Facts about Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods Biography
The winner of 15 major championships, Tiger Woods was golf’s dominant superstar when a sex scandal and then injuries derailed his career starting for nearly a decade — before he came roaring back to win the Masters in 2019.
Tiger Woods had been a golfer and a celebrity for decades: his father Earl allegedly introduced Tiger to golf at age 9 months, and at age 2 the youngster made a now-famous appearance putting with Bob Hope on The Mike Douglas Show. Woods won three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles (1994-96), and in 1996 turned pro with a $40 million contract from Nike and a fame usually reserved for movie stars.
Woods made good on the hype, winning 46 PGA tournaments in his first ten seasons on the tour. He won the 1997 Masters in his first attempt as a pro and later won the PGA Championship (1999), the British Open (2000) and the U.S. Open (2000) to become one of the few golfers to win all four major tournaments during their careers.
In 2001 Woods won the Masters again, becoming the first golfer in the modern era to hold all four major tournament titles at once (2000 U.S Open, British Open and PGA Championship, and 2001 Masters). In 1999-2000 Woods won six consecutive tournaments, making him the first man to do so since Ben Hogan in 1948.
Tiger Woods wed Elin Nordegren on October 5, 2004 in Barbados; a Swede, she had been a nanny to the children of golfer Jesper Parnevik. Although 2005 and 2006 were tough on Woods — his father died on May 3, 2006 — he won the British Open in 2005 and 2006, and the PGA Championship in both 2006 and 2007.
But in 2009 things took a major turn when The National Enquirer alleged that Woods was having an affair with an event planner named Rachel Uchitel. Uchitel told The New York Post that she and Woods had “never had an affair,” but the story gained traction after Woods had an early-morning car crash outside his home on November 27, 2009, with gossip sites reporting that it followed an argument with his wife. Soon other women, including Jaimee Grubbs, came forward to claim they had slept with Woods before and during his marriage.
On December 11th of 2009, Woods released a statement admitting “infidelity” and he then took a break from golf, reportedly attending a rehabilitation clinic. He returned to playing golf in the spring of 2010. Woods and Nordegren announced their divorce in August of 2010. After a period in rehab for sex addiction, Woods returned to the pro golf tour, but a series of back injuries kept him hobbled for years.
After major back fusion surgery in 2017, Woods returned to the Tour in 2018 and won the tournament known as the Tour Championship on September 23, 2018. It was his first win in five years. In April of 2019 he again won the Masters, notching his 15th major victory and the first since the U.S. Open in 2008.
Extra credit
Tiger Woods has won all of pro golf’s major tournaments at least three times: The Masters in 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, and 2019, the PGA Championship in 1999, 2000, 2006 and 2007, the British Open in 2000, 2005 and 2006, and the U.S. Open in 2000, 2002 and 2008… Tiger Woods’s father served in Vietnam and nicknamed his son “Tiger” after a South Vietnamese army officer. Woods’s mother, Kultida, is from Thailand. Tiger’s middle name, Tont, is a traditional Thai name, according to Australian newspaper The Age… Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren have a daughter, Sam Alexis Woods (born on June 18, 2007), and a son, Charlie Axel (born on February 8, 2009). Woods told reporters that “Sam” was a nickname his father sometimes called him as child… Tiger Woods dated skier Lindsey Vonn from 2012 until 2015, when they announced their breakup on social media… By winning The Masters in both 2001 and 2002, Woods joined Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo as the only men to win in consecutive years… Tiger Woods once told Oprah Winfrey that as a child he had decided he was “Cablinasian” — a mixture of Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian. His mother Kutilda is from Thailand, his father is an American of multiple ethnic backgrounds… Before his marriage to Elin Nordegren, Tiger Woods’s longtime girlfriend was UCLA law student Joanna Jagoda.