Tiger Woods – Outstanding American golfer

Tiger Woods

Eldrick Tont  Woods
(December 30, 1975, Cypress, California, USA)
Nationality: United States of America
Category: Athletes
Occupation: Golf Players
Unique distinction: One of the most outstanding golfers of all time.
Height: 6′ 1″ (1.85 m)
Weight: 185 lb (84 kg)
Gender: Male

Quotes:
1. No matter how good you get you can always get better, and that’s the exciting part. 2. You can always become better.
3. Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.
4. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?
5. America’s a melting pot, all races, cultures, religious choices.
6. I love to compete. That’s the essence of who I am.
7. My will can move mountains.
8. I smile at obstacles.
9. The greatest thing about tomorrow is I will be better than I am today.
10. I don’t want to become as good as I once was. I want to become better.
11. Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught.
12. In order to help people, you have to first learn how to help yourself.
Website: Tigerwoods

Achievements and contributions:


Social and professional position: Tiger Woods is an American professional golfer.
The main contribution to (what is known): He is regarded as one of the most outstanding and famous golfers of all time.
Contributions: Tiger Woods is an outstanding American professional golfer, considered as one of the most outstanding and successful golfers of all time.
Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, the second-highest of any male player (after Jack Nicklaus leads with 18 wins), and 79 PGA Tour events.
He has more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other active golfer. (PGA-Professional Golfers’ Association)
He became the youngest golfer to achieve the Career Grand Slam and also is the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour.
He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record eleven times.
He has won 14 professional major golf championships.
He is only the second golfer, after Nicklaus, to have achieved a career in Grand Slam three times.
Woods has won 18 World Golf Championships.
A number of wins by tour:
Professional wins  – 106:
PGA Tour – 79, European Tour – 40, Japan Golf Tour – 2, Asian Tour – 1, PGA Tour of Australasia – 1, Other 16.
Best results in major championships:
Total wins – 14: 
Masters Tournament Won: 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005
U.S. Open Won: 2000, 2002, 2008
The Open Championship Won: 2000, 2005, 2006
PGA Championship Won: 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007
Ranked #2 in the 2008 Forbes The Celebrity 100 list.
Ranking PGA:  Woods has held the number one position for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks – 683 (On 20 October 2016).
 After his divorce, he lost golf form and his ranking gradually fell to # 58 in November 2011, then it rose again to #4 (6,71) on 16 June 2012, and fell to #21 (3,83) on 5th March 2012.
After winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational on March 25, 2013, he ascended to #1 once again and held it until May 2014.
On March 29, 2015, Woods had fallen to #104 and after back surgery in April 2014 and September 2015, he dropped out of the world top 500. His current Rank (on 20 October 2016) -is #802.
Honours and Awards: On December 5, 2007, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento. He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record 11 times and has the record of leading the money list in nine different seasons.
Major works: «How I Play Golf» (2001) is the best-selling golf instruction book, which had the largest print run of any golf book for its first edition, 1.5 million copies. Woods has written a golf instruction column for Golf Digest magazine since 1997.

Career and personal life:


Origin: Tiger Woods was born in Cypress, California. His father Ear (1932-2006), a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Vietnam War veteran, was of mixed African American, Chinese and Native American ancestry.
His mother Kultida (Tida) Woods (b. 1944) (née Punsawad), originally from Thailand, 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 is the only child of their marriage but has two half-brothers, Earl Jr. (b. 1955) and Kevin (b. 1957), and one half-sister, Royce (b. 1958) from Earl Woods’s first marriage.
Woods was a child prodigy who began to play golf at the age of two. He shot 48 for nine holes at age 3 and was featured in “Golf Digest” at age 5.
His father, the Earl, served as his teacher and mentor. Around the age of eight, Woods had become extremely proficient at the game, showing off his skills on such television shows as Good Morning America.
Education: Tiger graduated from Western High School in Anaheim in 1994. He also studied at Stanford University but left it before graduating.

Career highlights:

