Tiger Woods Becomes World's Top-Rated Golfer

Date June 15, 1997

After turning professional in 1996, Tiger Woods quickly came to dominate the sport of golf. In 1997, he won the Masters Tournament, his first major tournament as a professional, and became the youngest player up to that time to achieve the top spot in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Locale United States

Key Figures

• Tiger Woods (b. 1975), American professional golfer
• Earl Woods (1932–2006), father of Tiger Woods

Summary of Event

When Tiger Woods exploded onto the professional golf scene in 1996 he had already experienced notable successes in golf. He won his first golf tournament at the age of eight, and at fifteen he became the youngest golfer up to that time to win the US Junior National Championship. He went on to become the first African American and the youngest golfer to win the US Amateur Golf Championship, a tournament he then won three years in a row. In 1996, he became the first African American to earn a PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) Tour card since Adrian Stills in 1985.

On his way to winning his first major professional tournament, the Masters, in April, 1997, at twenty-one years of age, Woods shattered several PGA records. His score of 270 over four rounds was the lowest in the history of the Masters, and his twelve-stroke victory over the second-place finisher was the greatest winning margin since 1862. Not long after his Masters win, on June 15, 1997, Woods became the youngest professional golfer ever to take the number one spot in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Woods’s phenomenal success drew a great deal of media attention. In 1997, television coverage of the Masters included sixty-six of his sixty-nine final-round shots and earned the CBS network record television ratings for a Masters final. After Woods joined the PGA Tour in 1996, hundreds of millions of new dollars began to flow into the sport of professional golf, including increases in television contracts. Prize money on the PGA Tour in 1996, the year Woods turned pro, added up to a little more than $69 million. In contrast, by 2001 the total purse had escalated to $180 million. As arguably the most recognized athlete in the world, Woods brought more people out to the tournaments and created more media coverage.

In addition to raising the financial status of professional golf, Woods transformed the public image of the sport, taking golf’s long history as a decadent pastime for White people and turning it inside out. As Tim Finchem, commissioner of the PGA Tour, noted, Woods’s impact came not only from his skill but also from his persona and the dignified way he carried himself.

In December, 1996, several months after Woods left Stanford University to become a professional golfer, an article in Sports Illustrated quoted his father, Earl Woods, as claiming that his son was qualified through his ethnicity to do more than any other person in history to change the course of humanity. According to the elder Woods, Tiger’s heritage—which included Thai, Chinese, American Indian, and European as well as African forebears—placed him in a position to stimulate new interest in the concept of the United States as a melting pot. Building on the interest in Tiger Woods, stories about mixed-race children and racially mixed marriages proliferated in the mass media. Woods himself, however, was somewhat reluctant to make public statements about issues of race and ethnicity. He frowned on being referred to as African American because he felt that such categorization neglected his Asian mother. For the most part, he seemed inclined to concentrate on golf and let others speak on behalf of race relations. He did, however, often find time to devote to helping disadvantaged youth, both on and off the golf course. To that end, he and his father established the Tiger Woods Foundation in 1996.

Significance

Tiger Woods’s success and popularity had major impacts on the sport of golf, which had long stood as a potent symbol of exclusion and racial intolerance. He generated increased interest in the sport of golf in the United States and around the world, among adults and children of all ethnic groups who previously had no interest in the sport. The country-club mystique of golf began to lessen as the sport became democratized and more affordable, with an increasing proportion of new courses open to the public. Although golf continued to be overwhelmingly a sport played and watched by White people, surveys showed that from 1996 to 2003, the number of African Americans who identified themselves as avid fans of professional golf rose 380 percent. In the same period, the percentage of African American golfers doubled. By 2003, approximately five hundred golf programs were operating in urban, inner-city areas in the United States, compared with just eighty-five such programs in 1994. Nevertheless, racial disparities did remain prominent in the golf community, and Woods himself often faced racist remarks throughout his career. He also expressed discomfort with being treated as a symbol for the Black community, especially given his diverse family heritage.

In addition to his cultural impact, Woods had a profound effect on the very way his sport is played. His example of commitment to a relentless work ethic in the gym and on the practice range brought a new level of physical fitness and dedication to the realm of professional golf. The game’s equipment revolution around the end of the twentieth century was also fueled in part by the desire among lesser players to catch up to Woods. His mile-long drives were a major contributor to an obsession with distance off the tee, which led many golf courses, including Augusta National, to redesign golf holes to allow for greater length.

Woods’s influence and success continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000, his fifteen-stroke victory at the US Open at Pebble Beach made Woods the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three major tournaments in a year. In April, 2001, Woods became the first golfer to hold all four majors titles at once, although not in the same year, when he again captured the Masters title. This feat became known as the “Tiger slam.” Though he subsequently went through some struggles as well as successes, by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century he was well established as one of the greatest golfers of all time.

Woods's status as a major celebrity, even a cultural icon, also continued beyond his golf performance. However, this attention was not always positive. He was involved in a car crash in late 2009 and soon after allegations of infidelity developed into a high-profile scandal, leading Woods to issue an apology and announce a break from competition. Some of his corporate sponsors cut off their endorsements as his public image degenerated sharply. He returned to golf in April 2010, but his play declined and his ranking plummeted. Though he briefly reclaimed his top ranking in 2013, he underwent major back surgery the following year and he continued to struggle with injuries over the next several years. Woods mounted a comeback beginning in 2018, climbing the rankings once again and winning his fifth Masters Tournament in 2019 before tying the record for most PGA Tour victories with his eighty-second such win later that year. Also in 2019 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, further cementing his place as an all-time great athlete and iconic public figure.

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