"I didn't think he'd be that good," Woods tells PEOPLE of his crushing defeat
A few years ago, Muhammad Ali's wife, Lonnie, gave me her business card. And the name of her company was: GOAT, Inc.
This story appears in the April 13, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Since 1955, Sports Illustrated has been on the scene at the Masters. Here is a look back at 54 years of golf's greatest tournament:
From the helicopter, a blanket of trees spreads out below me, and in the distance, the town of Asheville is barely visible. The chopper banks right, and out the window I can see that swaths of foliage have been cut away to form serpentine shapes, barely identifiable as fairways from 1,000 feet above.
The returning PGA star calls his knee injury a "blessing" that gave him time at home
The first photos of Charlie Axel Woods, only 10 days old, are revealed
Are you enjoying the 2009 PGA Tour?
His return to competition depends on wife Elin giving birth, which "takes precedent over anything I do golf-wise"
The most amazing thing I saw in this most amazing sports year was not especially important or historic or even decisive. No one won a medal at the end of it, no trophy, no championship, no world record. There were no playbooks involved, no chalkboards, no swimsuits, no balls, no bats, no clubs, no rackets. The man who performed the miracle was only doing what every child does, and at the end of it he seemed utterly unimpressed with himself. He would become world famous, but that was later.
"I didn't think he'd be that good," Woods tells PEOPLE of his crushing defeat
A few years ago, Muhammad Ali's wife, Lonnie, gave me her business card. And the name of her company was: GOAT, Inc.
This story appears in the April 13, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Since 1955, Sports Illustrated has been on the scene at the Masters. Here is a look back at 54 years of golf's greatest tournament:
From the helicopter, a blanket of trees spreads out below me, and in the distance, the town of Asheville is barely visible. The chopper banks right, and out the window I can see that swaths of foliage have been cut away to form serpentine shapes, barely identifiable as fairways from 1,000 feet above.
The returning PGA star calls his knee injury a "blessing" that gave him time at home
The first photos of Charlie Axel Woods, only 10 days old, are revealed
Are you enjoying the 2009 PGA Tour?
His return to competition depends on wife Elin giving birth, which "takes precedent over anything I do golf-wise"
The most amazing thing I saw in this most amazing sports year was not especially important or historic or even decisive. No one won a medal at the end of it, no trophy, no championship, no world record. There were no playbooks involved, no chalkboards, no swimsuits, no balls, no bats, no clubs, no rackets. The man who performed the miracle was only doing what every child does, and at the end of it he seemed utterly unimpressed with himself. He would become world famous, but that was later.
Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Dec. 2. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer. For more essays, click here.
It is mid-1978, and we are inside the giant Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, looking into a cubicle shared by a pair of 22-year-old men, fresh out of college. Their assignment is to sell Duncan Hines brownie mix, but they spend a lot of their time just rewriting memos. They are clearly smart - one has just graduated from Harvard, the other from Dartmouth - but that doesn't distinguish them from a slew of other new hires at P&G.
The Golden Boy chats with Woods – and crosses paths with Misty May-Treanor – at a Manhattan party
"As far as swinging a club, that's not going to happen until next year," says the champ
Doctors who treat the kinds of knee and leg injuries that ended Tiger Woods' victorious season have one word for his US Open victory -- remarkable
Two days after a grueling U.S. Open that took him five days and 91 holes to win, Woods said he will have reconstructive surgery on his left knee to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament
The U.S. Open champ credits watching her grow with getting through knee surgery and winning
In early September the beautifully comported U.S. Walker Cup team went to Ireland and defeated a team of fellow amateurs from Great Britain and Ireland, 12 1/2 to 11 1/2. A week later the American women went to Sweden to play a European squad for the Solheim Cup and came back victorious, 16-12. Then in late September the American men, led by Tiger Woods and loosely managed by Captain Jack (Nicklaus), went to Canada for the Presidents Cup and won handily over Gary Player's International team, 19 1/2 to 14 1/2. The last time U.S. golfers had such a trifecta? Never.
(AP) -- One of the intriguing aspects of the Presidents Cup is that the captains fill in the players one game at a time, instead of blind draw, meaning they can orchestrate matches. That led to Tiger Woods playing Ernie Els in South Africa, and Fred Couples playing Vijay Singh in 2005.
With only two par fives and numerous doglegs reigning in the boom-boom generation, Southern Hills isn't considered a candidate for Tiger Woods' personal ranking of the "Top 100 Courses I Can Play."
