American professional golfer Tiger Woods has enjoyed one of the most successful golfing careers of all time. After competing in amateur events since he was a toddler and representing Stanford University on a golf scholarship, Woods left college after two years to turn professional at the age of 20.
1996–1998: Early years and first major win
With the announcement "Hello, World." Tiger Woods became a professional golfer in August 1996 and signed endorsement deals worth $40 million from Nike, Inc. and $20 million from Titleist. These endorsement contracts were the highest in golf history up to that point. He played his first professional golf event at the Greater Milwaukee Open, tying for 60th place, recorded a hole-in-one, and would win two events in the next three months to qualify for the Tour Championship. For his efforts, Woods was named Sports Illustrated'''s 1996 Sportsman of the Year and PGA Tour Rookie of the Year. He began his tradition of wearing a red shirt during the final round of tournaments, which was a link to his college days at Stanford.
The following April, Woods won his first major, The Masters, with a record score of 18-under-par 270, by a record margin of 12 strokes. The landmark victory made Woods the tournament's youngest-ever winner, as well as its first African-American winner (and its first Asian-American winner). Woods set 20 Masters records in 1997 and tied six others. He went on to win another three PGA Tour events that year, and on June 15, 1997, in only his 42nd week as a professional, rose to number one in the Official World Golf Ranking, the fastest-ever ascent to world No. 1. At the conclusion of the 1997 season, Woods was named PGA Player of the Year, the first time a golfer had won the award in just his second year as a professional.
While expectations for Woods were high, his play faded in the second half of 1997, and in 1998 he only won a single PGA Tour event. He answered critics of his "slump" and what seemed to be wavering form by maintaining he was undergoing extensive swing changes with his coach, Butch Harmon, and was hoping to do better in the future.
1999–2002: Slams In June 1999, Woods won the Memorial Tournament, a victory that touched off one of the greatest sustained periods of dominance in the history of men's golf. He completed his 1999 campaign by winning his last four starts —- including the PGA Championship -— and finished the season with eight wins, a feat not achieved since 1974. Woods was voted PGA Tour Player of the Year and Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year for the second time in three years.
Picking up where he had left off in 1999, Woods started 2000 with his fifth consecutive victory and began a record-setting season. He extended his win streak to six at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in February with a memorable comeback—trailing by seven strokes with seven holes to play, he finished eagle-birdie-par-birdie for a 64 and a two-stroke victory. His six consecutive wins were the most since Ben Hogan in 1948. At his next tournament, the Buick Invitational, he finished tied for second, breaking the streak, but earned enough money to put him at the top of the PGA Tour's career money list, a position he has held ever since. In the 2000 U.S. Open, he broke or tied nine U.S. Open records with his 15-stroke win, including Old Tom Morris's record for the largest victory margin ever in a major championship, which had stood since 1862. He led by a record ten strokes going into the final round, and Sports Illustrated called it "the greatest performance in golf history." In the 2000 Open Championship at St Andrews, which he won by eight strokes, he set the record for lowest score to par (−19) in any major tournament, and Woods at one time held at least a share of that record in all four major championships (since eclipsed by Rory McIlroy's −16 at the 2011 U.S. Open and Jason Day's −20 at the 2015 PGA Championship). At 24, he became the youngest golfer to achieve the Career Grand Slam.
Woods's major championship streak was seriously threatened at the 2000 PGA Championship, when Bob May went head-to-head with Woods on Sunday at Valhalla Golf Club. However, Woods played the last twelve holes of regulation seven under par, and won a three-hole aggregate playoff over May with a birdie on the first hole and pars on the next two. He joined Ben Hogan (1953) as the only other player to win three professional majors in one season. Three weeks later, he won his third straight start on Tour at the Bell Canadian Open, becoming only the second man after Lee Trevino in 1971 to win the Triple Crown of Golf (U.S., British, and Canadian Opens) in one year. By the end of Woods' 2000 campaign, he had won three consecutive majors, nine PGA Tour events, and had set or tied 27 Tour records. Of the twenty events he entered, he finished in the top three fourteen times. His adjusted scoring average of 67.79 and his actual scoring average of 68.17 were the lowest in PGA Tour history, besting his own record of 68.43 in 1999 and Byron Nelson's average of 68.33 in 1945. He was named the 2000 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, becoming the first athlete to be honored twice, a feat that was matched by LeBron James in 2016. Woods was ranked as the twelfth best golfer of all time by Golf Digest magazine just four years after he turned professional.
The following season, Woods continued to dominate. His 2001 Masters Tournament win marked the only time in the modern era of the Grand Slam that any player has held all four major championship titles at the same time, a feat now known as the "Tiger Slam". It is not viewed as a true Grand Slam, however, because it was not achieved in a calendar year. Surprisingly, he was not a factor in the three remaining majors of the year, but finished with the most PGA Tour wins in the season, with five. In 2002, he started strongly, joining Nick Faldo (1989–90) and Jack Nicklaus (1965–66) as the only men to have won back-to-back Masters Tournaments.
