TIGER WOODS: The Billionaire Athlete
It is reported that there exists an estimated 946 billionaires in the world. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet even Oprah Winfrey are on the list but there is no mention of Michael Jordan, David Beckham or even Michael Schumacher. Demigods in the realm of athletic prowess, you would assume have reached this financial pantheon once reserved for Wall Street misers and Middle East oil tycoons. No athlete has ever made their way onto this ever-growing list of financial prosperity…not yet.
Tiger Woods is expected to join another club, but not a club where one trades opinions on new sand wedges but a club where its members trade advice on new $150 million dollar yachts. By 2009, it is expected that Tiger will be the first Billionaire Athlete. Tiger is already more than halfway to this plateau, where once again he enters hallowed ground, where a person such as him has failed to venture. Tiger’s cumulative tournament purses and endorsement deals have totaled more than $545 million dollars since turning pro in 1996.
For those living in a cave for the past 10 years, Tiger has redefined the game of golf and has changed the face of the game. Where once the poster child was a crodgety old man, playing behind high-walls in his suburban sanctuary; the game now looking more like a Benetton poster; with every race, color, creed and sex learning how to hit a little dimpled-white ball down that big open lawn called a fairway, into a hole only 4.25 inches in diameter. At the tender age of 30, Tiger has won 80 professional golf tournaments worldwide with 60 of them being official PGA golf tournaments and 13 being Major Championships.
But most of you already know all this information. What about the business empire that is Tiger Woods? What about the latest endorsement deal with Gatorade? Another blockbuster deal for Tiger that reportedly, will pay him $100 million dollars over the next 5-years. Or the fact that the beleaguered General Motors division of Buick actually sold 150,000 units of the disgustingly designed Rendezvous between 2002 and 2003; in large part to the 5-year, $40 million endorsement deal with Tiger. Tiger has already begun his quest at further immortality with his first two golf course designs. In 2006, Tiger established the TW Design Company with his first golf course design being the Al Ruwaya, at Tiger Woods Dubai located in United Arab Emirates. The second being The Cliffs at High Carolina, located in South Carolina, United States. Adding his name to the list of other famous golfers such as Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Bobby Jones who have cemented their names in golf lore not only through their heroics on the golf links but through the design of golf courses to which, mortal hacks such myself, make pilgrimages to on an annual basis.
These endorsement deals and golf courses are simply the tip of the iceberg. What separates Tiger from the pack, is his ability to look past what he must do to get onto MTV’s next episode of Cribs or how many more carats he can fit onto his pinky ring. One could say his Stanford University education has helped him make the kind of mature financial decisions, which will ensure his great-great grandchildren will never have to work a day in their life if they chose so (doubtful).
The distinction between Tiger Woods the golfer and Tiger Woods the father, the husband, the businessman can be summed up in this quote from Tiger himself, “My dad has always taught me these words: care and share. That's why we put on clinics. The only thing I can do is try to give back. If it works, it works.” “Care and share” are the tenants of Tiger Woods and his foundation. The Tiger Woods Foundation primarily funding organizations and programs based in urban American cities. Helping under-privileged youths, through the game of golf, learn life lessons that will enable them to break the social and family curses of poverty, illiteracy and self-deprecating behavior.
Golf has been the platform onto which Tiger has built his foundation of financial and social wealth, but golf is not what Tiger wants to be remembered by. Tiger was once quoted as saying, "A child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi...has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for." This quote summarizes Tiger’s goal, a pragmatic view on our Country’s current state of social misconceptions and prejudice but a quote that reveals the his deep-seeded understanding of his and his foundation’s difficult road ahead. In an interview conducted during Tiger’s early career, his father, Earl Woods was quoted as saying, “…Tiger is as charismatic and would have an impact upon the world, in a humanitarian aspect, very similar to that of Gandhi. Tiger will be interested in kids like that. He will be like an ambassador at large, without portfolio. It would not be political. He's not a very political individual, at this stage.” Tiger’s impact in the trivial world of Sport compares to only a few athletes, Michael Jordan, Mohammed Ali and Wayne Gretsky but his impact on the Business World and World at large has yet to be tested. His foundation and Tiger Woods’ Learning Center are simply the seeds to what his father had eluded to prior to his recent death.
Tiger, the Billionaire Athlete, will impact the Business World but more importantly, the World at large as no other athlete has done. Among other things, Mohammed Ali helped bring awareness to Apartheid and the injustice faced by the minorities in this country; but his brash and candid communication left mainstream Americans with an opinion of a loud-mouth, uneducated black man opinioning about things he knew nothing about. With his “West Coast Ivy-League” education and polished demeanor, Tiger has the tools to change the world and make his father’s prophecy come to fruition. The mainstream corporate world is already jumping onto the Tiger Woods bandwagon, showering him with more financial wealth than any other athlete has seen before.
Tiger once said, "One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it." If what we know about Tiger is true, all of our predictions and speculations about what Tiger will do or become are wrong. Only Tiger knows what he expects out of himself, and unlike us, he probably isn’t surprised with what he has already accomplished. Tiger will probably become the first Asian/African American President of the United States and in the end, be worth $100 Billion Dollars…then again, I could be way off base.
To steal a quote from a famous hip-hop artist, Tiger isn’t a businessman; he’s a business…man.