Timeline of golf (2000–present) number one at the end of that year. Tiger Woods completes what becomes known as the "Tiger Slam", holding off David Duval and Phil Mickelson to win the Masters Championship in April to become the first golfer in history to hold, concurrently, all four professional major championships. For good measure, Woods had won the game's fifth most important event, the Tournament Players' Championship as well, in March. By the end of the year, however, Woods would have relinquished three of his titles, on each occasion to players winning their first major title. At the U.S. Open, South African Retief Goosen
Tiger Woods addition to his first major, the 1997 Masters. Woods won this tournament by 12 strokes in a record-breaking performance and earned $486,000. He first reached the number one position in the world rankings in June 1997, less than a year after turning pro. Throughout the 2000s, Woods was the dominant force in golf—he won the 2000 U.S. Open by a record 15-shot margin. He was the top-ranked golfer in the world from August 1999 to September 2004 (264 weeks) and again from June 2005 to October 2010 (281 weeks). Woods took a self-imposed hiatus from professional golf from December 2009