In near darkness, Tiger Woods stared down a 6-foot par putt on the 72nd hole. He made it, forcing a playoff with Bob May. The two had dueled for hours, matching birdies under intense pressure. Woods’s final-round 67 and May’s 66 were among the greatest paired performances in major history. The three-hole aggregate playoff was anticlimactic; Woods won by one stroke. At 24, he secured his fifth major title and his third of the 2000 season, following record-shattering wins at the U.S. Open (15-stroke victory) and The Open Championship (8-stroke victory).
The achievement, dubbed the ‘Tiger Slam’ after he won the 2001 Masters to hold all four majors consecutively, recalibrated the sport’s standards. His dominance was quantitative and qualitative. He led the PGA Tour in scoring average (67.79), earnings ($9.1 million), and brought a previously unseen athleticism to the game. Equipment and course design began to change in response to his power. Television contracts and prize money swelled, driven by the ratings he commanded.
Many remember the year for his margin of victory at Pebble Beach. The PGA Championship at Valhalla mattered more. It was a grind, a test of nerve against a little-known challenger playing the round of his life. It proved Woods could win without his absolute best ball-striking, relying on scrambling and clutch putting. It was a completeness of competitive skill.
The 2000 season established Woods as the central figure in golf for a generation. It created an aura of inevitability that defined his prime and set a benchmark—the modern Grand Slam—that became the sole measure of his own success and, for years, the impossible standard for his rivals.