Kansas State University Athletics
Former K-Stater Earl Woods passes away
May 03, 2006 | Baseball
From staff and wire reports
Earl Woods, a member of Kansas State's 1952 baseball team and the first African-American baseball player in Big Seven Conference history, passed away Wednesday morning at his home in Cypress, Calif. He was 74.
"My dad was my best friend and greatest role model, and I will miss him deeply," Tiger Woods said on his Web site. "I'm overwhelmed when I think of all of the great things he accomplished in his life. He was an amazing dad, coach, mentor, soldier, husband and friend. I wouldn't be where I am today without him, and I'm honored to continue his legacy of sharing and caring."
Woods was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998 and was treated with radiation. But the cancer returned in 2004 and spread throughout his body.
Last month, he was too frail to travel to the Masters for the first time.
The last tournament Woods attended was the Target World Challenge in December 2004, when his son rallied to win and then donated $1.25 million to the Tiger Woods Foundation that his father helped him establish. The Tiger Woods Learning Center, another vision inspired by his father, opened in February.
Woods decided not to play in the Wachovia Championship this week in Charlotte, N.C. Two of his best friends on tour, Mark O'Meara and John Cook, withdrew from the tournament and flew to California to be with him.
Jack Nicklaus, who also was 30 when his father died, said he had long "admired and related to the close bond" shared by Tiger and Earl.
"My father was my best friend, my mentor and perhaps my greatest support system. Earl was all of that to Tiger," he said.
But Earl Woods was more than a golf dad.
He had played catcher at K-State and was a Green Beret for two tours in Vietnam. But he felt his true purpose was to train Tiger, and he watched his son evolve into the dominant player of his time -- the youngest player to win the career Grand Slam -- and one of the most celebrated athletes in the world.
"I knew Tiger was special the day he was born," Woods said in a May 2000 interview with The Associated Press.
Woods introduced Tiger to golf by swinging a club as his son watched in a high chair. Tiger appeared on the "Mike Douglas Show" at age 2, played exhibitions with Sam Snead and Nicklaus, and his television appeal was solely responsible for quantum gains in PGA Tour prize money.
Tiger Woods set records that might never be broken by winning three straight U.S. Junior titles, followed by three straight U.S. Amateurs. At age 30, he already has won 48 times on the PGA Tour with 10 major championships, and he set a PGA Tour record by going seven years and 142 consecutive events making the cut.
Tiger Woods won twice in his first seven PGA Tour events after turning pro in 1996 at age 20 and was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. Woods predicted greatness for Tiger on and off the course, telling the magazine that his son "will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity."
Perhaps the lasting image of Earl Woods came the next spring, at the 1997 Masters, when he stepped onto the 18th green and wrapped his arms around a 21-year-old son who shattered records at Augusta National, a watershed victory that changed the appeal of golf and sent him to the greatness his father had always predicted.
Earl Woods was born March 5, 1932, in Manhattan, Kan., the youngest of six children. He graduated from Kansas State in 1953 with a degree is sociology.