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Eldrick "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is
considered one of the greatest golfers of all
time.  In 2005, at the age of 29, he reached the
milestone of ten professional Major championships
(golf)|major golf championships, placing him third
on the golfers with most major championship
wins|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 golfers with most PGA Tour wins|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.

Woods, who is of mixed race, is credited with
prompting a major surge of interest in the game of
golf, especially among racial minorities and
younger people in the United States. 
 
==Background and family==
Woods is from a comfortable social background. He
was born in Cypress, California|Cypress,
California. His father, Earl Woods, is a Vietnam
War veteran and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant
colonel, of mixed African American, Caucasian
race|Caucasian, and Native American ancestry. He
is now the chairman of his son's charitable Tiger
Woods Foundation (see section 9 below). Woods'
mother Kultida Woods is originally from Thailand,
and has mixed Thai and China|Chinese ancestry.

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 was achieving
national prominence in amateur golf, he was always
called Tiger Woods. 

In 2003, Woods became engaged to Elin Nordegren, a
Sweden|Swedish model. They were introduced by
Swedish golf star Jesper Parnevik, who had
employed her as a nanny. They married in a sunset
ceremony at the Sandy Lane Hotel and Golf Club on
Barbados amid armed security before approximately
200 family and friends on October 5, 2004. They
presently make their home in Windermere,
Florida|Windermere, a suburb of Orlando, Florida.

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

==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. 

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 of Golf|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.

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. 

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
majors|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 Tom Morris, Sr.|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.

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. 

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.

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 professional golf tours|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.

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).

==Major Championships==
Woods' Major championships (golf)|major
championship victories are as follows:

* The Masters (known in Great Britain as the US
Masters)(1997, 2001, 2002, 2005)
* U.S. Open (golf)|US Open (2000, 2002)
* The Open Championship (known in North America as
the British Open) (2000, 2005)
* PGA Championship (1999, 2000) 

With his victory in The Masters in 2001, he became
the only man to have held 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 of golf|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:
*The Masters: -18 (270), 1997 (outright to-par and
low 72 holes record)
*US Open: -12 (272), 2000 (outright to par record)
**Woods shares the low 72-holes record with Jack
Nicklaus, Lee Janzen, and Jim Furyk.
*The Open Championship: -19 (269), 2000 (outright
to-par record)
**Greg Norman holds the low 72-holes record at
267.
*PGA Championship: -18 (270), 2000  (to-par record
shared with Bob May (golfer)|Bob May)
**David Toms holds the low 72-holes record at 265.

The above performances have also given him the
record victory margin in two majors:
*The Masters: 12 strokes, 1997
*US Open: 15 strokes, 2000 (record for all majors)

Tiger also 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.

===Results===
{| cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" border="1"
style="font-size: 95%; border: #aaa solid 1px;
border-collapse: collapse;"
|- bgcolor="#eeeeee"
! Tournament !! 1995 !! 1996 !! 1997 !! 1998 !!
1999 !! 2000 !! 2001 !! 2002 !! 2003 !! 2004 !!
2005
|-
|The Masters Tournament|The Masters
|align="center"|T41
|align="center"|CUT
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|T8
|align="center"|T18
|align="center"|5
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|T15
|align="center"|T22
|align="center"|1

|-
|U.S. Open (golf)|U.S. Open
|align="center"|WD
|align="center"|T82
|align="center"|T19
|align="center"|T18
|align="center"|T3
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|T12
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|T20
|align="center"|T17
|align="center"|2

|-
|The Open Championship
|align="center"|T68
|align="center"|T22
|align="center"|T24
|align="center"|3
|align="center"|T7
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|T25
|align="center"|T28
|align="center"|T4
|align="center"|T9
|align="center"|1

|-
|PGA Championship
|align="center"|DNP
|align="center"|DNP
|align="center"|T29
|align="center"|T10
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|T29
|align="center"|2
|align="center"|T39
|align="center"|T24
|align="center"|T4
|}

DNP = did not play

WD = withdrew

CUT = missed the half way cut

"T" indicates a tie for a place.


