Fansided

Tiger Woods’ 15 essential moments on the PGA Tour

By Luke Norris

AUGUSTA, GA - 1997: Tiger Woods during the final round of the 1997 Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club on April 13, 1997 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/PGA TOUR Archive)
AUGUSTA, GA - 1997: Tiger Woods during the final round of the 1997 Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club on April 13, 1997 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/PGA TOUR Archive) /
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23 Jul 2000: Tiger Woods of the USA with the trophy after winning the British Open Golf Championships at the Old Course, St Andrews, Scotland. Mandatory Credit: David Cannon/ALLSPORT
23 Jul 2000: Tiger Woods of the USA with the trophy after winning the British Open Golf Championships at the Old Course, St Andrews, Scotland. Mandatory Credit: David Cannon/ALLSPORT /

Tiger completes the career Grand Slam at the 2000 Open Championship

After completing the third leg with his historic win at Pebble Beach, Tiger Woods had a chance to become just the fifth man in history to win the Grand Slam at The Open Championship in 2000. And what better venue to do it than the home of golf: the Old Course at St. Andrews.

With a win, 24-year-old Tiger would become the youngest-ever winner of the Grand Slam by two years (Jack Nicklaus did it at 26) and he was in the mix right from the start, shooting an opening-round 67, just one back of Ernie Els. Unfortunately for the rest of the field, Tiger followed it up with a second-round 66 to get to 11-under, three shots better than David Toms heading into the weekend. And at that point in his career, nobody was going to catch him. Even the rest of his fellow competitors knew they were playing for second place.

Three-time major championship winner Nick Price had been paired with Tiger for the first two rounds and he admitted that he was in absolute awe of what he was seeing. Toms would echo that following the third round, a round that saw Tiger shoot 67 and increase his lead to six. Toms said that he had never seen so many people on a golf course — more than 230,000 people showed up to the Old Course for the show — and that watching Woods was just awesome.

World No. 2 David Duval, who was one of only a handful of players in 2000 that might be able to call himself Tiger’s peer (and would win this championship a year later for his sole major), was paired with Woods in the final round and had a front row seat to history as the game’s most dominant player shot a fourth consecutive round in the 60s, this time a 3-under 69 to break the Open Championship scoring record at 19-under. Woods beat Ernie Els and Thomas Bjorn by eight strokes just five weeks after winning the U.S. Open by 15. What may be even more impressive, if that’s actually possible, is that Tiger played the entire tournament without going into one of 112 bunkers on the course. That’s 448 bunkers over 72 holes, some of which are insanely daunting, and he didn’t find one of them.

At just 24, Tiger was now a Grand Slam winner. But there’s no way he could keep winning majors at this pace, right? Well…

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