How Tiger Woods changed golf forever

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Tiger Woods changed golf forever. He made golf cool. He exploded its economics. He challenged what was previously thought possible on the tee.

And here’s how he did it.

Seb Stafford-Bloor writes. Philippe Fenner illustrates.

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Music sourced from epidemicsound.com
Additional footage sourced from freestockfootagearchive.com

#Golf #TigerWoods #PGA

He made golf cool he exploded its economics he challenged what was previously thought possible on the tea tiger W changed his sport forever and here is how he did it Woods’s influence on the game today is very apparent most obviously in the anecdotal Sense on the very best players

Jordan spe has said that nobody had more influence on his game Bubba Watson Adam Scott and Rory mroy have made similar remarks and Bryson Das Shambo revealed that Woods push me to be a better golfer growing up Patrick Reed wears red shirts on Sunday in tribute to woods and that

Barely scratches the surface nor does it include the unquantifiable number of amateur players first encouraged to swing a club after watching him play but why well partly it’s about the image of the game and what Woods represented prior to his turning professional in 1996 the stereotypical golfer was quite

Different the cliche was outof shaped players dressed in country club outfits Woods by contrast was not the first player to be mindful of his condition but he was certainly the first to attract publicity for the brutality of his training regimen he had the Sleek muscularity of an athlete and wore slim

Fit apparel that made him an outlier in what remained a stuffy and conservative sport in 1997 just a year after turning professional he became the first non-white player to win The Masters at Augusta although woods’ success never really changed the game’s demographics the barriers to entry and the sports

Cost to amateur levels all dampened that potential effect nevertheless Tony Fel a six-time winner on the PGA tour and the first American of Tongan Samo and Heritage to play on it remembers that 97 Masters as the first tournament he ever watched but Woods’s age at Augusta very

Much did change some of the assumptions around the sport as Bill Pennington wrote In The New York Times it was accepted wisdom that grasping the intricate nuances of Augusta National Golf Club would take years words it was said repeatedly by the tours Elders would have to wait but he didn’t 21 at

The time he blew through the field winning the tournament by 12 shots and finishing 18 underpar and that changed the perception of golf across the world when I was growing up said Dustin Johnson a former world number one in high school you were kind of a dork if

You played golf but tiger actually made it a cool sport to play and that image changed the demand around the game it’s appealed to sponsors and broadcasters and ultimately golf’s economics measuring that impact is imprecise but for context in 1996 the year Woods turned Pro only nine players in the

World earned $1 million in prize money or more the highest earner Tom Layman won just $1.7 million that year in the modern day the PGA Tours 2023 money list contained 139 players earning more than a million that year and at the top of the list American Scotty Sheffer earned

Just over $21 million and that surge in sponsorship and prize money can be partially explained by the number of people attracted to the game during Woods’s rise and dominance for instance the final round of the 1997 Masters Wood’s first major win attracted a global audience of 43 million viewers

The highest in history according to neelsen that round had a 14.1 household rating the highest since 1977 the second highest on the list was another Woods victory at the Masters in 2001 which achieved a 13.0 rating by the end of the decade Woods’s performances had subsided but his draw had not in

2008 he missed the PGA Championship through injury and the average viewership for the final round was 4 million the next year recovered he played and contended finishing second the viewing average Rose to 10.1 million and when he returned to win the 2019 Masters the tournament attracted the

Most viewers it had since 2006 and to nearly capture the influence Woods had had over the course of his career he took home a Winner’s check for over $2 million that day 22 years earlier in 1997 the winner’s share of the purse was 486,000 and there are many more statistics like that contributing

Collectively to what was known as the tiger effect in simple terms when Woods played television audience and tournament attendance Rose exponentially and Myriad benefits like boosts to ticketing broadcasting and sponsorship income followed His Image helped and so did his youth but Woods also created a unique spectacle he was dominant in an

Unprecedented way by the year 2000 at the age of 24 he became the youngest player in history to have won all all four majors in 2001 after winning the US Masters he became the first player in history to win all four majors in a row an achievement subsequently christened

The tiger slam and many of those wins were by a great distance too in fact only twice in the modern era has a player won a major tournament by more than 10 shots both times at the 97 Masters and the 2000 US Open it was tigerwoods that did it he was also doing

Things that had never been seen before at his Peak he was hitting the ball 2 5 yards further on average from the te than any other player he could strike the ball with unfathomable distance and great accuracy framing him as a new type of athlete one both hugely successful

But also wildly different one could argue that he changed the sport in one very measurable way after his 2001 victory at Augusta one of the sport theories or Buzz phrases became the need to Tiger proof courses in other words lengthen and toughen them to curb Woods’s dominance in 1990 the Master

Course at Augusta National was 6,95 yard in length today it’s almost 72,000 yard long that describes equipment changes too as well as an exponential rise in Heavy Hitters across the tour but Woods’s challenge to what was previously thought possible clearly helped to alter the dimensions of the game itself and

That is a highly literal measurement in the figurative sense from the way players dress to their body shapes and how much they’re able to earn on the course and away from it tiger woods’ influence is practically incalculable if you like this video please consider subscribing to the

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