"The Masters is where I won my first major, and I view this tournament with great respect. After a long and necessary time away from the game, I feel like I'm ready to start my season at Augusta." -- Tiger Woods
Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Currently the World No. 1, he is the highest-paid professional athlete in the world, having earned an estimated $90.5 million from winnings and endorsements in 2010.
Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player (Jack Nicklaus leads with 18), and 71 PGA Tour events, third all time. He has more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other active golfer. He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour. Additionally, Woods is only the second golfer, after Jack Nicklaus, to have achieved a career Grand Slam three times. Woods has won 16 World Golf Championships, and has won at least one of those events each of the 11 years they have been in existence.
Woods has held the number one position in the world rankings for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks. He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record ten times, the Byron Nelson Award for lowest adjusted scoring average a record eight times, and has the record of leading the money list in nine different seasons.
On December 11, 2009, Woods announced he would take an indefinite leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage after he admitted infidelity. His multiple infidelities were revealed by over a dozen women, through many worldwide media sources. Woods returned to competition for the 2010 Masters on April 8, 2010, after a break lasting 20 weeks.
In July 2010, Forbes announced Tiger Woods as the richest sportsman in the world, earning a reported $105m according to them and $90.5m according to Sports Illustrated.
"Achievements on the golf course are not what matters, decency and honesty are what matter.""And I don't cook, either. Not as long as they still deliver pizza.""As a kid, I might have been psycho, I guess, but I used to throw golf balls in the trees and try and somehow make par from them. I thought that was fun.""Don't force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters, not the parent's desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun.""For many my behavior has been a major disappointment, my behavior has caused considerable worry to my business partners, and everyone involved in my business, but most importantly to the young people we influence, I apologize.""Green and black go well together, don't they?""Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.""I did envisage being this successful as a player, but not all the hysteria around it off the golf course.""I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don't know when that day will be.""I don't get to live by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me.""I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for - getting paid for doing what you love.""I love to play golf, and that's my arena. And you can characterize it and describe it however you want, but I have a love and a passion for getting that ball in the hole and beating those guys.""I stopped living according to my core values. I knew what I was doing was wrong but thought only about myself and thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to.""I want to be what I've always wanted to be: dominant.""I'm addicted. I'm addicted to golf.""I'm aware if I'm playing at my best I'm tough to beat. And I enjoy that.""I'm not as far along as Jack Nicklaus was at this age, but I'm trying.""If money titles meant anything, I'd play more tournaments. The only thing that means a lot to me is winning. If I have more wins than anybody else and win more majors than anybody else in the same year, then it's been a good year.""If you are given a chance to be a role model, I think you should always take it because you can influence a person's life in a positive light, and that's what I want to do. That's what it's all about.""In therapy I have learned the importance of keeping spiritual life and professional life balanced. I need to regain my balance.""It will always be the ball and me.""Michael left because of the Bulls' management, not because he'd lost his love of playing the game.""Money and fame made me believe I was entitled. I was wrong and foolish.""My main focus is on my game.""The major championships have always been a special focus in my career, and as a professional, I think Augusta is where I need to be.""You can always become better."
Woods was born in Cypress, California, to Earl (1932—2006) and Kultida (Tida) Woods (born 1944). He is the only child of their marriage but has two half-brothers, Earl Jr. (born 1955) and Kevin (born 1957), and one half-sister, Royce (born 1958) from the 18-year marriage of Earl Woods and his first wife, Barbara Woods Gray. Earl, a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Vietnam War veteran, was of mixed African American, Chinese, and Native American ancestry. Kultida (née Punsawad), originally from Thailand, is of mixed Thai, Chinese, and Dutch ancestry. This makes Woods himself half Asian (one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Thai), one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch. He refers to his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian” (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, Indian, and Asian).
From childhood he was raised as a Buddhist and actively practised this faith from childhood until well into his adult career. He has attributed his deviations and infidelity to his losing track of Buddhism. He said that "Buddhism teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught."
At birth, Woods was given 'Eldrick' and 'Tont' as first and middle names. His middle name, Tont (), is a traditional Thai name. He got his nickname from a Vietnamese soldier friend of his father, Vuong Dang Phong, to whom his father had also given the Tiger nickname. He became generally known by that name and by the time he had achieved national prominence in junior and amateur golf, he was simply known as 'Tiger' Woods.}}