Tiger Woods Essay, Research Paper

Biography of Tiger Woods “Let your clubs speak for you.” Tiger Woods was too young to notice the racism around him. He didn’t understand that in this world, people were judged by the color of their skin. He couldn’t speak out about it; he couldn’t voice his opinions, or come up with possible solutions because he was too young. Tiger faced many racial ordeals throughout his life, mainly because he was half-Thai and half-black. He broke into the sport of golf as one of the youngest. He not only wanted to be the best black golfer; he wanted to be the b est golfer. The only way Tiger dealt with racism was to let his clubs do all the talking for him. The book starts off with Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, during the Vietnam War. A sniper almost took out Earl but his friend saved him. Later on that day, he gets in a predicament with a bamboo viper, and once again, his friend saves him. The friend’s name was Nguyen Phong, and he was good in combat; he was a tiger in combat. Nguyen Phong had the nickname of “Tiger”. Earl vowed that if he ever had an o ther son, he would call him “Tiger”. After the war, back in the United States, Earl met a Thai woman named Kultida and he married her and had a son. They named the baby Eldrick, but Earl called him “Tiger”. Tiger Woods took interest in golf at a young age. He would watch from his crib as his father would practice his swing. He began playing golf since before he could walk. When he got a few years older, he began to compete in the Junior Nationals tournaments against older boys. He didn’t hav e the strength to drive the ball far, but he had skill; he was blessed. Earl made Tiger some miniature clubs out of his old ones and from that moment on, he was obsessed with the sport. The way that Tiger played, it was no longer a sport, it became an art. With every hole he played, his game progressed to a whole new level. As Tiger grew older, he still played tournaments and racked up his victories, he even played for Harvard’s golf team. Harvard was interested in having him play for them sinc e an early age. Later on in his career, he started to show that he wasn’t perfect. He showed that he too made mistakes and was just like everybody else.The author of the book definitely knows a lot about Tiger. He got a lot of information for the book directly from Kultida and Earl Woods. John Strege wanted others to get to know Tiger. He wrote this book to show how Tiger got to be where he is now. The book starts off with how Tiger got the name Tiger. It was obvious that the author admired Tig e r. I really liked this book because I did not know where Tiger got his name. It was interesting to read about how Earl Woods vowed to call his next son Tiger to repay his friend Nguyen Phong for saving his life. I am not one to take interest in golf but this book was exciting. I liked reading about how Tiger started at a really young age and practiced everyday to perfect his game. Tiger is a good example of that if you put your mind to something, if you try hard enough, and focus all your atte n tion on something, you can do it; that right there you can apply to all aspects of life, not just golf or any other sport. I thought that this book was going to be boring because golf is boring, but I was really interested in reading details about all these tournaments that Tiger played in. I felt as if I was really there watching Tiger play golf. I don’t think that there was anything wrong with this book; I didn’t dislike anything about it. I think the reason why I didn’t find anything wrong w ith this book was that this book is a biography and you can’t really change the story too much because it is about someone’s life. If I could have changed a part of the book, I would probably have added what Tiger feels about racism now that he is older, instead of just reading “Let your clubs speak for you” time and time again throughout the book. It would have been interesting to read how the racism affected him. I recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn a little more about Tiger W o ods. I think that anybody would enjoy this book whether they like golf or not. This book isn’t 100% golf, it is the biography of Tiger Woods and it is all about how Tiger rose to fame and became one of the best golfers in the world. It is a good book and it should be shared with everyone else.