(AP) -- After just four holes, there was no longer any question who would win, only by how many.
TULSA, Okla. -- It seemed like 2000 again in Akron, Ohio, on Sunday, when Tiger Woods won the Bridgestone Invitational by eight strokes, lapping the field at Firestone Country Club. It was the sixth time he's won on Firestone's South Course.
Tiger Woods is seeking his "lucky 13th" major win at this week's PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., but two days after the tournament ends Woods will be announcing a first: his inaugural golf course design in the United States.
AKRON, Ohio (AP) -- The ninth hole is where all the action is at Firestone Country Club.
AKRON, Ohio (AP) -- Tiger Woods looked as unbeatable as everSunday at Firestone.
Tiger Woods Career Gallery
Tiger Woods's baby daughter, Sam Alexis, may be only two weeks old, but she's already held a golf club in her hand - or at least tried to.
Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Nordegren welcomed a daughter, Sam Alexis, on Monday, the golfer announced on his Web site.
What ever happened to Tiger Woods? You remember him, right? Big smile, flawless putting stroke and an aura so intimidating that other players' mock turtlenecks would get tighter at the very sight of his name on the leader board. Woods may lead the PGA Tour in victories, scoring average and all-important FedEx Cup points, but the story of the year in golf is that something has gone missing in Tiger's game. The most ruthless closer the sport has known has developed a vulnerability when it matters most, and it cost him last week's U.S. Open, just as it did the Masters earlier this year.
Unlike the famous commercial that introduced the best golfer to the world, I am NOT Tiger Woods.
For the fourth straight year, Sports Illustrated set out to rank the 50 top-earning American athletes (taking into account on and off the field income), and it's no surprise to see the familiar names at the top of the list. In fact, there are dozens of trends and storylines that make this year's incarnation of the Fortunate 50 one of the most interesting we've ever compiled.
(AP) -- Tiger Woods was once so nearsighted he said he would be considered legally blind without glasses or contacts. He had Lasik surgery in October 1999 after the Ryder Cup, won the Disney Classic in his first tournament back and has done fairly well since.
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- In a couple of months, it will all change for Tiger Woods.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- The gallery stood a dozen rows deep and spilled down both sides of the fairway, the kind of scene Tiger Woods is used to seeing on the weekend at a major championship. This was only a pro-am round Wednesday at the Wachovia Championship.
CHARLOTTE, N. C., May 2 -- I must be dreaming. It's 1 p.m., and the press room at the Wachovia Championship is packed with writers. And they're writing! I see rows of earnest journalists hunched over their laptops, pawing through interview transcripts and chugging their Diet Cokes. I see newspapermen, bloggers, magazine scribes, skywriters honing their material before they head for the airstrip. It's like the U.S. Open in here, and it's Wednesday.
New Orleans is known for minting first-time winners, but Nick Watney's slow waltz to victory at the Zurich Classic last weekend contained very little suspense, especially not after last year's heart-stopper by Chris Couch.
OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) -- Tiger Woods got his first look at Oakmont Country Club on Sunday as he began preparations for the U.S. Open.
There's something interesting about watching crowds of African-Americans follow Tiger Woods around Augusta National on Easter weekend. When Woods, the son of a black father and Thai mother, arrived on Tour, many of us in black America believed that he was going to be our golfing messiah. When his father, Earl, told SI in 1996 that his son was "the chosen one," we thought Tiger had come to save us, to show the way toward more opportunities to play the game and succeed in the golf industry.
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AUGUSTA, Ga., April 8 -- This qualifies as a major newsflash: Tiger Woods is human.
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) -- Tiger Woods lost a golf club but saved a par at the Masters on Sunday.
AUGUSTA, Ga., April 7 -- When the legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins was among a group of senior golf writers honored earlier in the week for having covered 40 or more Masters tournaments, he joked about remembering the Masters won by Hogan, Snead, Nicklaus, Palmer and the greats. Many of the rest, he said, were just blanks.
AUGUSTA, Ga., April 6 -- Paul Casey, Padraig Harrington and Jerry Kelly were the only players to break 70 Friday as the 2007 Masters continued to confound the players. The struggles of one man, Tiger Woods, spoke loudest.
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) -- The most impressive swing Tiger Woods makes this week could end up being the one that didn't make the ball go an inch.
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) -- Even with low temperatures leading to high scores at the Masters, Tiger Woods was getting into dangerous territory Friday.
