4/13/1997 - Tiger wins his first Masters

(Tiger celebrates his historic win. Photo by John Iacono, SI Photos)

Tiger Woods didn't make a splash at the 1997 Masters -- he made a tidal wave. At the age of 21, Woods not only became the first black man to win a major PGA tournament, he did it by annihilating the competition.

"It is not so much that Eldrick (Tiger) Woods won the Masters as the way he won it," wrote Dave Anderson of the New York Times. "He virtually shrank Augusta National into a pitch-and-putt course. At the 500-yard 15th hole, he crushed 350-yard drives and lofted 150-yard wedges over the pond. He finessed chip shots. He putted the linoleum-fast greens as if he were using a feather-duster."

''Arnold [Palmer] and I both agreed, that you could take his Masters and my Masters, and add them together, and this kid should win more than that," said Jack Nicklaus.

Eldrick Woods had hardly come out of nowhere. At age 2, he was on the Mike Douglas Show displaying his driving ability. In 1991, he won the Junior Amateur Championship at 15, when he was in the ninth grade. Woods again won the Junior Amateur in '92 and '93, becoming the first person to win it more than once, and then went on to win the Amateur Championship in '94 through '96.

When Woods stepped on the Augusta National course in 1997, he was a rookie. It was his first major tournament as a professional and there was an immense amount of buzz in the air. He had won his level's major championship the previous six years -- could he do it again at the pro ranks, where the name of the course was "The Masters"? Tiger was not only a prodigy in a sport characterized by its seniority, he was a person of color, which was quite a change to the golfing world. His father was black and his mother was Korean.

Golf had always been one of the "whitest" sports in America. Racial quotas existed in golf until the 1960's, when Charlie Sifford broke the PGA color barrier. By that time, every Major League Baseball team had experienced integration. It wasn't until 1975 and Lee Elder that an African American would even play at Augusta. In 1990, Shoal Creek, one of the highest-rated courses in the country, was the site of the PGA Championship. Asked why his club had yet to admit a black member, course founder Hall Thompson sparked outrage by responding, "That's just not done in Birmingham.'' Forced to recover from a public relations nightmare, several prominent country clubs admitted blacks for the first time. Augusta National was one of them.

Nearly 50 years to the day of Jackie Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Woods ended his final round at the Masters. Finishing at -18, the neophyte golfer shot a 270, breaking the all-time course record previously held by Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd. At the most famous course in the world, Woods won by a dozen strokes, obliterating the competition at a place notarized by discrimination and racial intolerance.

Afterward, Woods emotionally hugged his father, Earl, who had been with him from day one.

''As time goes on, I think what we will see is, with my age, [the] influence I've had on the game," said Woods, who thanked the euphoric crowd that gave him standing ovations throughout the evening. "I think more young people will start to play the game. I think that barrier, where young people haven't normally pursued golf, I think that now kids will think golf is cool, really. And I think they will start playing it.''

''I am just so elated,'' said Lee Elder. ''Here we're going to have a black champion, and that's something that certainly makes my heart feel very warm.''

(Woods getting fitted with the green jacket. Photo courtesy of Associated Press)

Woods dominated the headlines of every morning newspaper the next day. He had shattered the hype before him in an unprecedented fashion and was already being described as the best golfer on the planet.

Although the number of African Americans on tour failed to spike like he predicted, Tiger would live up to every expectation from that day forward. He won tournaments at an astonishing rate and began to threaten Jack Nicklaus' 18 major victories. In 2001, he reclaimed Augusta for the second time, and in doing so, won his fourth consecutive major tournament. Though the "Tiger Slam" was not quite the same as winning a Grand Slam (claiming all four majors in a calendar year), Woods made it clear that he was the greatest talent the sport of golf had ever seen.

Woods became so formidable that it was actually shocking when he didn't win. Never before has one man been so regularly favored to beat an entire field of 200 or even 300 competitors.

"A lot of other guys have had talent, breakthrough talent, but never really showed it the way Tiger has," Ernie Els said on the 10th anniversary of Woods' Masters conquest. "He's really come through more than I think a lot of people have expected. He's showed a lot of dedication through the last 10 years."