Tiger Woods 2007 Ps2
Gianira Jardin
Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer. He is tied for first in PGA Tour wins, ranks second in men's major championships, and holds numerous golf records.[4] Woods is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and is one of the most famous athletes in modern history.[4] He is an inductee of the World Golf Hall of Fame.[5]
Following an outstanding junior, college, and amateur golf career, Woods turned professional in 1996 at the age of 20. By the end of April 1997, he had won three PGA Tour events in addition to his first major, the 1997 Masters, which he won by 12 strokes in a record-breaking performance. He reached number one in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time in June 1997, less than a year after turning pro. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, Woods was the dominant force in golf. He was the top-ranked golfer in the world 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 13 of golf's major championships.
The next decade of Woods's career was marked by comebacks from personal problems and injuries. He took a self-imposed hiatus from professional golf from December 2009 to early April 2010 in an attempt to resolve marital issues with his wife at the time, Elin. Woods admitted to multiple marital infidelities, and the couple eventually divorced.[6] He fell to number 58 in the world rankings in November 2011 before ascending again to the number-one ranking between March 2013 and May 2014.[7][8] However, injuries led him to undergo four back surgeries between 2014 and 2017.[9] Woods competed in only one tournament between August 2015 and January 2018, and he dropped off the list of the world's top 1,000 golfers.[10][11] On his return to regular competition, Woods made steady progress to the top of the game, winning his first tournament in five years at the Tour Championship in September 2018 and his first major in 11 years at the 2019 Masters.
Woods has held numerous golf records. 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[12] 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 (trailing only Jack Nicklaus, who leads with 18) and 82 PGA Tour events (tied for first all time with Sam Snead).[13] Woods leads all active golfers in career major wins and career PGA Tour wins.Woods is the fifth (after Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus) player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest to do so. He is also the second golfer out of two (after Nicklaus) to achieve a career Grand Slam three times.[14]
Woods has won 18 World Golf Championships. He was also part of the American winning team for the 1999 Ryder Cup. In May 2019, Woods was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Trump, the fourth golfer to receive the honor.[15]
On February 23, 2021, Woods was hospitalized in serious but stable condition after a single-car collision and underwent emergency surgery to repair compound fractures sustained in his right leg in addition to a shattered ankle.[16] In an interview with Golf Digest in November 2021, Woods indicated that his full-time career as a professional golfer was over, although he would continue to play "a few events per year".[17] For the first time since the car crash, he returned to the PGA Tour at the 2022 Masters.
Woods was born on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California,[18] to Earl[19] and Kultida "Tida" Woods.[20] He is their only child, though he has two half-brothers and a half-sister from his father's first marriage.[21] Earl was a retired U.S. Army officer and Vietnam War veteran; he was born to African-American parents and was also said to have had European and Native American descent.[22][23] Kultida (ne Punsawad) is originally from Thailand, where Earl met her when he was on a tour of duty there in 1968. She is of mixed Thai, Chinese, and Dutch ancestry.[24] In 2002, ESPN claimed: "For the record, he is one-quarter Thai, one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Caucasian, one-eighth African American and one-eighth Native American."[25] Tiger has described his ethnic make-up as "Cablinasian" (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian).[26]
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.[27] Woods has a niece, Cheyenne Woods, who played for the Wake Forest University golf team and turned professional in 2012 when she made her pro debut in the LPGA Championship.[28]
Woods grew up in Orange County, California. He was a child prodigy who was introduced to golf before the age of two by his athletic father Earl Woods. Earl was a single-digit handicap amateur golfer who also was one of the earliest African-American college baseball players at Kansas State University.[29] Woods told reporters he had wanted to be a baseball player like his father but abandoned that goal after tearing his rotator cuff.[30] His father was a member of the military and had playing privileges at the Navy golf course beside the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, which allowed Tiger to play there. Tiger also played at the par 3 Heartwell golf course in Long Beach, as well as some of the municipals in Long Beach.[31]
