While Tiger Woods will now only be seen on the golf course wearing Sun Day Red apparel, there has arguably never been an athlete more synonymous with a brand than the 15-time major champion was with Nike.
Tiger Woods spent more than 27 years associated with Nike before their partnership came to an end in early 2024. He had also been playing TaylorMade clubs for some time at that stage, with Nike deciding to stop manufacturing equipment back in 2016.
One of the reasons Nike’s decision nine years ago came as such a shock was the fact that they had arguably the greatest talent golf has ever seen signed to them.
Some of the most iconic moments in the sport’s recent history have involved Woods, with the Nike Swoosh in a prominent position.
How Tiger Woods reacted to signing his $40 million Nike deal in 1996
Of course, Woods has now taken on the elder statesman role on the PGA Tour, having helped to try and find a deal with the PIF, as well as play a part in appointing Brian Rolapp as the tour’s new CEO.
But it seems that he has not always been that invested in the business side of the sport.
Speaking on Subpar, his former agent Hughes Norton noted that Woods barely batted an eyelid when presented with the deal from Nike ahead of his professional debut.
“Complete indifference. I sat in the hotel suite, it was the night before he went out to play his first round as a pro, the pro-am at Milwaukee, 1996, and we talk about it in the book, I had three contracts: I had a $40 million fully-guaranteed deal from Nike, a $20 million fully-guaranteed deal from Titleist, and the IMG representation contract. And we describe all those in detail in the book. But we sat there at this little table, and we moved the McDonalds bags and burgers aside – that was the diet of Earl and Tiger without fail every night. I didn’t want to get any grease on these nice contracts. So we shoved them aside, and we went through them page by page,” he said.
“And really, I said indifference, it’s kind of boredom as we go through. Not so much Earl, but Tiger kind of yawning and wondering when SportsCenter’s going to come on. He’s 20 years old, he had no frame of reference whatsoever for this, and I kept trying to put it in perspective. I would say, ‘Tiger, just so you know, this $8 million a year for shoes and clothes from Nike is four to five times what the number one guys in the world right now in your sport are making: Nick Faldo and Greg Norman. How do I know that, because they both were clients of IMG’. And finally, he signed them, and I said, ‘what do you think?’ He said: ‘not bad, huh’. He got up and went and watched TV.”
Tiger Woods’ performance on his professional debut at the Greater Milwaukee Open
Woods went on to finish in a tie for 60th at that week’s Greater Milwaukee Open. He shot seven under par for the week, ending up 12 shots behind Loren Roberts.
But despite the result, Woods did manage to steal the show and provide a glimpse of what was to come when he made a hole in one in the final round.
Woods would earn $2,544 for his performance that week at Brown Deer Park Golf Course. That may well have felt like loose change to the boy wonder given the deal that he had signed just a few days earlier.
Nike meanwhile, probably felt almost immediately vindicated about their investment when Woods did make an ace on his first professional start.
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