Being touted as one of the most successful golfers of all time, Tiger Woods has been World Number one for the most successive weeks and for the greatest number of times for any golfer. He has been in the top position for 281 consecutive weeks. He has also broken numerous golf records in his career. Needless to say, he took the golf world by storm as he is the youngest ever player to become World Number one. He has won 105 tournaments, 79 of those on the PGA Tour, including Masters Tournaments, US Opens, British Opens and PGA championships. Besides, Woods has been named PGA Player of the Year 11 times.
However, he has had an unprecedented career since becoming a professional golfer in the late summer of 1996. Speaking about his experiences and coming out as being extremely open and candid, the ace golfer reveals many of his never-beforeheard stories and dispels previous misconceptions in his biography titled Unprecedented: The Masters and Me. He had a rough terrain to tackle through his journey, with different injuries, changes in the game, as well as being married, having kids and getting publicly divorced.
Woods, along with his co-author Lorne Rubenstein, gives insights about his lifelong physical and mental preparation for the tournament, his transition from amateur to professional status and the gripping shot-by-shot details of how he turned a tough first round into a Masters win for the ages. Leading up to the 1997 Masters Tournament, 21- year-old Tiger Woods was already one of the world's most scrutinised and talked about professional athletes, yet his exhilarating win and historic margin of victory astonished the golf world and instantaneously catapulted him to stardom. To mark the 20th anniversary of his historic US Masters victory, Woods reflects for the first time on his record setting win, and how it changed his life and the game of golf, forever.
The exceptional golfer's biography takes the reader through his relationship with the game, the Masters Tournament and those close to him, including his father Earl. After his win of two of his first eight PGA Tour events as a professional, which qualified him to play the 1997 PGA Tour full-time, the hype, surrounding him by the end of 1996, and his selection into the Masters, was intense. "I was having trouble handling all the attention. Writers followed me when I walked to my car. Television cameras were in my face. I was being asked personal questions that had nothing to do with golf. That was the deal, and I realised I'd better adjust quickly," the golfer writes in his memoir.
He added, "This was my new life as a professional, and there were plenty of perks, such as the Nike deal that I'd signed, flying on private airplanes and, 10 years later, flying in my own airplane. But more than anything, I loved golf and competing. I needed to cope with the magnifying glass trained on me all the time. I found it stifling at times, but as Arnold Palmer told me, the attention was going to be there, and it would be unrelenting." Woods has also spoken about his relationship over the years with Arnold Palmer, also fondly known as The King in the golf world, whom he would consider as his father figure after his father had died in 2006.
Tiger Woods shared an exquisitely emotional bond with his father, Earl. He writes, "My dad knew me so well, and he knew how to say the right thing at the right time. After we lost him in 2006, I missed that the most. I knew him really well too. We could get on each other and talk about anything we wanted. He had made sure from when I was a kid that he didn't talk down to me, and he went so far as to lean down to my height when I was a little guy, something I do with my children Sam and Charlie." "My dad," writes Woods, "always told me to play only for myself."
Speaking about his Masters win, he gushed, "I started to appreciate what winning the Masters had done for me. I had won three PGA Tour events before the Masters and gotten into the Tour Championship the previous October. In winning the Masters, though, I got job security for the next decade."
Besides, he was also surrounded by various controversies including his cases of "infidelity". "As I look back, at the age of 41, at my first Masters win, much has happened since that memorable Sunday in April 1997. My daughter, Sam, born 2007, and son, Charlie, born 2009, are the lights of my life. Their mother, Elin Nordegren, and I were so much in love when we married in 2004. But I betrayed her. My dishonesty andselfishness caused her intense pain. Elin and I tried to repair the damage I had done, but we couldn't. My regret will last a lifetime," inscribes Woods in his memoir.
A review by Nivedita R