When Woods was 13 years old, he played in the 1989 Big I, which was his first major national junior tournament. In the final round, he was paired with pro John Daly, who was then relatively unknown. The event's format placed a professional with each group of juniors who had qualified. Daly birdied three of the last four holes to beat him by only one stroke.[43] As a young teenager, Woods first met Jack Nicklaus in Los Angeles at the Bel-Air Country Club, when Nicklaus was performing a clinic for the club's members. Woods was part of the show, and he impressed Nicklaus and the crowd with his skills and potential.[44] Earl Woods had researched in detail the career accomplishments of Nicklaus and had set his young son the goals of breaking those records.[42]
Woods was 15 years old and a student at Western High School in Anaheim when he became the youngest U.S. Junior Amateur champion; this was a record that stood until it was broken by Jim Liu in 2010.[45] He was named 1991's Southern California Amateur Player of the Year (for the second consecutive year) and Golf Digest Junior Amateur Player of the Year. In 1992, he defended his title at the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, becoming the tournament's first two-time winner. He also competed in his first PGA Tour event, the Nissan Los Angeles Open (he missed the 36-hole cut), and was named Golf Digest Amateur Player of the Year, Golf World Player of the Year, and Golfweek National Amateur of the Year.[46][47]
The following year, Woods won his third consecutive U.S. Junior Amateur; he remains the event's only three-time winner.[48] In 1994, at the TPC at Sawgrass in Florida, he became the youngest winner of the U.S. Amateur, a record he held until 2008 when it was broken by Danny Lee.[49][50] He was a member of the American team at the 1994 Eisenhower Trophy World Amateur Golf Team Championships (winning), and the 1995 Walker Cup (losing).[51][52]
Woods graduated from Western High School at age 18 in 1994 and was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" among the graduating class. He starred for the high school's golf team under coach Don Crosby.[53] Woods learned to manage his stuttering as a boy.[54] This was not widely known until he wrote a letter to a boy who contemplated suicide. Woods wrote, "I know what it's like to be different and to sometimes not fit in. I also stuttered as a child and I would talk to my dog and he would sit there and listen until he fell asleep. I also took a class for two years to help me, and I finally learned to stop."[55]
Woods was heavily recruited by college golf powers. He chose Stanford University, the 1994 NCAA champions. He enrolled at Stanford in the fall of 1994 under a golf scholarship and won his first collegiate event, the 40th Annual William H. Tucker Invitational, that September.[56] He selected a major in economics and was nicknamed "Urkel" by college teammate Notah Begay III.[57] In 1995, he successfully defended his U.S. Amateur title at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island[49] and was voted Pac-10 Player of the Year, NCAA First Team All-American, and Stanford's Male Freshman of the Year (an award that encompasses all sports).[58][59]
At age 19, Woods participated in his first PGA Tour major, the 1995 Masters, and tied for 41st as the only amateur to make the cut. At age 20 in 1996, he became the first golfer to win three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles[60] and won the NCAA individual golf championship.[61] In winning the silver medal as leading amateur at The Open Championship, he tied the record for an amateur aggregate score of 281.[62] He left college after two years in order to turn professional in the golf industry. In 1996, Woods moved out of California, stating in 2013 that it was due to the state's high tax rate.[63]
Woods turned professional at age 20 in August 1996 and immediately signed advertising deals with Nike, Inc. and Titleist that ranked as the most lucrative endorsement contracts in golf history at that time.[64][65] Woods was named Sports Illustrated's 1996 Sportsman of the Year and PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.[66] On April 13, 1997, he won his first major, the Masters, in record-breaking fashion and became the tournament's youngest winner at age 21.[67] Two months later, he set the record for the fastest ascent to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking.[68] After a lackluster 1998, Woods finished the 1999 season with eight wins, including the PGA Championship, a feat not achieved since Johnny Miller did it in 1974.[69][70]