Tiger Woods Golf Player online information at WagerWeb Sportsbook

Woods, who is multiracial, is credited with prompting a major surge of interest in the game of golf among minorities and young people in the United States.

Career
Early life and amateur career

Woods was a child prodigy who began to play golf at the age of two. In 1978, he putted against comedian Bob Hope in a television appearance on The Mike Douglas Show. At age three, Woods shot a 48 over nine holes at the Navy Golf Club in Cypress, California, and at age five, he appeared in Golf Digest and on ABC's That's Incredible. In 1984 at the age of eight he won the 9–10 boys' event, the youngest age group available, at the Junior World Golf Championships. Woods went on to win the Junior World Championships six times, including four consecutive wins from 1988 to 1991. At the age of 15, he became the youngest ever U.S. Junior Amateur Champion, was voted Southern California Amateur Player of the Year for the second consecutive year, and Golf Digest Amateur Player of the Year 1991. He successfully defended his title at the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, becoming the first multiple winner, competed in his first PGA Tour event, the Nissan Los Angeles Open and was named Golf Digest Amateur Player of the Year, Golf World Player of the Year and Golfweek National Amateur of the Year in 1992.

The following year, he won his third consecutive U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, and remains the event's youngest-ever and only multiple winner. In 1994, Woods became the youngest ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship. He was a member of the American team at the 1994 Eisenhower Trophy World Amateur Golf Team Championships and 1995 Walker Cup. Later that year, he enrolled at Stanford University, and won his first collegiate event, the William Tucker Invitational. At Stanford he majored in Economics and was nicknamed "Urkel" by his college teammates. In 1995, Woods defended his U.S. Amateur title, 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). He participated in his first PGA Tour major, The Masters, and tied for 41st, the only amateur to make the cut. At age 20 in 1996, Woods 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, Woods tied the record for an amateur aggregate score of 281. He left college after two years and turned professional.

Professional career
With the announcement, "Hello World," Tiger Woods became a professional golfer in August 1996, and signed endorsement deals worth $40 million from Nike and $20 million from Titleist. He played his first round of professional golf at the Greater Milwaukee Open tying for 60th place, but went on to win two events in the next three months, and qualify for the Tour Championship. Woods was named Sports Illustrated's' 1996 Sportsman of the Year and PGA Rookie of the Year. He began his tradition of wearing a red shirt during the final round of tournaments, a link to his college days at Stanford and a color he believes symbolizes aggression and assertiveness.

The following April, Woods won his first golf major, The Masters, by a record margin of 12 strokes, became the youngest Masters winner, and the first winner of African or Asian descent. He set a total of 20 Masters records and tied 6 others. He won 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 Rankings, the fastest ever ascent to world No. 1. He was named PGA Player of the Year, the first golfer to win the award the year following his rookie season.

While expectations for Woods were high, Woods' form faded in the second half of 1997, and in 1998 he only won one PGA Tour event. Woods 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.

In June 1999, Woods won the Memorial Tournament, a victory that marked the beginning of perhaps 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, and finished the season with eight wins — a feat not achieved in the past 25 years. He was voted PGA Tour Player of the Year and Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year for the second time in three years.

Woods rang in the new millennium with his fifth consecutive victory and began a record-setting season, where he would win three consecutive majors, 9 PGA Tour events, and set or tie 27 Tour records. He went on to capture his sixth consecutive victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am with a comeback for the ages. Trailing by seven strokes with seven holes to play, Woods finished eagle-birdie-par-birdie for a 64 and a two-stroke victory. His six consecutive wins were the most since Hogan in 1948 and only five behind Byron Nelson’s record of 11 in a row. In the 2000 U.S. Open, Woods broke or tied a total of nine U.S. Open records with his 15-shot win, including Old Tom Morris's record for the largest victory margin ever in a major championship, which had stood since 1862, and became the Tour's all-time career money leader. In the 2000 Open Championship at St Andrews, which he won by eight strokes, Woods set the record for lowest score to par (-19) in any major tournament, and he holds at least a share of that record in all four major championships. At 24 he became the youngest golfer to achieve the Career Grand Slam. His major championship streak was seriously threatened at the 2000 PGA Championship, however, when Bob May went head-to-head with Woods on Sunday at Valhalla Golf Club. Woods only escaped with a victory after winning a three-hole playoff, 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, Woods 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. Of the twenty events he entered in 2000, he finished in the top three 14 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, respectively. He was named the 2000 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.

The following season, Woods continued dominating. His 2001 Masters win marked the only time within the era of the modern "grand slam" that any player has been the holder of all four major championship titles at the same time, a feat now known as the "Tiger Slam". It is not viewed as as a true Grand Slam, however, because it was not achieved in a calender year. Surprisingly, Woods 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, Woods started off strong, joining Nick Faldo (1989-90) and Jack Nicklaus (1965-66) as the only men to have won back-to-back Masters. 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 ended Grand Slam hopes. At the PGA Woods 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.

