‘Tiger’ Woods: One of the greatest golfers of all time

Regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time, Eldrick Tont 'Tiger' Woods is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam. He won 82 PGA Tour events, including 15 majors, and 18 world tournaments. He was awarded the PGA Player of the Year a record 11 times & elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame.

He was born as Eldrick Tont Woods to Earl, a retired US Army officer and Vietnam War veteran, and Kultida Woods in Cypress, California, on December 30, 1975. He was nicknamed Tiger in honour of his father’s friend. A child prodigy, Tiger was introduced to golf when he was just a toddler by his father. He grew up in Orange County, California, and attended Western High School in Anaheim from where he graduated in 1994. At 15, he won the Junior World Golf Championships six times and became the youngest ever US Junior Amateur champion. Later he enrolled at Stanford under a golf scholarship and won his first collegiate event. Two years later, he left studies to pursue golfing as a career.

Career
In 1997 he won his first major, the Masters, in a record-breaking performance and became the tournament’s youngest winner at age 21. Soon he reached the No.1 position in the world rankings, setting the record for the fastest ascent to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings. In 1999, he won the PGA Championship and two years later he became the first player to win all four major professional titles at the same time. He won Masters titles in 2001 and 2002. In 2005, he won six official PGA Tour money events. A knee injury in 2008 forced him to take a short break but he came back to win the 2009 Presidents Cup with an amazing performance. In 2011, he fell to No.58 rank due to his personal, professional, and health woes. In 2013, he won three championships regaining his World No.1 position. Woods was the world’s top ranked golfer from August 1999 to September 2004 (264 consecutive weeks) and again from June 2005 to October 2010 (281 consecutive weeks). During this time, he won 15 of golf’s major championships. In 2019 at 43, he won the Masters again, his 15th major overall, becoming the second oldest golfer to win the Masters. In February 2021, Woods was hospitalised after a car collision and underwent emergency surgery.

Achievements and honours
He has been the number one golfer in the world for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks of any player in history. Woods was the first player to win consecutively four major tournaments of golf— the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open (Open Championship), and the PGA Championship. In 2007, he was inducted into The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento. In 2009, he was named ‘Athlete of the Decade’ by the Associated Press. He was named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year a record four times.He was one of two people to be named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year more than once. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Donald Trump in 2019.

Personal life
In 2004, he married former Swedish model Elin Nordegren. They have two children— daughter, Sam and son Charlie. The couple divorced in 2010. As per Forbes’ list, his net worth was at $800 million in 2018. Since 1996, he has earned $1.5 billion from endorsements, appearances and course design fees. Payne’s Valley, the first public golf course designed by Woods, opened in 2020 in Missouri.

Interesting facts
Woods has African American, Native American, Chinese, Thai and Dutch ancestry. He coined it as ‘Cablinasian’ (a syllabic abbreviation from Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian)

Tiger Woods’ first name, Eldrick, was chosen by his mother because it began with the letter ‘E’ (for Earl) and ended with the letter ‘K’ (for Kultida). His middle name Tont is a traditional Thai name. Woods was nicknamed Tiger in honour of his father, Earl’s friend, South Vietnamese Colonel Vuong Dang Phong, who had also been known as ‘Tiger’ for his fighting skills and indomitable courage.

In 2000, he signed a 5-year, $105 million contract extension with Nike, which was then the largest endorsement package signed by a professional athlete. A building is named after him at Nike’s headquarters.

Woods’ father Earl, a golf player himself, has written that Tiger first defeated him when he was 11 . He lost to Woods every time from then on. The legendary golfer is a lover of many watersports including scuba diving.