There is a before and after Tiger Woods in golf. This Tuesday, on his 50th birthday, the American celebrates a career that has revolutionized the sport and multiplied its audience, that of a golfer who seemed invincible but who ended up paying the price with his body and his private life for the weight of being a legend.
Away from the golf courses for all of 2025 after rupturing his Achilles tendon in March and undergoing his seventh back surgery in September, Woods has long been out of the elite, although he remains the most recognized athlete in his discipline, a true icon.
Tiger Woods, 50
At 50, Woods could compete on the PGA Tour Champions, the circuit reserved for veteran golfers.
"I'll probably play about 25 tournaments between both tours, and I think that should cover most of the year, right?" Woods joked weeks ago during the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, which he is hosting.
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The reality is that his last professional appearance was in July 2014 at the British Open, where he missed the cut.
Woods boasts 15 major championships, the 1999 Ryder Cup, 82 PGA titles, 683 weeks as world number one, and a streak of 142 tournaments making the cut. This impressive record was built on an aggressive and unique playing style, which was the foundation of his resounding victories.
Among them, the 1999 PGA Championship stands out, in which he defeated Sergio Garcia in a duel that has gone down in history as one of the greatest in modern golf.
His success on the course had a cultural impact that transformed golf into a fashionable, global sport with enormous audiences, accompanied by an economic boom in prize money, contracts, and sponsorships.
With Nikea relationship that ended in 2024Woods became the face of golf, with massive contracts and iconic campaigns.
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Woods has, in fact, achieved great business success and is one of the few athletes to have amassed a fortune of over $1 billion.
Injuries and Scandals
2009 marked a turning point for Woods. After years of absolute dominance, on Thanksgiving Day he was involved in a car accident in front of his home in Florida, which led to a scandal involving infidelity.
The episode led to his divorce, the loss of sponsors, and a hiatus in his career that ended the dominance he had held in golf between 1997 and 2008. After that break, he only won one other major, the 2019 Masters Tournament.
In 2017, he was arrested for driving under the influence, and in 2021, he suffered a serious car accident in Los Angeles that resulted in multiple fractures to his right leg, requiring complex surgeries and limiting his appearances to a few tournaments.
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Recently, Woods has been linked to the Trump family through his relationship with Vanessa Trump, mother of Kai Trump, the golfing granddaughter of the US president.
Mission: Save the PGA
Beyond his uncertain sporting future, Woods, at 50, has taken on the challenge of transforming the PGA to regain the interest of fans and challenge LIV Golf, the circuit financed by the Saudis.
Woods was recently appointed chairman of the PGA Tour's Future Competition Committee, a newly created body tasked with designing this transformation, which anticipates major changes by 2027.
His considerable authority allows him to lead this working group, which aims to improve a product that has suffered a talent drain to the LIV, with the loss of players like Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson, and Dustin Johnson.
