Tiger Woods Signed 1997 Masters Badge | PSA/DNA Authentic, Auto 9 | Woods' 1st Masters Victory | Youngest Masters Champion | Largest Masters Margin of Victory | 1997-2000 Era Signature

Sotheby's is proud to present this 1997 Masters badge signed by Tiger Woods. Issued for the tournament staged at Augusta National Golf Club between 10 and 13 April 1997, the badge is from Tiger Woods’ historic first major championship victory. The signature is period correct, and consistent with examples from 1997.

Entering the week as a 21-year-old prodigy in his first Masters as a professional, Woods produced one of the most dominant performances ever witnessed at Augusta. After a nervous opening nine holes in the first round, during which he turned in four-over-par 40, he mounted a remarkable recovery and proceeded to overwhelm the field over the remaining 63 holes.

Woods completed the championship with rounds of 70, 66, 65 and 69 for a tournament-record total of 270, eighteen under par. He finished twelve strokes clear of runner-up Tom Kite, establishing the largest margin of victory in Masters history.

Woods became the youngest Masters champion to that date, the first non-white golfer to win the tournament, and the holder of a new scoring record at Augusta National.

The autograph was graded and received a 9 from PSA/DNA.

Going Deeper | Tiger Woods

Eldrick "Tiger" Woods was born on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California, to Earl Woods, a retired Army officer, and Kultida Woods, who was born in Thailand. His father introduced him to golf before he could walk. He appeared on The Mike Douglas Show at the age of two, putting against Bob Hope. He won the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at fifteen, becoming the youngest player ever to do so, and won it again the following year. He won three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles before turning professional in August 1996. Seven months later, he arrived at Augusta National for the 1997 Masters.

At twenty-one, Woods became the youngest champion in Masters history, winning by a record twelve strokes. His score of 18-under-par 270 broke Jack Nicklaus' 32-year-old Masters record. His margin of victory was the largest in the twentieth century, second only to Old Tom Morris' thirteen-shot margin at the 1862 British Open. It was also the first time a person of Asian or African heritage had won a major championship.

Journalist Ron Sirak described the victory as "a societal accomplishment as well as an athletic accomplishment — as if Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball and Babe Ruth's home run record in the same season." Augusta National had not invited its first Black player until the year Woods was born. African-American workers at the club stood on the balcony of the clubhouse cheering him as he putted out on the eighteenth green, while forty-four million television viewers watched his record-setting performance during the final round.

What followed the 1997 Masters was one of the most sustained periods of dominance in the history of sport. The defining stretch came between 1999 and 2002, when Woods wasn't simply winning tournaments — he was suffocating fields. It wasn't just that he collected trophies. It was the way he did it: with control, swagger, and the sense that everyone else was playing for second if he showed up with his best game. In June 2000 he won the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach by fifteen strokes, the largest winning margin at a major championship in history. He became the fifth player in golf history, and the youngest, to complete the career Grand Slam when he won the British Open the following month. He then won the 2001 Masters to hold all four major championships simultaneously — a feat no player in the modern era has matched, and the closest golf has come to a champion having the sport on pause.

He spent 683 weeks as World No. 1 — the most in Official World Golf Ranking history. He won 82 official PGA Tour events, tied with Sam Snead for the all-time record. He holds fifteen major championships, second only to Jack Nicklaus' eighteen. He won the Masters five times in total — 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, and 2019 — the last of which, coming eleven years after his previous major victory and following multiple back surgeries, a DUI arrest, and a period in which his career appeared to be over, was described by many as the greatest comeback in sports history.

In February 2021, Woods was involved in a serious single-vehicle accident in Los Angeles that caused significant injuries to his right leg, requiring multiple surgeries and raising genuine questions about whether he would ever compete again. He returned to play the 2022 Masters and the 2022 Open Championship, completing rounds in considerable pain. He remains one of the most followed and discussed figures in sports.

His legacy extends beyond statistics. Woods transformed perceptions of golf, expanding its appeal to diverse audiences and inspiring a generation of players, particularly young people of colour, to take up the game. The forty-four million viewers who watched the 1997 Masters final round remain one of the largest audiences ever recorded for a golf broadcast. In the years that followed, television ratings, tournament prize funds, endorsement markets, and youth participation in golf all rose dramatically. The sport before Tiger Woods and the sport after him are not quite the same sport.