Tiger Woods turning pro in 1996 changed the face of golf forever

August 28, 1996. Golf’s big bang. Things would never be the same again.

Tiger Woods holds the winner’s cheque after his first victory as a professional, the 1996 Las Vegas International. Picture: AP

August 28, 1996. Golf’s big bang. From that point on, the day Tiger Woods announced he was turning professional, things would never be the same again.

Golf, particularly as a professional sport, went to a new dimension. Woods turned pro with a handful of groundbreaking endorsement contracts already in his pocket. One for $US40m over five years from Nike to wear its clothes and shoes. Another from Titleist worth $US20m over five years to use its equipment. Several more millions from American Express. Unprecedented numbers for a golfer.

At the time, Nike founder Phil Knight said: “What Michael Jordan did for basketball, (Woods) absolutely can do for golf. The world has not seen anything like what he’s going to do for the sport.”

And he wasn’t wrong, was he?

All these years later, Tiger’s impact on golf can be boiled down to two things: money and influence.

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Tiger joined the PGA Tour towards the end of its 1996 season. That year the tour comprised 44 events and the average first prize, according to Golf Digest, was $US263,341.

Not including the four majors and the end of season limited-field Tour Championship, the biggest first prize cheque in 1996 was the $US630,000 on offer at the Players Championship. The biggest first prize in a regular event was $US360,000.

Tom Lehman, who won the British Open that year, topped the 1996 money list with a grand total of $US1,780,159. By 2000, with Woods in his pomp, the 49-event season included three World Golf Championship events offering a first prize of $US1m. Only eight events on the calendar offered a first prize of less than $US500,000.

When Woods topped the money list that year, for the third time in his career, his winnings totalled $US9,188,321. The $US10m-in-a-year barrier would be broken by Vijay Singh in 2004, and then three times by Woods in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Jordan Spieth set a new bar in 2015 with winnings of $US12,030,465.

The recently completed 2018-19 season comprised 46 events, only five of which offered a first prize cheque of less than $US1m.

In 1996, just nine players banked PGA Tour winnings of more than $US1m. Last season there were 112.

Tiger turning pro unlocked rivers of gold for golf. The fuddy-duddy sport played by white, middle-aged men in dodgy sweaters suddenly had a cool edge to it. Like the Pied Piper, Tiger Woods brought the people along with him. At the 1997 Masters, Tiger’s first major victory, a staggering 44 million people tuned in to watch the final round coverage in the US. In 1996, there were about 24.4 million people who played golf in the US. By 2006 that number had soared to 29.8 million.

Professional golf today is reaping the rewards of that Tiger-inspired boom in participation.

Many of the players at the top end of the game credit Tiger as the reason why they pursued golf as a professional sport. Among them are the likes of Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Spieth, all major champions.

“There’s nobody who had more influence in my golf game than Tiger,” Spieth once said.

So the Tiger legacy lives on. Players inspired by Tiger now take centre stage and golf, while not at the heady levels of the early 2000s, is still doing very nicely thank you. And it can’t hurt that the man himself has found his way back into the limelight for all the right reasons.

The timing is opportune. The PGA Tour is in the throes of renegotiating its television rights. The first plank of this was signed in 2018 with a 12-year deal agreement worth $US2bn with Discovery TV to show PGA Tour golf outside the US.

The domestic US rights for the tour come up in 2021, and with major players such as Amazon, ESPN, AT&T and Fox showing an interest, it’s a fair bet that the current deal will be worth a fair chunk more than the approximate $US400m a year CBS and NBC currently pay.

Nick Faldo, six-time major winner and dominant player before the big bang, wrote in his autobiography, Life Swings: “Tiger has taken interest in the sport to a new level, in a way that possibly only Arnold Palmer did before. Every professional in America, Europe, Australia and Asia should be truly grateful for that.”