Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of Tiger Woods from Jeff Benedict's and Armen Keteyian's  book, Tiger Woods


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0:00 - 10,000 hours

“Malcolm Gladwell who coined the phrase 10,000 hours said, “the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.” And Tiger Woods had probably accumulated ten thousand hours by the time he was twelve.

2:30 -  Make it Visible

“Earl was always looking for ways to give his son an edge. Tiger was in grade school when his father furnished him with a cassette player and motivational self-help tapes…Tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great. He even wrote some of the messages from the self-help cassettes on a sheet of paper that he taped on his bedroom wall:

4:45 - Philosophy

“In sport, you have to go for the throat because if all friendly, they come back and beat your ass. So you kill them. Take their heart.”

10:00 - Chasing History

“Many believed Tiger’s primary goal was to win more major championships than Jack Nicklaus. Nicklaus’s eighteen major championships, however, were not Woods’ primary focus. It was age not numbers, that mattered most to Tiger. 

“It was the first time he broke 40, the first time he broke 80, the first golf tournament he ever won, first time he ever won the state amateur, first time he won the US amateur, and the first time he won the US Open…That was it. That was the list. It was all age related. To me, it was important. This guys the best out there and the best of all time. If I can beat each age that he did it, then I have a chance at being the best.”

13:25 - Belief

“In my life, I’ve never gone to a tournament without thinking I could win. I’ve explained that to you guys before. That’s just the mindset I have.”

17:15 - Never Satisfied

“I was in in it to find the answer to one question. How good can I be?”

“I didn’t care that I won by twelve shots. I knew what I needed to do…I thrived on working on my swing. I was addicted to staying on the range for hours.”

22:30 - Capacity for Pain

“There is a difference between being hurt and being injured. If I’m hurt, I can deal with pain. Pain is no big deal. I can block that out.

30:30 - One final Note

"There’s no sense in going to a tournament if you don’t believe that you can win it. That is the belief I’ve always had, and that’s not going to change.”