PART 2 Amateur Chapter 8

Western High School

Anaheim, California

Spring 1991

How many tournaments have you won?” a reporter asks.

“I have no idea,” fifteen-year-old Tiger says. “I quit counting after 11-and-under. I had 110 trophies. I threw them all into the garage.”

“By the time he was 14,” notes a March Sports Illustrated feature on Tiger under the headline GOLF CUB, “he had won five age-group junior world titles, two more than any other golfer has won. With the trophies for those and more than 100 local junior titles, the Woods house contains more hardware than your neighborhood True Value Home Center.”

“The game has never seemed hard,” says Tiger with a shrug. “I don’t know why, but I’ve always been good.”

“Good” is obviously an understatement. Playing around thirty tournaments a year, Tiger keeps winning, including both the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section and the California Interscholastic Federation/Southern California Golf Association events.

The victories happen in between practicing trick shots and playing games such as golf-cart polo. “We’ll go on a deserted course and take turns trying to hit a tree,” says Bryon Bell, one of Tiger’s best friends. “Or he’ll see how many times he can bounce a ball off his club face. Or he’ll practice hitting a ball backward. Your basic stuff.”

Tiger’s latest stats: he’s almost six feet tall and less than 140 pounds.

Sipping a soda outside the clubhouse at the Torrey Pines South Course, the first fifteen-year-old to win the fifteen-to-seventeen age bracket and the first player ever to win six Junior World titles, is a familiar face to reporters. The Optimist Junior World runner-up—sixteen-year-old Mark Worthington of Redmond, Washington—admits to the television crew, “I did not play good today but I got to play with Tiger. I had never seen him before. I only read about him in Sports Illustrated.”

On July 24, less than a week after winning the Junior World in San Diego, Tiger is in Orlando, Florida. Last year, he made it as far as the United States Golf Association Junior Amateur Championship semifinals. His new goal is to become the youngest winner in tournament history. His dad and Jay Brunza, who’s acting as his caddie this weekend, are here to support him.

Bay Hill Club his is internal. I don’t see him burning out, because golf is pure pleasure for him.”

Tiger is playing on four hours of sleep.

The fifteen-year-old recently crowned USGA Junior Amateur champion flew into Chattanooga, Tennessee, from Colorado Springs only eight hours before his 8:42 a.m. tee time at the ninety-first U.S. Amateur Championship.

He’d been in Colorado to headline the Canon Cup at the US Air Force Academy’s Eisenhower Golf Course. “I wanted him to have total fun at the Canon Cup, which was really about playing as a team with his friends, and he was so excited that his team won,” says Earl of the east-versus-west junior tournament.

“It’s a bunch of teenagers away from home, of course there’s a lot of goofing off,” says fellow California golfer Jason Gore, who roomed with Tiger in Colorado Springs. “But Tiger went to bed every night at 7:30. It was like, Dude, what are you doing? I’ll never forget the sight of him with the blankets pulled up under his chin, and he’s peeking out in those huge glasses.”

Tiger may be “just a golf nerd,” but he’ll need that rest.

The U.S. Amateur field has 312 players and no age restriction, narrowing to sixty-four over two rounds of stroke play on two qualifying courses. Twenty-one-year-old Phil Mickelson is favored to defend his 1990 title.

But a Tennessee face-off between the two Southern California golf prodigies fails to materialize. On August 21, the Los Angeles Times reports: WOODS, MICKELSON OFF TO SLOW STARTS.

The next day, Tiger’s out. He fails to make the cut, sending him home to Cypress.