After a 28-year career filled with victories, injuries, scandals and failures, Tiger Woods was recently recognized by Forbes as a billionaire with a fortune of over $1 billion.

Tiger Woods, real name Eldrick Woods, was born on December 30, 1975 in Cypress, California, USA. His father is African American and his mother is Thai.

Considered a naturally gifted player, Mr. Woods learned to play golf from a very young age and was considered a prodigy in this subject.

In 1991, at age 15, Mr. Woods became the youngest winner of the US Junior Amateur Golf Championship. He also won the Junior Amateur title in 1992 and 1993. In 1994, Tiger Woods won the first of three consecutive U.S. Amateur championships thanks to the six-hole tournament. The same year, Woods enrolled at Stanford University and graduated in 1996.

Woods left college and turned professional on August 29, 1996. Tiger Woods is considered to have had one of the greatest amateur careers in history and became the dominant player on the professional circuit in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Tiger Woods during a tournament in 2002.

In 1997, Woods became the first African-American golfer to win the Masters Tournament, one of the sport’s most prestigious events.

In 1999, when Woods was 22 years old, he became the first golfer in more than two decades to win eight PGA events in one year. The previous record belonged to Ben Hogan from 1948 with 6 consecutive victories, the second longest streak in PGA history. The record for winning the most PGA championships belongs to Byron Nelson with 11 consecutive wins.

In June 2000, Woods once again made history with a record victory at the US Open. He became the first golfer to finish the tournament at 12 under par, surpassing Jack Nicklaus for the lowest 72-hole score (272), and Woods’ 15-stroke victory was the largest margin at a championship. big.

On July 23, 2000, Mr. Woods became the 5th person in golf history, and the youngest person, to complete the Grand Slam of 4 major championships in his career by winning the British Open championship.

With his victory at the 2001 Masters, Woods became the first person to win four major golf tournaments consecutively: the Masters, the US Open, the Open Championship and the PGA Championship.

Tiger Woods completed his third career Grand Slam in 2008, just a few months after undergoing knee surgery due to an injury. At that time, he was only 31 years old.

Injuries, scandals and spectacular comebacks

The world’s number one veteran golfer’s glorious career is associated with many injuries, even having to withdraw from PGA tournaments 9 times due to health problems.

In December 1994, at the beginning of his career, Woods had surgery to remove two benign tumors and scar tissue in his left knee. In December 2002, Woods continued to have surgery to remove fluid in and around the anterior cruciate ligament of his left knee.

In 2008 alone, Tiger Woods had to have surgery four times for problems related to his left knee, torn Achilles tendon and fractured tibia. From 2010-2015, the male athlete was continuously injured and had to withdraw from many tournaments in pain or have to leave by ambulance.

In November 2009, Woods was involved in an early morning car accident outside his home in Orlando, Florida. The unusual circumstances of the accident led to media attention being drawn to the golfer’s personal life. Tiger Woods, who married Elin Nordegren in 2004, is alleged to have had several extramarital affairs. Woods later divorced his wife and had a forgettable playing season in 2010.

Woods’ struggles on the golf course continued in 2011 when he failed to win an official PGA tournament. This only ended in 2012 after an Arnold Palmer Invitational, Woods’ first PGA win in about 30 months.

In 2013, he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational for the eighth time, setting a PGA record for most career victories in a single tournament in the process and regaining the world number one ranking for the first time in nearly two and a half years, before consecutively missing many tournaments due to injuries.

Woods’ personal life once again received a lot of attention in May 2017 when Woods was arrested on suspicion of driving while taking a combination of sleeping pills and painkillers. Afterwards, Woods had to undergo a two-week detox course and revealed that he received “professional help” to manage his drug intake.

In April 2019, Woods stunned the golf world by winning the Masters for the first time in 14 years, setting a new record for the longest interval between wins in that tournament and becoming the first player to win the Masters. 2nd oldest golfer, after Nicklaus, at age 43, to win the green jersey. Woods went on to make history by winning the Zozo Championship later that year.

In early 2021, Woods announced that he had undergone his fifth back surgery and was not expected to return to competition until April of the same year at the earliest. In February, he continued to have an accident and had to have surgery on his right leg. Nine months after the accident, Woods held a press conference that raised doubts about whether he would play again on the professional tour. However, in April 2022, he returned to the PGA Tour, competing in the Masters tournament.

Tiger Woods was awarded the Medal of Freedom by former US President Donald Trump in 2019. He was later also the subject of the television documentary Tiger, released in 2021.

Became a billionaire at 47 years old

On June 10, Forbes announced that Tiger Woods officially became a billionaire with a fortune of over 1 billion USD. He is the third athlete to be recognized as a billionaire, after basketball stars Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

Notably, Forbes said, less than 10% of Woods’ net worth comes from golf course income. His fortune comes largely from sponsorship deals through Nike, TaylorMade, Gatorade and Monster Energy and investments from veteran golfers.

Woods used his status and income to expand into a series of other ventures, including a golf course design business (TGR Design), a live event production company (TGR Live), and restaurant (The Woods).

Through TGR Ventures, Woods has invested in Full Swing, a golf technology training tool; Heard, a hotel software startup; and PopStroke, a luxury mini-golf experience with four locations in Florida and plans to open more locations around the country in 2022.

At his peak, Woods was the highest-paid athlete in history, earning $100 million per year. He held the No. 1 spot on Forbes’ list of highest-paid athletes for 10 consecutive years, ending in 2012.

Even his dramatic decline after a car accident on Thanksgiving 2009 did not affect his earning capacity. Over the past 12 months, despite almost never teeing off while recovering from a serious car accident, Woods has raked in $68 million in off-the-course earnings, enough to make him a recognized athlete. 14th highest salary in the world.