Try to imagine a Masters without Tiger Woods.
The appearance of the two most chronicled players in the game on a warm, cloudy Tuesday at Augusta National begged the question: Can anybody other than Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods win this tournament?
1. Which program did CBS air immediately before its Masters coverage on Sunday?
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Tiger Woods shot an 8-under 64 Tuesday to win the stroke play competition at the Tavistock Cup.
MIAMI (AP)-- Davis Love III was the first.
"I am, by nature, a control freak," Tiger says with a smile.
MIAMI -- You don't have to worry about Tiger Woods someday starting his own tour. He's already got one. It's called the World Golf Championships.
KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. (AP) -- Tiger Woods has the last tee time Sunday, which is fortunate because Roger Federer kept him out late Saturday night.
MIAMI(AP) Tiger Woods made it all look so routine, from a 4-iron into 10 feet for eagle on the opening hole to the most simple par on the final hole to build a four-shot lead on a Blue Monster course he has tamed the last three years.
MIAMI (AP) -- Tiger Woods made it all look so routine, from a 4-iron into 10 feet for eagle on the opening hole to the most simple par on the final hole to build a four-shot lead on a Blue Monster course he has tamed the last three years.
MIAMI (AP) -- With the Masters right around the corner and his putting stroke lagging behind, Tiger Woods stayed on the practice green for close to an hour after the first round at Doral in a desperate search for a solution.
YOU WOULD HAVE thought Sergio Garcia was the next Elvis the way crowds responded to him at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago. The smile, the daring, the vigor, and only 19 -- men exchanged high-fives, women swooned, and kids, well, kids adored him most of all. "It looks like they love me,"a grinning Garcia said after narrowly missing birdie putts on 17 and 18 and finishing second to Tiger Woods.
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ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - Tiger Woods has won four PGA Tour events at the Bay Hill Club, but he cannot explain why he has failed to shine over the last three years at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
On Sunday evening the scorecard said that Henrik Stenson was the winner of the Accenture Match Play Championship. Perhaps the real victor, though, was a gentleman who passed away in September at the age of 94. When Nick O'Hern eliminated Tiger Woods in the third round at the Gallery's South course, thus halting Woods's streak of PGA Tour wins at seven, Byron Nelson's hallowed record of 11 straight victories in 1945 acquired even more luster. Now it looks downright unassailable, and only one question remains: Is this the greatest individual sports streak of all time?
While it's hard to remember the Masters without Tiger Woods, here, from the pages of our sister publication Sports Illustrated, is a decade-old snapshot of something you'll never forget: the nail-biting quiet before Tiger's first Masters as a professional in 1997, and the aftereffect of the most dominating performance ever seen up to that time in a major championship. (Unattributed lines excerpted from stories by Rick Reilly, John Garrity and Jaime Diaz.)
When Jack Vickers canceled the International three weeks ago, he laid the corpse at the feet of Tiger Woods, saying, "If something isn't done, you're not going to have a Tour. Right now, it's a one-man show". But the long-held belief that Woods alone drives ratings has taken a hit so far this year. Woods has played only twice, though at press time full ratings were not yet available for the Accenture Match Play. At the Buick Invitational viewership was down 8.2% on Sunday from the 2006 figure, even though Woods started in contention and rallied on the back nine to win. (It is still the most-watched golf broadcast of the season so far.) Meanwhile, Sunday ratings at Tiger-less Pebble Beach were up 19.0% for Phil Mickelson's cruise to victory, and they were up again the next week (31.1% over '06) when Mickelson lost the Nissan Open in a playoff to Charles Howell. The only other event that was broadcast on network television, the FBR Open, in which Woods didn't play and Mickelson missed the cut, posted rating
It wasn't the outfit. Tiger Woods was wearing a black shirt and hat, with charcoal-gray slacks. It must've been his sinewy arms and buff, V-shaped upper body, and the faster-than-a-speeding-bullet, 341-yard drive he had just launched at the 4th hole of the Gallery at Dove Mountain. Whatever, as Woods strode down the fairway a starstruck fan blurted out, "Wow! He looks like Superman!"
It's too bad Tiger Woods had his PGA Tour winning streak end at seven last week in Arizona. It means we'll miss the debate about whether his streak was comparable to Byron Nelson's famous run of 11 straight victories in 1945.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- It was a lovely week at the Emirates Golf Club. Palms rustled, birds chirped, pile-drivers hammered, tractors roared, construction cranes rattled, saws whined, dumpsters clanged, trucks groaned, and traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road top-dressed the ambient cacophony with a lusty baritone hum. What was vacant desert just a few years ago is now a construction project to beggar the imagination, with dozens and dozens of skyscrapers springing skyward.
