Tiger Woods Honors His Father With Tribute to Veterans
Tiger Woods celebrated Memorial Day by honoring his father. The 47-year-old golf legend went to social media during Memorial Day weekend and posted a photo of Earl Woods in his military uniform. And in the caption, Woods wrote, "If it wasn't for my father and hundreds of thousands of others, we wouldn't have the freedoms we have stateside. Miss and love you dad. The ultimate SF operator."
The elder Woods served in the military from 1954-1974 and did two tours in Vietnam while becoming a Green Beret. In an interview with Golf Digest, Earl explained why he wanted to join the Miltary. "If you consider all the options open to a young black college graduate in 1953, the options were slim and none," he said.
"If you wanted a fair chance, it amounted to post-office work — take the civil-service exam — or military service. That was it. So the odds are, if I had not taken advanced ROTC, I would have been tossed into the labor pool — black, educated people who corporations did not really want. Overqualified, underemployed and underpaid. I would not have had any reason at all to go to Thailand, and I never would have met Tida, and there never would have been a Tiger."
Earl also revealed his first active-duty assignment, which was in Fort Benning, Georgia. "It was my first extended period in the South, and I had a tremendous adaptation to go through, because I wasn't brought up that way," he said. "I did not feel inferior, I did not feel intimidated, and I was like a ticking bomb, really."
Earl died in 2006 at the age of 74 after suffering a heart attack at his home in Cypress, California. He coached Tiger at a very young age and predicted greatness for him. "He's the bridge between the East and the West," Earl once told Sports Illustrated, "I don't know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. He'll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power."
Tiger has become of the greatest golfers of all time. He has won 82 PGA Tour events, tied for the most in golf history. Tiger has also won 15 major championships, the second-most behind Jack Nicklaus.
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