 Woods shot to fame after winning the U.S. Masters at Augusta in 1997—with a record score of 270. This year  Tiger Woods became the youngest-ever Masters champion at age 21 years, three months and 14 days and the first African-American to accomplish this feat.
In 1998 in his first appearance at the British Open, Woods tied the course record of 64.
The next few years brought even more successes, including four US PGA titles, three U.S. Open wins, three Open Championship wins, and four U.S. Masters wins.
Golf’s increased popularity is attributed to Woods’ presence. He is credited for dramatically increasing prize money in golf, generating interest in new audiences as the first person of colour to win the Masters, and for drawing the largest TV audiences in golf history.
In June 1999, Woods won the Memorial Tournament, a victory that marked the beginning of one of the greatest sustained periods of dominance in the history of men’s golf. He completed his 1999 campaign with eight wins.
He was voted PGA Tour Player of the Year and Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year for the second time in three years.
In 2000  he won three consecutive majors, nine PGA Tour events, and set 27 Tour records.  Tiger Woods became the youngest-ever career grand slam winner in 2000, at age 25, when he won the British Open.
In 2001 Woods won the Masters and became the first golfer to hold all four professional majors at the same time.
He finished his 2001 season with the most PGA Tour wins in the season, with five.
In 2003, among Woods’ five wins.
In 2004 Woods won only one official PGA Tour championship. In this year Woods married his longtime girlfriend Elin Nordegren, a Swedish model, in October of 2004. Returning to dominate the sport, he won six championships in 2005 and was voted the PGA Tour Player of the Year for the seventh time in nine years.
Woods took a couple of months off in 2006 following the death of his father. But then he returned and won the next two majors. In July 2006, at the age of 30, he won his third British Open, his 11th Major Championship.
In the next season, he won the World Golf Championship and US PGA Championship in August 2007.
Open on June 16, 2008, Woods won a dramatic playoff victory in the U.S. Open, then revealed that he was playing with a torn ACL and with a fracture in his leg.
On December 11, 2009, Woods announced he would take an indefinite leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage Woods returned to competition for the 2010 Masters on April 8, 2010, after a break lasting 20 weeks.
From December 2009 to early April 2010, Woods took leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage after he admitted infidelity, but he and his wife Elin Nordegren eventually divorced. After winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational on March 25, 2013, he ascended to the No.1 ranking once again. Woods had back surgery in April 2014 and September 2015.
Salary: He was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million.
In 2009 he was the first in Money Winners Ranking and earned 10.508.16 $.
In July 2010, Forbes announced Tigar Woods as the richest sportsman in the world earning a reported $105 m and $90.5m according to Sports Illustrated.
In 2000 he signed a five-year, $100-million endorsement contract with Nike. This contract remains the largest endorsement deal ever signed by an athlete.
Charity. The Tiger Woods Foundation, launched by Woods and his father in 1996, has raised millions of dollars to help underprivileged youth get started in golf and succeed in life.
In 2006, he donated $9,500,000 to the Tiger Woods Learning Center, Earl D.Woods Sr. Scholarship Fund, and other Tiger Woods Foundation programs.
In January 2006, he purchased a $39-million property in Jupiter, FL, which became his primary residence.

Personal life: 

He grew up in Orange County, California and graduated from Western High School in Anaheim in 1994.
He also studied at Stanford University and won a number of amateur U.S. golf titles before turning professional in 1996.
Woods was the youngest, at age 15 years,  ever to win the U.S. Junior Amateur and the youngest (at 18) to win the U.S. Amateur.
He was also one of the most accomplished amateur golfers in history, winning six USGA national championships, an NCAA title during his two years at Stanford University, and an unprecedented three consecutive U.S. Amateur Championships.
Woods left Stanford University before graduating in order to pursue his golfing career.
Woods was granted dual citizenship by the Thai government in 1997 prior to playing in the Asian Honda Classic.
In November 2003, Woods became engaged to Elin Nordegren, a Swedish model. They were introduced during The Open Championship in 2001 by Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik. They married on October 5, 2004, at the Sandy Lane resort on the Caribbean island of Barbados.
Woods experienced a great personal loss in 2006. His father died in May after battling cancer.  Despite his grief, Woods returned to golf and won several events, including the PGA Championship and the British Open.
On 18 June 2007 Tiger and Elin Nordegren became the parents of a girl, Sam Alexis Woods, in Orlando, FL. Their son, Charlie Axel Woods was born on February 8, 2009.
In 2009 his private life unravelled over allegations that surfaced in late November and December about affairs between him and several women.
On December 2, 2009, Woods issued an apology for his “transgressions.”
Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren officially divorced on August 23, 2010, during a brief proceeding at a courthouse in Miami, Florida. Elin received $110 million from Tiger.
Elin’s lawyers released the following statement on behalf of the couple: “We are sad that our marriage is over and we wish each other the very best for the future.”
On March 18, 2013, Woods announced that he and skier Lindsey Vonn were dating. They split up in May 2015.
Zest:
His nickname: Tiger. His given name is Eldrick, middle name, Tont, is a traditional Thai name, but he legally changed his name to “Tiger” in the late 1990s.
He got his nickname “Tiger” from a Vietnamese soldier friend of his father, who saved Earl’s life on several occasions Woods is a Buddhist.
He has said that his faith was acquired from his mother and that it helps control both his stubbornness and impatience. His mother made the Tiger club cover in his bag with the words “Love from Mom” in Thai stitched on it.
He wears a red shirt on the final day of every tournament because his mother feels that it is a “power colour” for him. He has his own line of golf watches.
Shares a birthday with NBA superstar LeBron James. Enjoys boating, water sports, fishing and car racing. Good friends with tennis superstar Roger Federer,  golfer Darren Clarke and  New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. His all-time favourite movie is Caddyshack (1980).