Tiger Woods

Eldrick "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American golfer who is considered one of the greatest golfers of all time. In 2005, at the age of 29, he reached the milestone of winning a tenth major golf championship, placing him third on the all time list behind Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen. Including his three U.S. Amateur Championship wins he and Bobby Jones are the only golfers to win thirteen majors before age 30. He has won more times on the PGA Tour than any other active golfer and he holds the PGA Tour record for most consecutive tournament cuts made with 142.

Professional career

Woods became a professional golfer in August 1996 playing his first round of professional golf at the Greater Milwaukee Open (GMO). 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.

Related Topics:
August - 1996 - April - The Masters - Official World Golf Rankings

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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.

Related Topics:
Mark O'Meara - World Cup

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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 him back problems in the long term 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.

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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 achievements that hadn't been rivaled for several decades, and golf in Woods' era is generally seen as having much more 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. His 2001 Masters win marked the only time anyone had ever won four consecutive majors, a feat which became known as the Tiger Slam. He broke 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. In the 2000 British Open he set the record for lowest score to par, -19, in any major tournament and holds at least a share of the record in all four major championships for lowest score to par. 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.

Related Topics:
Memorial Tournament - Major championships - Old Tom Morris' - 1862 - 2000

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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. No one has held the number one ranking more total weeks than Woods. 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.

Related Topics:
September - 2004 - Vijay Singh

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At the start of the 2005 PGA Tour season, Woods returned to his winning ways. On 6 March he won the Ford Championship at Doral and returned to number one in the Official World Golf Rankings, but just two weeks later, Singh displaced him once again. On 10 April, Woods broke his "drought" in the majors by winning the 2005 Masters in a tie-breaking playoff, which also assured him of returning to number one in the World Rankings once 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 for his 10th major.

Related Topics:
6 March - Ford Championship at Doral - Official World Golf Rankings - 10 April

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To date, Woods has won 45 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. 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 1998http://www.pgatour.com/story/8469590. 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 another player was usually only in the 10s or 20s.

Related Topics:
PGA Tour - Gene Sarazen - Ben Hogan - Jack Nicklaus - Gary Player - Golf - Cuts - Byron Nelson - EDS Byron Nelson Championship

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Woods won the "World Sportsman of the Year" award at the Laureus World Sports Awards in 2000 and 2001. He is the only two-time winner as an individual of Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award (1996, 2000).

Related Topics:
Laureus World Sports Awards - Sports Illustrated - Sportsman of the Year

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An interesting fact about Tiger is that he always wears a red shirt on the final round of every tournament in which he plays. According to his mother's religion, the color red symbolizes power. He also puts tape on his middle and ring fingers, not for medical reasons, but for superstitions.

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