Eldrick Tont Woods (born December 30, 1975), better known as Tiger Woods,is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Currently the World No. 1, he was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million from winnings and endorsements.
Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player, and 71 PGA Tour events, third all time. He has more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other active golfer.
He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour. Additionally, Woods is the second golfer to have achieved a career grand slam three times along with Jack Nicklaus.
Woods has won 16 World Golf Championships and has won at least one event each of the 11 years they have been in existence.
Woods has held the number one position in the world rankings for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks.
He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record ten times,the Byron Nelson Award for lowest adjusted scoring average a record eight times, and has the record of leading the money list in nine different seasons.
He has been named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year a record-tying four times, and is the only person to be named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year more than once.
Since his record-breaking win at the 1997 Masters Tournament, golf's increased popularity is attributed to Woods' presence.
He is credited for dramatically increasing prize money in golf, generating interest in new audiences as the first non-white person to win the Masters, and for drawing the largest TV audiences in golf history.
He has been named "Athlete of the Decade" by the Associated Press in December 2009.
On December 11, 2009, Woods announced an indefinite leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage after his past infidelities came to light.
Woods was born in Cypress, California, to Earl (1932-2006) and Kultida (Tida) Woods (born 1944).
He is the only child of their marriage but has two half-brothers, Earl Jr. (born 1955) and Kevin (born 1957), and one half-sister, Royce (born 1958) from the 18-year marriage of Earl Woods and his first wife, Barbara Woods Gray.
Earl, a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Vietnam War veteran, was of mixed African American, Chinese and Native American ancestry. Kultida (née Punsawad), originally from Thailand, is of mixed Thai, Chinese, and Dutch ancestry.
This makes Woods himself half Asian (one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Thai), one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch. He refers to his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian” (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, (American) Indian, and Asian).
At birth, Woods was given 'Eldrick' and 'Tont' as first and middle names.
His middle name, Tont, is a traditional Thai name. He got his nickname from a Vietnamese soldier friend of his father, Vuong Dang Phong, to whom his father had also given the Tiger nickname.
He became generally known by that name and by the time he had achieved national prominence in junior and amateur golf, he was simply known as 'Tiger' Woods.
He grew up in Orange County, California and graduated from Western High School in Anaheim in 1994.
Woods was a 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, he 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. He went on to win the Junior World Championships six times, including four consecutive wins from 1988 to 1991.
While attending Western High School in Anaheim at the age of 15, Woods 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 Junior Amateur Player of the Year 1991.
He 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, Woods won his third consecutive U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, and remains the event's youngest-ever and only multiple winner.
In 1994, he became the youngest ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, a record that stood until 2008 when it was broken by Danny Lee.
He was a member of the American team at the 1994 Eisenhower Trophy World Amateur Golf Team Championships and 1995 Walker Cup.
Woods enrolled at Stanford University in the fall of 1994, and won his first collegiate event, the 40th Annual William H. Tucker Invitational in September.
He declared a major in Economics and was nicknamed "Urkel" by his college teammates. In 1995, he 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 Tournament, 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 and turned professional.
