Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
Tiger Woods
with some carpet and a net, and while he practiced Woods
would sit in his high chair and watch. Earl cut some clubs
down to Woods’s size for him to play with, and one day,
when Woods was nine months old, he climbed out of his
chair when Earl took a break and tried to imitate Earl’s
activity. He did so almost perfectly, and the ball flew expertly
into the net. “I was flabbergasted,” Earl told biographer
John Strege. “I almost fell off my chair.”
When Woods was eighteen months old, Earl took
him to a real driving range for the first time and started
letting him play the occasional hole on Earl’s home
course, the Navy Courses at Los Alamitos, California.
When he was two Woods won his first competition
there, playing against boys who were as old as ten. The
same year Woods appeared on the Mike Douglas Show.
He had an on-air putting contest with Bob Hope and
won. When he was three, he shot a forty-eight over nine
holes on one of the Navy Courses from the front tees,
and then at five he appeared on national television again,
on the show That’s Incredible!
People across the country marveled when they heard
about this tiny golfing protégé, but Woods didn’t want to
be just a curiosity. He wanted to be a winner. He started
working with his first professional coach, an assistant
club professional from Long Beach, California named
Rudy Duran, when he was four, and throughout his elementary
school years Woods dominated junior golf in
his age bracket in southern California. Although Woods
was patient during this time, honing his skills and slow-
Chronology
Woods
1975 Born December 30 in Cypress, CA, to Earl and Kultida Woods
1978 Appears on the Mike Douglas Show, where he wins a putting
contest with Bob Hope
1978 Wins first golf competition, a ten-and-under
1980 Begins working with first coach, Rudy Duran
1981 Appears on That’s Incredible!
1982 Plays a two-hole tournament with Sam Snead
1987 Undefeated in junior tournament competition
1994 Begins attending Stanford University
1995 Competes in his first Masters
1996 Turns professional and quits Stanford
1996 Makes a hole in one during his first professional event
1996 Starts Tiger Woods Foundation in December
2000 Becomes youngest golfer ever to complete career Grand Slam
2000 Appears on the cover of Time magazine
2001 Becomes first golfer ever to hold all four major titles at once
2002 Undergoes arthroscopic knee surgery December 12
ly preparing himself for the next level, he always had his
sights set on higher things. A chart of Nicklaus’s records
and milestones, going back to when Nicklaus was a
child, hung on Woods’s wall, and he was determined to
surpass them all.
High School Years
When he was fifteen, Woods set out to become the
youngest golfer ever to qualify for a PGA Tour event,
the 1991 Los Angeles Open. He played excellently in
the qualifying event but, with a bogey on the last hole,
he had three strokes too many to make it to the Open.
However, later that year Woods broke another record
when he became the youngest person ever to win the
U.S. Junior Amateur Championship.
Woods successfully defended his U.S. Junior Amateur
championship in 1992, becoming the only person
ever to be U.S. junior amateur champion more than
once. He then won the event for an unheard of third time
in 1993. Earl Woods later attributed his success to his
training methods during that time. “Every year he would
take the week before his major to mentally and physically
fine-tune,” Earl told Sports Illustrated reporter Jaime
Diaz. “We’d drive to the site and play practice rounds,
and after we got home, I’d find him lying on his bed
with his eyes closed. He told me he was playing the
shots he was going to need in his head.”
Woods was invited back to the Los Angeles Open in
1992 on a sponsor’s exemption. It was thought at the time
that he was still the youngest person to play in a Tour
event, but it was later discovered that a fifteen-year-old
had played in the Canadian Open in 1957. Woods shot
one over par on the first day and four over on the second,
missing the cut by six strokes, but he still called the experience
“the two best days of my life.” Not until the spring
of 1994, at the Johnnie Walker Asian Classic in Thailand,
would Woods make the cut in a professional event.
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