Woods, Tiger (Eldrick Woods), 1975–, American golfer, b. Cypress, Calif. The son of an African-American father and a Thai mother, he was a college star at Stanford and became the only three-time (1994–96) U.S. amateur champion before turning professional in 1997. The greatest golfer of his era, Woods won the 1997 Masters in a runaway, had mixed success in 1998, then won the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Championship and dominated golf in 1999. In 2000, Woods won the U.S. and British opens and PGA Championship, setting or tying several records as he became the youngest golfer to achieve a modern career Grand Slam. His 2001 Masters win made him the first golfer to win all four major professional championships in a row. He then won the Masters (2002, 2005), U.S. Open (2002, 2008), British Open (2005–6), and PGA Championship (2006–7) twice; his more than 50 tournament victories by age 30 is a PGA record. In 2007 he won the inaugural FedEx Cup, a four-tournament championship, and in 2019 he tied Sam Snead for most PGA Tour wins (82). After 2013 his career suffered due to back problems, but following surgery in 2017 he won the Masters again in 2019. Lurid revelations in 2009 of marital infidelities tarnished his personal reputation.
See T. Woods and L. Rubenstein, The 1997 Masters: My Story (2017); H. Haney, The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (2013); biographies by J. Savage (2009), T. Callahan (2010), S. Helling (2010), L. J. Londino (2d ed. 2010), and J. Benedict and A. Keteyian (2018).
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