Key Highlights
- Amateur where, in the second round of stroke-play qualifying, he scorched around Muirfield Village in a bogey-free 66. Yes, while Woods was yet to become a man, he was still very much the man in the world of junior and amateur golf.
- (Oh, and earlier that year, he also teed it up for the first time in a PGA Tour event at the Nissan Los Angeles Open.)AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhich is why what took place at the Orange Bowl Junior International Championship in Coral Gables, Fla.,—on Tiger’s 17th birthday to boot—stuck in his craw for some time to come.
- Woods didn’t make a habit of losing when facing his peers—taught at an early age to be a cold-blooded golf assassin.
- Now he had fallen to someone he had never heard of. While Woods skulked, his father Earl deemed the three-shot defeat a useful experience for his gifted son, describing it as “a good lesson for Tiger.”And it was a confidence booster for the 17-year-old from Africa who beat him. More From Golf Digest Year in Review 2025 Newsmakers of the Year—Our annual countdown of the top 25 players, events and moments in golf Year in Review Our favorite golf memories from 2025 Features Paying tribute to those golf lost in 2025 AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLEWIS CHITENGWA might be the greatest player the golf world never got the chance to see compete.
- He was born in Harare, Zimbabwe on Jan.