Two months later, Woods was the only player under par at the U.S. Open, and resurrected buzz about the calendar Grand Slam, which had eluded him in 2000. All eyes were on Woods at the Open Championship, but his third round score of 81 in dreadful weather at Muirfield ended his Grand Slam hopes. At the PGA Championship, he nearly repeated his 2000 feat of winning three majors in one year, but bogeys at the 13th and 14th holes in the final round cost him the championship by one stroke. Nonetheless, he took home the money title, Vardon Trophy, and Player of the Year honors for the fourth year in a row.
2003–2004: Swing adjustments
The next phase of Woods's 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, falling to second in the PGA Tour money list in 2003 and fourth in 2004. Nevertheless, he was named 2003 PGA Player of the Year and PGA Tour Player of the Year after winning two World Golf Championships and finishing fourth at the Open Championship.
In September 2004, his record streak of 264 consecutive weeks as the world's top-ranked golfer ended at the Deutsche Bank Championship, when Vijay Singh won and overtook Woods in the Official World Golf Ranking.
Many commentators were puzzled by Woods's "slump," offering explanations that ranged from his rift with swing coach Butch Harmon to his engagement and marriage. At the same time, he let it be known that he was again working on changes to his swing, this time in hopes of reducing the wear and tear on his surgically repaired left knee, which was subjected to severe stress in the 1998–2003 version of his swing. Again, he anticipated that once the adjustments were complete, he would return to his previous form. Woods changed coaches, working with Hank Haney after leaving Harmon.
2005–2007: Resurgence In the 2005 season, Woods quickly returned to his winning ways. He won the Buick Invitational in January, and in March he outplayed Phil Mickelson to win the Ford Championship at Doral and temporarily return to the Official World Golf Ranking number one position (Singh displaced him once again two weeks later). In April, he finally broke his "drought" in the majors by winning the 2005 Masters Tournament in a playoff, which regained him the number one spot in the World Rankings. Singh and Woods swapped the #1 position several times over the next couple of months, but by early July Woods had reclaimed the top spot, propelled further by a victory at the 2005 Open Championship, his 10th major. He went on to win six official money events on the PGA Tour in 2005, topping the money list for the sixth time in his career. His 2005 wins also included two at the World Golf Championships.
For Woods, the year 2006 was markedly different from 2005. While he began just as dominantly (winning the first two PGA tournaments he entered on the year) and was in the hunt for his fifth Masters championship in April, he never mounted a Sunday charge to defend his title, allowing Phil Mickelson to claim the green jacket.
Death of father On May 3, 2006, Woods's father, mentor and inspiration, Earl, died at age 74 after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. Woods took a nine-week hiatus from the PGA Tour to be with his family. When he returned for the 2006 U.S. Open, the rust was evident—he missed the cut at Winged Foot, the first time he had missed the cut at a major as a professional, and ended his record-tying streak of 39 consecutive cuts made at majors. Still, a tie for second at the Western Open just three weeks later showed him poised to defend his Open Championship crown at Hoylake.
Returns to top form At the 2006 Open Championship, Woods almost exclusively used long irons off the tee (he hit driver only one time the entire week—the 16th hole of the first round), he missed just four fairways all week (hitting the fairway 92% of the time), and his score of −18 to par (three eagles, 19 birdies, 43 pars, and seven bogeys) was just one off of his major championship record −19, set at St Andrews in 2000 (since eclipsed by Jason Day). The victory was an emotional one for Woods, who dedicated his play to his father's memory.
Four weeks later at the 2006 PGA Championship, Woods again won in dominating fashion, making only three bogeys, tying the record for fewest in a major. He finished the tournament at 18-under-par, equaling the to-par record in the PGA that he shares with Bob May from 2000 (since eclipsed by Jason Day). In August 2006, he won his 50th professional tournament at the Buick Open—and at the age of thirty years and seven months, he became the youngest golfer to do so. He ended the year by winning six consecutive PGA Tour events, and won the three most prestigious awards given by the PGA Tour (Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Byron Nelson Awards) in the same year for a record seventh time.
At the close of his first 11 seasons, Woods's 54 wins and 12 major wins had surpassed the all-time eleven-season PGA Tour total win record of 51 (set by Byron Nelson) and total majors record of 11 (set by Jack Nicklaus). He was named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year for a record-tying fourth time.
Woods and tennis star Roger Federer, who share a major sponsor, first met at the 2006 U.S. Open tennis final. Since then, they have attended each other's events and have voiced their mutual appreciation for each other's talents.