One room isn’t big enough for Tiger Woods – even the World Golf Hall of Fame’s spacious Exhibit Hall, reserved every two years for a display honoring the incoming induction class.
That’s why the memorabilia honoring the star of the Class of 2022, which will be inducted on March 9 at the PGA Tour’s Global Home in Ponte Vedra Beach, is spread out all over the 75,000 square-foot structure just off I-95 in central St. Johns County.
The Hall of Fame will open the exhibit featuring Woods, who took golf by storm as a rookie in 1996 and still hasn’t fully let go, former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, four-time LPGA major champion Susie Maxwell Berning, and golf course architect and developer Marion Hollins to the public on Saturday.
The Hall of Fame and Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays. The exhibit for the incoming class, which will increase membership in the Hall to 164, will be open for approximately six months.
The date for the opening of the exhibit was not intended to coincide with Woods making his first public appearances and interviews this week, 10 months after a near-fatal car accident in Los Angeles.
But it will certainly remind fans of the scope and breadth of his contributions and achievements in golf.
Hall of Fame spokesman Jeff Szlinski said Woods was “hands-on,” during the process of deciding which of his personal items would be lent to the Hall of Fame.
Woods had most of the items at his Jupiter home. Some, including those from his junior golf days, were at his mother’s home.
“Anyone who has listened to Tiger’s interviews over the years knows that he has a great appreciation and knowledge of golf history,” Szlinski said. “He was very involved with the Hall of Fame staff members who went down there to work with him.”
The main exhibition honoring the 2022 inductees includes some items fans of Woods and golf might want to see with their own eyes, such as the red shirt, shoes, and player badge he wore during the final round of the 2019 Masters, where he won his 15th major championship and 82nd PGA Tour title to tie Sam Snead for the all-time record; the hat he wore in winning his third U.S. Amateur in 1996 at Pumpkin Ridge; and the putters he used in winning his first two U.S. Amateurs, including 1994 at the TPC Sawgrass.
Also in the display case are Woods’ trophies for being named player of the year, rookie of the year, winning World Golf Championships, his ESPY Award, his Wheaties box, and one humble yet special item: a hole-in-one plaque for acing a par-3 at a course in Long Beach, Calif., when he was only 6 years old.
But that’s not the only place at the Hall of Fame to find all things Tiger.
It begins at the main entrance, where items commemorating his time at Stanford University are in a small display case.
There’s also a significant corner of the Hall of Fame’s “Major Moments,” exhibit honoring golf’s four major championships: a display case with the trophies Woods won when he held the titles from the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship at the same time in 2001.
The room dedicated to the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup also has Woods-related items, such as Ryder Cup bags and uniforms, plus two gifts he received in Australia when he was the 2019 Presidents Cup captain: a boomerang and an Australian Rules football.
There are Woods-related items in the rooms honoring The Players Championship, contributions made by minority golfers, his locker in the Hall of Fame locker room, and in another area reserved for unusual items difficult to categorize, “Tales from the Collection.”
That room contains Woods’ oversized check for winning his first PGA Tour event, the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational.
Woods’ impact on golf can be seen in the amount on that check, then and now. He earned $270,000 that year. When Sungjae Im won that event in October, he earned $1.26 million, more than four times what Woods banked.
As Woods won more and more, his charisma, popularity, and talent dominated professional golf, and TV networks and title sponsors began to pay more and more to be a part of his ascension to a level occupied in the past only by his boyhood idol, Jack Nicklaus.
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Golf fans will also be able to see the contributions made by the other three inductees through their exhibits, such as the garage-sale putter Berning used to win the 1973 U.S. Open; the set of knives given to Finchem as a gift from the Ryder Cup; and blueprints and drawings by Hollins, who was one of the first women golf-course architects and developers.
The induction ceremony on March 9 will be at 7 p.m. and aired by Golf Channel. It marks the first ceremony on the First Coast since 2013 at the Hall of Fame. The induction has been rotated since, going to St. Andrews, Scotland, Pebble Beach, and New York.
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