==PGA TOUR career summary==


Year
Majors
Other wins
PGA TOUR
wins
Earnings ($)
Money list rank
1996
0
2
2
 
http://www.pgatour.com/players/results/149765/1996
790,594
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/r/
1996/109 24
1997
1
3
4
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/1997 2,066,833
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/r/1997/10
9 1
1998
0
1
1
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/1998
1,841,117
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/
r/1998/109 4
1999
1
7
8
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/1999
6,616,585
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/
r/1999/109 1
2000
3
6
9
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/2000
9,188,321
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/
r/2000/109 1
2001
1
4
5
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/2001 6,687,777
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/r/2001/10
9 1
2002
2
3
5
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/2002 6,912,625
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/r/2002/10
9 1
2003
0
5
5
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/2003 6,673,413
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/r/2003/10
9 2
2004
0
1
1
http://www.pgatour.
com/players/results/149765/2004
5,365,472
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/
r/2004/109 4
2005*
2
3
5
http://www.pgatour
.com/players/results/149765
8,592,674
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders/
r/2005/109 1
Career*
10
35
45
http://www.pg
atour.com/stats/leaders/r/2005/110
53,735,410
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/leaders
/r/2005/110 1st


* Updated 21 August 2005

Woods was only a professional for around 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
an official tour schedule.

Woods makes most of his income from endorsement
contracts and is the highest earning sportsman in
the world. In 2005, Forbes estimated his annual
income at $87 million
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/53/WR6D.html.

==PGA Tour wins==

*1996  Las Vegas Invitational, Walt Disney
World/Oldsmobile Classic  
*1997  Mercedes Championships, The Masters
Tournament|The Masters, EDS Byron Nelson
Championship|GTE Byron Nelson Golf Classic,
Western Open|Motorola Western Open  
*1998  BellSouth Classic  
*1999  Buick Invitational, Memorial Tournament,
Western Open|Motorola Western Open, PGA
Championship, WGC-NEC Invitational, National Car
Rental Golf Classic/Disney, The Tour Championship,
WGC-American Express Championship  
*2000  Mercedes Championships, AT&T Pro-Am|AT&T
Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Bay Hill
Invitational, Memorial Tournament, U.S. Open
(golf)|U.S. Open, The Open Championship, PGA
Championship, WGC-NEC Invitational, Canadian
Open|Bell Canadian Open  
*2001  Bay Hill Invitational,  The Players
Championship, The Masters Tournament|The Masters,
Memorial Tournament, WGC-NEC Invitational  
*2002  Bay Hill Invitational|Bay Hill Invitational
presented by Cooper Tires, The Masters
Tournament|The Masters,  U.S. Open (golf)|U.S.
Open, Buick Open, WGC-American Express
Championship  
*2003  Buick Invitational, WGC-Accenture Match
Play Championship, Bay Hill Invitational|Bay Hill
Invitational presented by Cooper Tires, Western
Open|100th Western Open presented by Golf Digest,
WGC-American Express Championship  
*2004  WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship  
*2005  Buick Invitational, Ford Championship at
Doral, The Masters Tournament|The Masters, The
Open Championship, WGC-NEC Invitational

Major championships are shown in bold.

==Other professional wins==
*1997 Asian Honda Classic (Asian Tour) 
*1998 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), WGC-World Cup|World Cup of Golf:
individual (unofficial event), WGC-World Cup|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), WGC-World
Cup|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), Target World Challenge|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)
*2004 Dunlop Phoenix (Japan Golf Tour), Target
World Challenge (United States - unofficial event)

==Woods' golf game==


When Woods burst onto the golf scene, one of the
things which made the biggest impact on fans was
his long driving. However, he refused to upgrade
his technology while other players caught up to
him during the 2002-2003 seasons on the PGA Tour.
During 2004, Woods finally upgraded his driver
technology and, as of 2005, he is back in his
place as one of the very longest hitters on the
PGA Tour. Despite his length advantage, he has
always focused on developing an excellent
all-around game. His driving is generally
accurate, his approach play accurate, his recovery
and bunker play sometimes brilliant, and his
putting is usually reliable. 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's worked
with the leading swing coach Butch Harmon, but
since he has been coached by the less-heralded
Hank Haney. He 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 charismatic, Woods'
approach is essentially cautious. He aims for
consistency: although he is better than any other
golfer when he is in form, his dominance comes not
from having best rounds that are better than the
other leading professionals' bests, but from
having fewer bad rounds.  He plays fewer
tournaments than most professionals (twenty or
twenty one a year compared to the typical twenty
five to thirty), and focuses his efforts on
preparing for and competing in the majors and the
most prestigious of the other tournaments.

==Charity and youth projects==

Tiger Woods has established several charitable and
youth projects.