Where does Tiger Woods' current streak of seven consecutive PGA Tour wins rank among all his achievements? Here's my top 12 list.
By now everyone has seen the outtakes of Tiger Woods unexpectedly decking his costar in a Buick commercial, but no one has heard from the deckee, Al Nowicki. "It was a lot of fun," says the actor, who has appeared in about 50 commercials. "It was Tiger's idea, and I was fine with it. I haven't played football since high school, but it was a good hit." This was not, however, Nowicki's only experience with a sports legend: "A few years ago I appeared in an AFLAC commercial with Yogi Berra. Nice man. He didn't hit me; he just sat there." ... While Nowicki was upgraded to stunt pay (he also received a bruise on the forehead), Tiger made some extra cash that day too. At one point director Steve Chase spotted a vertically mounted light, a four-foot-by-eight-inch unit known as a Kino Flo, about 80 yards away. He bet Woods $10 that Tiger couldn't hit it. Woods dropped a ball, pulled a three-iron and busted the light on the first try. (A clip of the shot and other outtakes are scheduled to appear on buick.com.) Ch
1. The Colts touched down in Miami on Monday night. They weren't talking about the health of Peyton Manning's swollen thumb, but it might not have been a good sign that it barely fit in the overhead compartment.
Tiger Woods arrived at last week's Buick Invitational nearly four months removed from his last PGA Tour start, the 2006 American Express Championship, at which he prevailed, running his winning streak to six consecutive Tour events. During his so-called off-season Woods finished second at a pair of tournaments in Asia, announced that his wife was pregnant, birthed a course-design business, jetted to Dubai to cut the ribbon on his first project, embarked on a whistle-stop tour across the western U.S. to promote Nike's new driver, went skiing in Colorado and celebrated his 31st birthday. But the more things change, the more Tiger stays the same.
1. Tiger Woods Gee, who do you think is the favorite at the 2008 U.S. Open?
It's all Tiger all the time this week, just as it is any time he tees it up, but there is a little more mania in the air at Torrey Pines.
What have we learned so far in 2007? A few things.
TIGER AND PHIL have not duked it out on a golf course since late August, but that doesn't mean they've stopped competing with each other. Two and a half months after Woods introduced his course-design company, Tiger Woods Design, Mickelson is going public with his own architectural firm: Phil Mickelson Design. Mickelson was expected to announce his venture on Tuesday in Palm Desert, Calif., before making his season debut at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Lefty, who co-designed the Lower course at Whisper Rock in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 2001, has already lined up two projects. The first is River Rock, a new development in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains that will include a nine-hole par-3 course designed by his coach, Rick Smith. The second, Diamante Cabo, will be an exclusive development north of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Several other deals are in the works. Wonder if any will have trees down the left side of the 18th fairway?... Speaking of Winged Foot, everyone is in a rush to portray Mickelson's 72n
A new era in golf begins ... and it feels strangely like the end of the old era: No Tiger, no Phil, no buzz. Is this the 2007 Mercedes Championships, or the '06 Tour Championship?
As we look back on 2006, one question: Where did all the good teams go? What an ordinary bunch of pseudo-winners. Never mind even a wannabe dynasty. Oh, what I would give for another bully of a team, a juggernaut, a steamroller. Where are the monsters of yesteryear?
What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett the world's premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing e...
Tiger Woods has just about everything he needs to be one of the world's most popular athletes except a rival.
Surviving a tight finish might have been easy, compared to talking about his dad.
If you've never heard of golf's "Fab Four," you're not alone.
Tiger Woods won the Masters at the "old" Augusta National in 1997. He won in 2001 after three holes were changed. He won yet again in 2002 after a substantial redesign added 285 yards to the course...
Four is an impressive number in golf, especially when (a) par is five, or (b) it's the number of majors you've won in a row. But Woods' lucky number is $54 million. That's how much he earned in end...
From that first report card to the last performance review, most people spend lots of time trying to correct their weaknesses. Marcus Buckingham's new book, Now, Discover Your Strengths (Free Press...
I can't wait to tell my kids about golf. When they're old enough to understand (my son is three; my daughter, just two months old), they'll probably be stunned to learn that children once longed fo...
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