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Tiger Woods didn’t waste much time taking the golf world by storm when he made his debut on the PGA Tour, but anyone who’d kept tabs on him when he was playing in college probably wasn’t surprised by that development based on what he achieved during his time at Stanford.
You don’t even have to follow golf to know just how much Tiger Woods changed the sport when he burst onto the scene in the 1990s.
The former child prodigy was 20 years old when he joined the PGA Tour in 1996, and he’d only been able to legally order a drink at a bar for a few months when he won his first green jacket at The Masters the following year.
That marked the first of the 15 major tournaments Tiger has won (while he might be firmly in the twilight of his career, history has taught us to never count him out), and he only needs one more PGA Tour victory to pass Sam Snead and take sole possession for the most tournament wins of all time.
Tiger also had a very impressive career as an amateur, and nothing sums up his dominance like his performance at the Pac-10 championship in 1996.
Tiger Woods shattered a course record as a junior in college during a tournament
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Tiger won three U.S. Junior Amateur championships when he was in high school, and every single college golf team in the country would’ve been more than happy to add him to their ranks.
He had no shortage of options to pick from, and he ultimately headed to Stanford University on a scholarship in 1994 (he kicked off his fall semester after winning the first of what would turn out to be three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles).
Woods came hot out of the gate, as he won the first tournament he ever competed in as a freshman, and by the time the season came to an end, he was named the Pac-10 Player of the Year and a First Team All-American.
His sophomore year would also end up being his last year at Stanford, and he certainly made the most of it. When everything was said and done, he won the NCAA individual championship (joining the ranks of Phil Mickelson, Jack Nicklaus, and Ben Crenshaw), but you could argue his most impressive achievement transpired during the Pac-10 Championship.
In 1996, golfers from around the conference flocked to Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach, California in the hopes of walking away with a title. At that point, everyone knew Tiger was the man to beat (especially when you consider he had plenty of experience at the course), and he quickly reminded them all why that was the case.
The two-day tournament required all of the golfers to play two rounds each day at a tract where the course record was 66. I say “was” because Woods headed out in the morning and shot a 61 only to head back out in the afternoon to shoot a 65.
Tiger coasted to the individual title to the tune of 14 strokes, and while he attempted to put his team on his back, they ultimately finished in fourth place (Arizona State topped the rest of the field, with USC coming in second and Cal taking the bronze).
What a legend.