Athletes - Tiger Woods

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	Athletes - Tiger Woods

Eldrick Tont (Tiger) Woods (born December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California) 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 10th major golf championship, placing him third on the all-time list behind Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen. He has more wins 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 minorities and young people in the United States.

Background and family

Woods' 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 Tiger Woods Foundation (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 African American, one eighth Native American, and one eighth Dutch. He refers to his ethnic make-up as Cablinasian (a portmanteau of Caucasian, Black, American-Indian, and Asian), a term he made up himself.

Woods' actual given name is 'Eldrick'. He was given the nickname 'Tiger' at birth, after Vuong Dang Phong, 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 and live at Isleworth, a community in Windermere, a suburb of Orlando, Florida. They also have homes in Jackson, Wyoming, California and Sweden. In January 2006, Woods and his wife purchased a $38 million residential property in Jupiter Island, Florida, which they intend to make their primary residence. Woods' Jupiter Island neighbors will include golfers Greg Norman and Nick Price, as well as singers Céline Dion and Alan Jackson. In 2006 Woods was named Forbes highest paid athlete . At around 87 million a year, that also put him at second in the overall list of highest paid celebrities.

Amateur career

Woods was a child prodigy who began to play golf at age three. In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired on March 26, 2006, Woods explained that he suffered from a severe stuttering problem when he was younger. 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 eight years old at the time, but 9-10 was the youngest age group available. Tiger went on to win the Junior World Championships six times, including four consecutive wins from 1988-1991. Woods then won 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 by becoming the only person to win three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles over the next three years. With his first US Amateur win in 1994 over Trip Kuehne, 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 two years to pursue professional golf.

Professional career

With the announcement, "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. On 15 June 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 of Golf together. The inspiration of working closely with Tiger 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.

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Athletes - Tiger Woods

Background and family

Amateur career

Professional career

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