This
season, Tiger Woods has firmly established himself as not only the most
dominant golfer in the world, but also the biggest single-season money
winner ever with over $6 million in prizes. He has won a total of eight
PGA tour events this year, including his last four in a row, while capturing
the 1999 PGA Championship, the PGA Tour Championship and, most recently,
the World Golf Championship. Woods has matured professionally under
intense public scrutiny, and is now truly fulfilling the promise of
his birth chart, while finally living up to all the hype he generated
when he originally turned pro back in 1996.
Tiger
was born December 30, 1975 at 10:50 pm PST in Cypress, California
with the Sun in Capricorn. He is, in many respects, a “typical Capricorn”;
hard working, ambitious, focused on achieving his goals and climbing
to the top of his chosen field. His fellow golfers on the tour, mostly
older and more experienced, now regularly concede that this 23-year-old
is already capable of things they will never achieve.
Family
is very important to Capricorns, and Tiger is no exception. He maintains
very close bonds with both parents. His father, Earl Woods, has been
his coach and mentor from the cradle and closely guided the former
phenom to greatness. The elder Woods has taken his share of the kind
of criticism that befalls parents of over-achievers, but the relationship
between the two of them has never shown any cracks and remains close
and supportive.
Tiger’s
drive and ambition come from within. No one has pushed him anywhere
he didn’t want to go. His chart reveals a powerful Pluto, placed in
the First House of personality and physical appearance. The world
is already familiar with his sullen intensity and he radiates the
kind of personal power that demands public adulation while fiercely
defending his personal privacy. Perhaps that has been the hardest
adjustment to life in the spotlight for Tiger. Individuals with a
strong Pluto tend to cultivate a deep inner life and do not generally
respond well to prying.
With
his reticent Virgo Ascendant, he had the work ethic to spend the endless
hours perfecting his game, but that inner focus did not serve him
well in his initial interactions with his public. Tiger has made great
progress in his efforts to come forward out of himself and cultivate
a more media-friendly personality.
He
exhibits a caring confidence now in his public relations, but that
carefully controlled mask protects a deeply introverted individual
who would prefer to be left alone to perfect himself. In an interview
after his victory in the PGA Tour Championship, when asked why he
did not, like so many of his colleagues, dress in the knickers and
caps they wore to memorialize Payne Stewart, Woods replied, in grief,
“I like to handle things internally. I don’t need to show it
outwardly, the pain that I feel inside.”
Great
athletes need a great Mars,
and Woods is no exception. At his birth, Mars in Gemini had just passed
its culmination, or the highest point it reaches in its path across
the sky. This tends to give the greatest eminence or public visibility
to an athlete’s martial abilities. In fact, that particular placement
of Mars within the birth chart of champion athletes was the chief
feature of some of the most famous and controversial astrological
research ever done, the famous Mars Effect of French researcher Michel
Gauquelin.
At
the tender age of 23 Woods has nowhere to go but up. The indications
in his chart seem to suggest that he will continue to improve, press
his advantage, and succeed at an even more outrageous level over the
coming years! While that will
certainly make for some exciting golf, it also raises the question:
Who will be the young gun that rises up to challenge him in the future?
How good will he have to be?
Tiger is raising the bar with every victory and golf, more
popular than ever, will never be the same again.
Notes
Mars,
the warrior, in airy Gemini shows adaptability and a willingness to
try a variety of approaches to a given problem. It may be associated
with scattering one's energies, but this tendency is outweighed here
by Tiger's earthy Sun, Ascendant and prominent Pluto.
Michel
Gauquelin was the leading astrology
researcher of the twentieth century. His statistical studies revealed
a meaningful correlation between the planets' positions at birth and
a person's career. The "Mars Effect" was the best known of his studies.
More
on the Mars Effect.
|