Tiger’s niece Cheyenne starts late but learns fast
DENHAM, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE — When Cheyenne Woods was three, she pottered into the California garage owned by her grandfather Earl and found an interesting-looking object.
Little did she know that this cutdown iron had once been used by Tiger Woods, nor that her uncle — then 18 years old — was already well on his way to becoming the biggest name in golf.
By the standards of her family, Cheyenne might seem like a late starter. By the time Tiger was three, he was already shooting 48 for nine holes at the Cypress Navy course where his father was a regular.
Yet there is little benefit to be had from comparisons with the greatest sportsman of our time. By any normal reckoning, Cheyenne has been a raging success story. She turned professional 14 months ago, at 21. And after her first year, which she has mostly spent on the Ladies’ European Tour, she has already emulated her more famous relative by becoming comfortably the leading AfricanAmerican player in the world.
“Being a Woods is definitely not a burden,” she said Tuesday. “Yes, you do have that added pressure, the expectation that comes with the name. But I’ve had it since I was 10 years old, which is when I started competing nationally. It is something that I am able to turn off when I get on the course, so that’s no big deal for me.”
On Friday, Woods will tee off in her first tournament in England — the ISPS Handa Ladies European Masters at the picturesque Buckinghamshire club in Denham.
A good performance would earn her a place in the British Open, which starts on Thursday week on the Old Course at St Andrews. And she can claim to be in form, having shot a career-best 64 in Madrid last week. Tiger took the time to call up and congratulate her for that one, even though he had just finished his own first round at Muirfield.
You might imagine that, like Tiger, Cheyenne must be a product of the Earl Dennison Woods production line. Yet this would be slightly misleading. Yes, Earl was an important mentor for her, “the one who guided me through junior golf and told me what events I should play in.” But Cheyenne lived with her own father — Earl Dennison Woods Jr., a social worker — in Phoenix, Ariz., more than 500 kilometres away. So she was restricted to occasional pieces of advice, and the odd visit during the summer holidays.
“I was only on the course with my grandfather maybe a handful of times,” she said. “Neither of my parents played golf, we didn’t know anything about it. At first my mum and I didn’t even know what a driving range was, so we would just go to the local park and hit balls in the grass there.
“I did start playing and taking lessons when I was five or six, which was very young. But then I played a lot of sports growing up, so golf wasn’t my entire life. I danced competitively, I ran track, I played volleyball. My parents wanted to make sure I was pretty well rounded and then I decided which track I wanted to go down.”
As for Tiger, she mainly saw him when he came to Scottsdale to play the Phoenix Open. Her clearest memory dates from 1997, just a few months before he won his first major at Augusta, when he made a famous hole-in-one at the 16th — which features one of the largest and loudest crowds on the golfing calendar.
“During the week of that tournament, we would just go and see my grandfather and Tiger, say hi and spend a bit of time with him,” she remembers now. “I was there for his hole in one and that was huge.
“I would always enjoy watching him on TV on the weekends. I thought it was really cool that my uncle was famous for playing golf. But I guess I didn’t realize how big the whole thing actually was. I was seven when he won that first Masters, and I remember watching Tiger walk off the green. Tida (Earl Sr.’s second wife Kultida) and my grandfather were there, giving him a big hug.”
From the age of eight, Cheyenne was playing tournaments of her own. She describes her style as “very steady — I feel like my personality reflects how I am on the course, very laid back, just go with the flow. I’m never too errant. I like to think my putting is one of my strongest points.”
Her surname may have helped win her an endorsement deal with Nike, who have supported Tiger since the beginning. But it was merit that earned her a golf scholarship to Wake Forest University — a prestigious institution that includes Arnold Palmer, 2012 US Open champion Webb Simpson and the successful Haas dynasty among its alumni.
For four years, she had to fit her practice, competitions and gym sessions around a degree in journalism and broadcasting, which may help to explain why she was so poised during a plethora of interviews Tuesday.