Tiger Woods

Early life

Woods was born on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. He is the only child of Earl and Kultida "Tida" Woods (née Punsawad). He has two half‑brothers and a half‑sister from his father's first marriage. Earl, a retired U.S. Army officer and Vietnam War veteran, was born to African-American parents and was also described as having European, Chinese, and Native American (Cherokee) ancestry. Kultida was originally from Thailand, where she met Earl during his tour of duty in 1968. She was of mixed Thai, Chinese, and Dutch descent. In 2002, ESPN stated that Woods was "one-quarter Thai, one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Caucasian, one-eighth African American and one-eighth Native American." Woods has described his ethnic background as "Cablinasian", a term he coined from Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian. His mother chose his first name, Eldrick, 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 was also known as "Tiger". Woods's niece, Cheyenne Woods, played collegiate golf at Wake Forest University and turned professional in 2012, making her debut at the LPGA Championship. Earl died on May 3, 2006. Kultida died on February 4, 2025. Following his mother's death, Woods stated that "without her none of my personal achievements would have been possible."

Eldrick Tont Woods was born on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. A child prodigy, he was introduced to golf before the age of two by his father, an accomplished athlete who was a single‑digit‑handicap amateur golfer and one of the earliest African American college baseball players at Kansas State University. Woods later said he had once hoped to become a baseball player like his father but abandoned that goal after tearing his rotator cuff. Because his father was a member of the military, he had playing privileges at the Navy Golf Course adjacent to the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, which allowed Woods to play there. Woods also played at the par-3 Heartwell Golf Course in Long Beach and at several Long beach municipal courses. In 1978, Woods putted against comedian Bob Hope during a television appearance on The Mike Douglas Show. At age three, he shot a 48 over nine holes at the Navy course. At age five, he appeared in Golf Digest and on ABC's That's Incredible!. Before turning seven, Woods won the Under‑Age‑10 division of the Drive, Pitch, and Putt competition at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress. In 1984, at age eight, he won the 9–10 boys' event—the youngest available age group—at the Junior World Golf Championships. He first broke 80 at age eight. Woods went on to win the Junior World Championships six times, including four consecutive titles from 1988 to 1991. His father later wrote that Woods first defeated him at age 11, with Earl playing h

The fortune

Woods has appeared on Forbes list of the world's highest-paid athletes. According to Golf Digest, Woods earned $769,440,709 from 1996 to 2007, and the magazine predicted that Woods would pass a billion dollars in earnings by 2010. In 2009, Forbes confirmed that Woods was indeed the world's first professional athlete to earn over a billion dollars in his career, after accounting for the $10 million bonus Woods received for the FedEx Cup title. The same year, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $600 million, making him the second richest person of color in the U.S., behind only Oprah Winfrey. In 2015, Woods ranked ninth in Forbes list of the world's highest-paid athletes, being the top among Asian Americans or the fourth among African Americans. As of 2017, Woods was considered to be the highest-paid golfer in the world. In 2022, Woods was the first golfer to have a net worth over one billion dollars, making him one of the richest celebrities.

Career

Woods was heavily recruited by college golf powers and chose Stanford University, the reigning 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. He selected a major in economics and was nicknamed "Urkel" by college teammate Notah Begay III. In 1995, he successfully defended his U.S. Amateur title at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island 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). 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 and won the NCAA individual golf championship. In winning the silver medal as leading amateur at The Open Championship, he tied the record for an amateur aggregate score of 281. 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.

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. Woods was named Sports Illustrated's 1996 Sportsman of the Year and PGA Tour Rookie of the Year. 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. Two months later, he set the record for the fastest ascent to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking. 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. Woods was severely myopic; his eyesight had a rating of 11 diopters. In order to correct this problem, he underwent successful laser eye surgery in 1999, and he immediately resumed winning tour events. In 2007, his vision again began to deteriorate, and he underwent laser eye surgery a second time. In 2000, Woods won six consecutive events on the PGA Tour, the longest winning streak since Ben Hogan accomplished the feat in 1948. One of these victories was the U.S. Open, where he broke or tied nine tournament records in what Sports Illustrated called "the greatest performance in golf history," winning by a record 15-stroke margin and earning $800,000. With the victory, Woods became the only golfer in history to have won the U.S. Junior Amateur, U.S. Amateur, and U.S. Open. At age 24, he became the youngest golfer to achieve the Career Grand Slam. At the end of 2000, Woods had won nine of the twenty PGA Tour events he entered and had broken the record for lowest scoring average in tour history. He was named the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, the only

Personal life

In November 2003, Woods became engaged to Elin Nordegren, a Swedish former model and daughter of former minister of migration Barbro Holmberg and radio journalist Thomas Nordegren. The two had been introduced during The Open Championship in 2001 by Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik, who had employed her as an au pair. They married on October 5, 2004, at the Sandy Lane resort in Barbados, and lived in Isleworth, a community in Windermere, a suburb of Orlando, Florida. In 2006, they purchased a $39-million estate on Jupiter Island, Florida, and began constructing a 10,000-square-foot home; Woods moved there in 2010 following the couple's divorce. Woods and Nordegren's first child, daughter Sam Alexis Woods, was born in 2007. Woods chose the name because his father had always called him "Sam." Their son, Charlie Axel Woods, was born in 2009.