Growing up, I was always fascinated with all the professional football and basketball players like Michael Jordan and Michael Vick because they were athletes that looked like me. I often envisioned myself playing on the court or running the football and scoring a touchdown. I even got the chance to play a year on my high school’s varsity team as a ‘Wide Receiver.’ As I got older, I began to fade away from sports and started to like the different trades of the medical field. I once worked as a technician at a local eye clinic. One of the doctors that I worked with was a fan of Tom Brady, LeBron James and even the great Tiger Woods. In the spring of 2018, he and my friend Jason were invited to see Tiger Woods play in Jacksonville, Florida and it was such an awesome experience. During his golf game, the crowd had to stop talking so Tiger would not be disturbed when he took his shot. I will never forget that day because it was an opportunity of a lifetime.
Tiger Eldrick, Woods, was born on December 30, 1975. He is the only child of two amazing parents. Tiger is the son of Earl Woods, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, and his wife, Kultida, is a native of Thailand. Tiger was a nickname that was named after a Vietnamese soldier and friend of his father, Vuong Dang Phong, to whom his father had also given that nickname. Tiger is not married but he and his ex-wife Elin Nondegree, a Swedish model have two amazing children; first, there is the daughter Sam Alexis and two years later Charlie Axel was born.
Young Tiger once took an interest in golf at a young age and loved watching and imitating his father’s every move when playing golf. Tiger once appeared on the ‘Mike Douglas Show’ at age two, putting with Bob Hope. A putt means to knock a golf ball in a hole at close range. Tiger once shot a forty-eight for nine holes at the age of three and was featured in ‘Golf Digest’ at the age of five. Tiger played in his first professional tournament in 1992, at the age of sixteen, the ‘Los Angeles Open’, and made the thirty-six-hole cut and tied for thirty-fourth place in the 1994 ‘Johnnie Walker Asian Classic’ in Thailand. Tiger was a student at Stanford University in 1994 and in two years he won ten collegiate events, concluding with the NCAA title.
On August 27, 1996, Tiger began his professional golfing career and he has continued to push the envelope; he has one hundred and six worldwide wins and fifteen majors. Tiger has eighty-two ‘PGA TOUR’ wins, tied with Sam Snead, holding the record for the most wins in history. He has also won five Master’s Tournaments, four PGA Championships, three ‘U.S. Open Championships just to name a few. In 2000, at the British Open at St. Andrews, I discovered that Tiger became the youngest to complete the ‘Grand Slam’ of professional major championships and only the fifth person to do it. Tiger was also the youngest Master’s champion ever, at the age of twenty-one. At the height of Tiger’s golfing success, Tiger had lost his best friend, his father in 2006; he was battling prostate cancer.
In 2008, he won four of six PGA TOUR events, including his fourteenth major at the U.S. Open–his last event of the year before season-ending knee surgery, and the ‘Dubai Desert Classic’ just to name a few. Once at his major win at ‘Torrey Pines, Tiger sank a twelve-foot birdie putt on the seventy-second hole to force a nineteenth hole playoff. In 2021, he was involved in a car accident but Tiger persisted on and he reminded us that we are ‘superhumans.’
Today, Tiger is still golfing, and he is inspiring other great golfers like his son and teaching him the same skills that his father once taught him. Tiger is also the founder and CEO of ‘TGR’, a multi-brand enterprise of his various companies and philanthropic endeavors such as, TGR Design and the golf course design company. The TGR Foundation is a charitable foundation. TGR Live, is an events production company and ‘The Woods Jupiter’, is an upscale sports restaurant. Tiger Woods is living his best life. Golf was a fun game to pass the time but at the same time, it turned out to become Tiger’s greatest passion. Tiger was able to provide for his family, follow his passion and even create a great legacy for his children. He is a testament that nothing is impossible.
