"You’ll Learn."

How one quiet exchange predicted golf’s greatest career 🐅

Honoring the game’s biggest moments, memories and legends

August 27, 1996.
Tiger Woods was 20 years old and on the edge of his professional debut at the Greater Milwaukee Open. He had just announced “Hello, world” to the golfing public a few days earlier. The hype was building, but in professional golf, hype is often humbled quickly.

Facing him in that first big interview was Curtis Strange. A man who had lifted the US Open trophy twice, a man who had seen young stars come and go.

“What are your expectations?” Strange asked.
“I expect to win,” Tiger said, calm and certain.

Curtis leaned back, gave a knowing smile and replied, “You’ll learn.”

It was the kind of thing veterans say to rookies. The PGA Tour was full of talent. Winning wasn’t just rare, it was almost impossible to do consistently.

But Tiger didn’t take long to prove he was different.

Within eight months he had two PGA Tour wins and Rookie of the Year locked up. Then came April 1997 and the Masters Tournament, where Tiger didn’t just win, he tore the record books apart. He finished at 270, 18 under par, the lowest total Augusta had ever seen. He won by 12 shots, the largest margin in major championship history. And he did it all at just 21 years old, the youngest Masters champion the game had ever seen.

If you want to see where it all started again, you can watch that moment here:
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From that moment forward, golf had a new standard.

Over the next decade, Tiger collected 82 PGA Tour victories, 15 major championships and spent 683 weeks ranked No. 1 in the world. The records are staggering, but the thing that still lingers is that first exchange.

When Tiger said, “I expect to win,” it wasn’t arrogance. It was belief. The kind of belief you hold before the world believes with you.

For us at Tribute Golf, it started here.
Our first viral reel.
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The moment the community began.