Tiger Woods is an American professional golf player whose net worth is $740 million. Eldrick Tiger Woods was born in Cypress, California (USA) on December 30th, 1975.
He is the son of the marriage between Earl Woods, an Afro-American origin (but with Chinese and Amerindian descendant, and Vietnam War veteran (His father nicknamed him “Tiger” in honor of his combat buddy Nguyen Phong, who saved his life in the Vietnam War), and Kultida Woods, with Thai origin (although of Chinese and Dutch descent).
Beginnings.
Woods started playing golf at the age of 2. He rose to fame after winning three United States Open Amateurs in a road before turning 20 years old. He decided to become a professional in 1996, and in three months he won two professional tournaments.
In 1997, surprised the world by winning the prestigious Masters at the Augusta National Golf Club unquestionably: at only 21 years old, he became the youngest person to win a major, with the biggest difference of swings, and the lowest score.
Consolidation as a golf player.
His presence in the world of golf revolutionized the game and produced more interest in this discipline. He did not win again a grand slam tournament until the 1999 PGA Championship, when he defeated the Spaniard Sergio Garcia. In 2000, Tiger won three of the four majors of the year, something that nobody had done since Ben Hogan achieved in 1953.
At Pebble Beach, California, he won the United States Open by a record margin of fifteen strokes, and tied the lowest score in tournament history. A month later, at St. Andrews, the golf birthplace, he won the British Open. To end a formidable summer, he again won the PGA Championship in an unforgettable duel against unknown Bob May.
With his 2001 Masters victory, Woods became the only player to own the four grand slam trophies at the same time, but, he got them in different years, so many do not consider it a Grand Slam.
Other “course” field.
In 2001, Tiger Woods wrote the best-selling book on how to play golf, How I Play Golf, with the largest circulation of any other golf book in its first edition, 1.5 million copies.
In 2004, he married Swedish model Elin Nordegren, who was Jesper Parnevik’s nanny, a Swedish golfer who introduced them. They were married in a secret ceremony in Barbados with approximately 200 guests.
Tiger Woods’s influence caused tournament prizes to grow. For example, when he won his first major in April 1997 he earned approximately $ 486,000, and when he won the same tournament in 2005, he earned $ 10,260,000. Thanks to his high contracts, Woods ended 2005 as the world’s best-paid sportsman according to Forbes magazine, with $ 87 million.
