring him as the reigning NCAA Golf Player of the Year (an event with a $200 per plate fee), even though he was withdrawing from the tournament due to "mental fatigue". But the next morning, Tiger informed tournament officials (through his agent) that his plane was on the runway, and that he was heading home. While Woods did send letters to those in attendance at the dinner apologizing for his actions, Tiger's attitude did not sit well with his fellow pros. "Every has been telling him how great he is," Davis Love III said. "I guess he's starting to believe it."

Less than a month before Tiger's first Masters win, though, he himself had become embroiled in a controversy regarding demeaning off-color remarks. In early 1997, Woods agreed to an exclusive interview with , as IMG (Woods' managers) felt that exposure in the men's magazine would be a boon to his young career. sent Charlie Pierce to interview Tiger for three hours, and to accompany him to the magazine's photoshoot in a limousine. During the drive and the photoshoot, Pierce heard Woods use excessive profanity and tell a number of racist and sexist jokes to just about anyone who would listen. After one joke, Woods turned to Pierce and said, "Hey, you can't write this," to which Pierce responded, "Too late." The article, which came out in in the middle of March, printed Woods' remarks verbatim. In damage-control mode, Woods' camp fired back with allegations that Pierce had wire-tapped the limo, charges Pierce strongly denies. But the controversy over the article was extremely short-lived, especially when Woods copped the Green Jacket less than four weeks later. While Pierce seems to still dwell on the article (he wrote about the affair as recently as 2000), the golf world has, for all intents and purposes, totally forgotten the incident.

Early in Woods' career, a small number of golf experts expressed concern about his impact on the competitiveness of the game (and thus the public appeal of professional golf). This issue was most prominent from 1999-2002, when Woods was at his most dominant. "The question has been asked, seriously, and more than once: Isn't Tiger Woods actually bad for golf?" - commented Bill Lyon of Knight-Ridder (though Lyon ultimately concluded that he wasn't [6]). At first, some pundits feared that Woods would drive the spirit of competition out of the game of golf by making existing courses obsolete and relegating opponents to simply competing for second place each week. Many courses in the PGA Tour rota (including Major Championship sites like Augusta National) even began to add massive amounts of yardage to their tees in an effort to slow down long hitters like Tiger, a strategy that became known as "Tiger-Proofing". However, Woods was unable to maintain his torrid pace after 2002 (though for reasons largely unrelated to "Tiger-Proofing"), and the increases in PGA Tour television ratings and prize money since Woods arrived on the golf scene have basically discredited the negative view of his impact on the game, to the point that, as of 2005, the complaint is rarely heard. The current mainstream view is that Woods' success is one of the most positive things that has ever happened to golf.

Some activists have criticised him on other social and environmental issues. Some of these criticisms concern the nature of the game of golf in general, and the mention of Woods is a device to attract publicity by utilising the name of a top celebrity. Specific criticisms of things he has done personally have included those of his endorsement of an SUV (the 2002 Buick Rendezvous) deemed second-most-dangerous by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and of mutual funds which do not meet certain activists' ethical investment criteria. The publicity which activists are able to attract for their views about an individual are proportionate to the individual's fame, so it could be considered that this negative publicity says little about Woods' personal ethics relative to those of other golfers, or of members of the general public.

Just as Woods was wrapping up his victory at the 1997 Masters, fellow pro Fuzzy Zoeller created a firestorm of controversy when reporters posed to him the question, 'What do you think about Tiger?' Zoeller responded infamously: "That little boy is driving well and he's putting well. He's doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it?" Zoeller was immediately called to the carpet for what most considered racist comments; K-Mart, a retail chain that had sponsored Zoeller, quickly terminated his contract. While Zoeller apologized continually for the remarks (and begged Woods to call him so he could personally apologize and offer an explanation), Woods was slow to respond. Three days after Zoeller's apology at the Greater Greensboro Open, Tiger finally issued a press statement accepting Zoeller's apology. The two players would stage a peace offering at a tournament several weeks later, but Woods still harbored resentment over the comments. "I forgive him," he said almost a year later. "But I can't forget."