Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is the winner of 14 of golf's major championships and is the sport's biggest superstar since Jack Nicklaus. Before he became a grown-up celeb, Woods was a kiddie phenomenon: his father Earl allegedly introduced Tiger to golf at age 9 months, and at age 2 the youngster made a now-famous appearance putting with Bob Hope on The Mike Douglas Show. Woods won three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles (1994-96), and in 1996 turned pro with a $40 million contract from Nike and a fame usually reserved for movie stars. Woods made good on the hype, winning 46 PGA tournaments in his first ten seasons on the tour. He won the 1997 Masters in his first attempt as a pro and later won the PGA Championship (1999), the British Open (2000) and the U.S. Open (2000) to become one of the few golfers to win all four major tournaments during their careers. In April of 2001 Woods won the Masters again, becoming the first golfer in the modern era to hold all four major tournament titles at once (2000 U.S Open, British Open and PGA Championship, and 2001 Masters). In 1999-2000 Woods won six consecutive tournaments, making him the first man to do so since Ben Hogan in 1948. Cementing his reputation as Nicklaus's heir, Woods won the British Open in 2005, the year of Nicklaus's final appearance at the competition. Although 2005 and 2006 were tough on Woods -- his father died 3 May 2006 -- he won the British Open again in 2006, and the PGA Championship in both 2006 and 2007.

Extra credit: Woods has won all the major tournaments at least twice: The Masters in 1997, 2001, 2002 and 2005, the PGA Championship in 1999, 2000, 2006 and 2007, the British Open in 2000, 2005 and 2006, and the U.S. Open in 2000, 2002 and 2008... Woods's father served in Vietnam and nicknamed his son "Tiger" after a South Vietnamese army officer... Woods wed Elin Nordegren on 5 October 2004 in Barbados; she's a Swede and the former nanny to golfer Jesper Parnevik... Nordegren gave birth to their daughter, Sam Alexis Woods, on 18 June 2007. Woods told reporters that "Sam" was another nickname his father sometimes called him by as child... By winning The Masters in both 2001 and 2002, Woods joined Nicklaus and Nick Faldo as the only men to win in consecutive years... Woods once told Oprah Winfrey that as a child he had decided he was "Cablinasian" -- a mixture of Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian. His mother Kutilda is from Thailand, his father is an American of multiple ethnic backgrounds.