The next phase of Woods' 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. In September 2004, Woods' record streak of 264 consecutive weeks as the world's top-ranked golfer came to an end at the Deutsche Bank Championship, when Vijay Singh won and overtook Woods in the Official World Golf Rankings. Many commentators were puzzled by Woods' "slump," offering explanations that ranged from Woods' rift with swing coach Butch Harmon to his marriage. At the same time, Woods 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, Woods anticipated that once the adjustments were complete, he would return to his previous form.

In the 2005 PGA Tour 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 Rankings number one position (Singh displaced him once again two weeks later). In April Woods finally broke his "drought" in the majors by winning the 2005 Masters in a playoff (after holing a chip-in on the 16th hole), which regained him the number one spot in the World Rankings. Singh and Woods swapped the number 1 position several times over the next couple of months, but by early July, Woods had established an advantage, propelled further by a victory in The Open Championship, a win that gave him his 10th major. Woods 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. Woods' 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 tournaments he entered on the year) and was in the hunt for his fifth Masters championship in April, Woods never mounted a Sunday charge to defend his title, allowing Phil Mickelson to claim the green jacket. Shortly thereafter (May 3, 2006), Woods' father/mentor/inspiration, Earl, died after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. Woods took a nine-week-long 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 ending his record-tying streak of 39 consecutive cuts made at majors. A tie for second at the Western Open just three weeks later showed him poised to defend his Open crown at Hoylake.

At the The Open Championship, Woods staged a tour de force in course management, putting, and accuracy with irons. Using almost exclusively long irons off the tee (he hit driver only one time the entire week — the 16th hole of the first round), Woods missed just four fairways all week (hitting the fairway 86 percent 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. The victory was an emotional one for Woods, who dedicated his play to his father's memory. Four weeks later, at the 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. In August 2006 he won his 50th professional tournament at the Buick Open, and at 30 years and 7 months old, he became the youngest to do so. He ended the year by winning his last six PGA Tour events, and won the 3 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 eleven seasons, Tiger's 54 wins and 12 major wins had eclipsed the all time eleven-season PGA Tour total win record of 52 (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, have developed a friendship and 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.

Woods stormed into 2007 with a two-stroke victory at the Buick Invitational for his third straight win at the event and his seventh consecutive win on the PGA Tour. The victory marked the fifth time he has won his first tournament of the season. With this win, he became the third man (after Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead) to win at least five times in three different events on the PGA Tour (his two other events are the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and WGC-CA Championship). Woods earned his second victory of the year at the WGC-CA Championship for his third consecutive win at the event and 13th official World Golf Championships event. With this victory, he became the first player to three-peat in five different events. Woods earned his third victory of the season by two strokes at the Wachovia Championship, the 24th different PGA Tour tournament Woods has won. He has collected at least three wins in a season nine times in his 12-year career. Woods then revealed he had Lasik laser surgery for the second time the Monday after the 2007 Masters. Before the first procedure in 1999, he said he would be considered legally blind without glasses or contacts.

As of May 2007, Woods has won 57 official money PGA Tour events, has 20 other individual professional titles, and two team titles in the two-man WGC-World Cup. With his victory at the 2006 WGC-American Express Championship, he became the first player in PGA Tour history to win at least eight times in three seasons. His victory in the Buick Invitational in January 2007 placed him 2nd for the longest PGA Tour win streak at 7 straight. Only Byron Nelson's streak of 11 wins in 1945 is longer. He has successfully defended a title 18 times on the PGA Tour, has finished runner-up 21 times, third place 17 times, and has won 28% (57 out of 206) of his professional starts on the PGA Tour. He has a 28-6 record when leading after 36 holes in Tour events, and a 39–3 record when leading after 54 holes. He owns the lowest career scoring average and the most career earnings of any player in PGA Tour history. He has been the PGA Tour Money Winner seven times, trailing Jack Nicklaus by one, the PGA Player of the Year a record eight times, the Vardon Trophy winner a record six times, and the Byron Nelson Award winner a record seven times. Woods is one of five players (along with Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player) to have won all four professional major championships in his career, known as the "Career Grand Slam", and was the youngest to do so. Bobby Jones won all four of what were in his era considered major championships. Woods's win at the 2005 Open Championship made him only the second golfer (after Nicklaus) to have won all four majors more than once. Woods holds at least a share of the scoring record in relation to par in all four majors, and also holds the margin of victory record in two majors, The Masters and the U.S. Open. At the 2003 TOUR Championship, it was widely reported in the print media that he set "an all-time record for most consecutive cuts", starting in 1998, with 114 (passing Byron Nelson's previous record of 113) and that he extended this mark to 142 before it ended on May 13, 2005 at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. Many consider this to be one of the most remarkable golf accomplishments of all time, given the margin by which he broke the old record (and against stronger fields in terms of depth than those in Nelson's day) and given that during the streak, the next longest streak by any other player was usually only in the 10s or 20s.

When Woods turned pro, Mike "Fluff" Cowan was his caddie until March 8, 1999. He was replaced by Steve Williams, who has become a close friend of Woods and is often credited with helping Woods with key shots and putts.

Major championships
Wins (12)

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