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Tiger Woods
“Tiger knew how to swing a club before he could walk.” So says Tiger Woods’s father, Earl Woods. He was talking about a golf club. By the age of 21, Tiger Woods was the best golfer in the world. Some people say he’s the greatest golfer who has ever played the game.
A BABY TIGER WITH A GOLF CLUB
Eldrick Woods was born on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California, near Los Angeles. His father nicknamed him Tiger after an army friend.
Tiger really did begin to play golf as a baby. At age two he appeared on TV. At three, he shot a 48 for nine holes. That’s a score many adult golfers would be glad to match! He won an international junior tournament for his age group six times before he turned 16.
A YOUNG CHAMPION
In 1991, Woods won the first of three straight United States Golf Association (USGA) Junior National Championships. He was its youngest winner ever. In 1994, he entered Stanford University. While he was in college he won three U.S. Amateur titles in a row.
By 1996, no other amateur golf players could compete with Tiger Woods. He then joined the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Tour. On the PGA Tour, the best players in the world compete for millions of dollars in prizes at tournaments throughout the year.
DOMINATING THE WORLD OF GOLF
In his first season on the tour, Tiger Woods won two tournaments. Then in April 1997, he won the famous Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Woods’s score and margin of victory set tournament records. That year he was ranked as the number one golfer in the world. Woods was the youngest golfer ever to be ranked number one.
Since then, Woods has continued to dominate the PGA Tour. It is unusual for even the best golfers to win more than three tour tournaments in a single year. Woods won eight in 1999. The next year he won nine and broke his own record for best average score.
The most important professional golfing tournaments are called major tournaments. They are the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship. In 2001, Tiger Woods became the first golfer ever to hold all four major championships at once.
Source: Microsoft ® Encarta