*The Tiger Woods Foundation: The Tiger Woods
Foundation was established in 1996 by Tiger Woods
and his father Earl. It focuses on projects for
children. Initially these comprised golf clinics
(aimed especially at disadvantaged children), and
a grant program. Further activities added since
then include university scholarships, an
association with Target House at St. Jude Hospital
in Memphis, Tennessee; the Start Something
character development program, which had had over
one million participants by 2003; and the Tiger
Woods Learning Center. 
*Tiger Woods Learning Center: This is a 35,000
square foot (3,000 m²) educational facility
due to open in Anaheim, California in 2005. It is
expected to be used by several thousand students
each year, with a day program for grades 4 to 6
and an after school program for grades 7 to 12.
There will also be summer programs, weekend and
community outreach programs and online learning
programs. The center's website states, "Our
mission is to provide an interactive enrichment
program that will improve individual aptitude in
reading, math, science and technology". The centre
will feature extensive multi-media facilities and
an outdoor golf teaching area. 
*Tiger Jam: An annual fundraising concert. 2005's
Tiger Jam VIII was headlined by Stevie Wonder and
Counting Crows.
*Target World Challenge: An annual off-season
charity golf tournament. The event also carries
generous prize money, but Woods donates his
winnings to his foundation.
*Tiger Woods Foundation National Junior Golf Team:
An eighteen member team which competes in the
annual Junior World Golf Championships.

==Controversy==
Early in Woods' career a small number of golf
experts expressed concern about his impact on the
competitiveness and thus the public appeal of
professional golf. This issue was most prominent
in around 2001-02 when he was at his most dominant
game level. "The question has been asked,
seriously, and more than once: Isn't Tiger Woods
actually bad for golf?" - commented Bill Lyon of
Knight-Ridder, before going on to argue that he
wasn't
http://www.tigertales.com/tiger/bad0816.html . At
first, some feared that Woods could drive all
spirit of competition out of the game of golf, by
obsoleting existing courses, and having no
competitors.  However, Woods was unable to keep up
the winning streak, and the increases in
television ratings and prize money which have
occurred since Woods arrived on the golf scene
have discredited the negative view of his impact
on the game. As of 2005 it is no longer heard. The
mainstream view is that Woods' success is one of
the most positive things that has ever happened to
golf.

Woods has also been mentioned in relation to
certain wider controversies, including the debate
about the role of sport in the aspirations of
American youth, especially African American youth,
which some consider to be unhealthy. Clarence Page
of the Chicago Tribune decried the "racially
charged, money-linked sports obsession" fueled by
a "fixation in which the riches and fame of such
sports heroes as Michael Jordan have caused a
wildly disproportionate number of young black
Americans, in particular, to focus on the brass
ring of professional sports at the expense of more
realistic and productive career paths." Woods
dropped out of Stanford after two years to pursue
his golf career. Page wrote, "That works out fine
for his bank account, but, for too many others it
only reinforces the wrongheaded notion that
academics should take a back seat to athletics."
Others see the inclusion of Woods in this debate
as inappropriate, arguing that his main
responsibility was to make the right decision for
his own career, that he had the backing of his
parents, who are certainly not feckless, and that
subsequent events suggest he timed his entry to
professional golf appropriately. As mentioned
above he has funded university scholarships and is
founding a learning centre. 

Some activists have criticised him on certain
social and environmental issues. Some of these
criticisms concern 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.

==See also==
*Golfers with most PGA Tour wins
*Golfers with most major championship wins
*Most PGA Tour wins in a year

== External links ==
* imdb name|id=0971329|name=Tiger Woods
* tvtome person|id=94321|name=Tiger Woods
* http://www.tigerwoods.com/ Official Tiger Woods
Site
**
http://www.tigerwoods.com/content/default.sps?iTyp
e=6266 Biography on his website
* http://www.twfound.org Tiger Woods Foundation
** http://www.twlc.org/ Tiger Woods Learning
Center
* http://www.pgatour.com/players/bio/149765
Profile on PGA Tour site
* http://www.golfstarsonline.com/W/Tiger_Woods/
Tiger Woods at Golf Stars Online Links to relevant
sites, interviews, feature articles and similar.
*http://tiger-woods-news.newslib.com/ Newslib.com
feed of articles about Tiger Woods
* http://golf.about.com/od/tigerwoods/ Tiger Woods
on About.com Profile, interviews, trivia and more
resources.
*
http://www.golfinvestors.com/players/profile.php?i
d=1 Profile on GolfInvestors

Golf world number ones (men)