Tiger Woods is now a billionaire — here's how he spends his money and lives his life
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Woods' career once looked over, but he made a stunning comeback by winning the Masters a fifth time and may become a regular on the senior tour in a few years.
He's one of the highest-paid athletes ever and, according to Forbes, is now a billionaire.
Woods spends his money on yachts, private jets, and megamansions off the course.
Tiger Woods is one of the greatest athletes in the history of sports.
While Tiger may be approaching the twilight of his legendary career on the PGA Tour, there are signs that he will be a regular on golf's senior tour when he turns 50 in a couple of years. In the meantime, he can spend a little more time living his lavish lifestyle with his children, cars, houses, and toys.
Take a look at Tiger's fabulous life below.
Tony Manfred and Mary Hanbury contributed reporting to a previous version of this article.
Tiger Woods has made more than $1.4 billion since turning pro in 1996.
With 82 PGA Tour victories and 15 major championships to his name, Woods has accrued remarkable wealth from his dominance on the course. More than $120 million of his 10-figure income has stemmed from his on-course winnings, according to the PGA Tour, making him No. 1 on the all-time money list, by far.
He had one of his biggest paydays ever in golf as recently as 2018. He won $4.6 million at the Tour Championship alone — $1.6 million for winning the tournament and $3 million for his second-place finish in the FedEx Cup.
Woods is now a billionaire.
According to Forbes, Woods is now a billionaire. He's one of only two athletes to achieve the status while still active, alongside LeBron James.
Incredible earnings aside, Woods has undoubtedly hit bumps in the road.
In 2009, news broke that Woods had been cheating on his wife, Elin Nordegren. Two days later, he crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant outside his house.
He was accused of having an affair with Rachel Uchitel, a New York nightclub manager. Months later, several other women came forward to say they had affairs with Woods.
His ensuing divorce settlement cost him $100 million in 2010, Forbes reported.
He has also battled various injuries.
When Woods was charged with driving under the influence in 2017, he blamed an "unexpected reaction to prescribed medications." Woods had recently had a fourth surgery on his back, and police later said he had five drugs in his system at the time of the arrest.
Many of Woods' endorsement partners dropped him over the controversy.
AT&T, Gatorade, Gillette, Golf Digest, and Tag Heuer all ended their relationships with the embattled superstar. But his caddie, Joe LaCava, refused to abandon him, and Woods repaid his loyalty by continuing to pay him even as his golf career began to turn sour.
Before the Masters win in 2019, Woods hadn't won a major golf championship since 2008, and before the Tour Championship, he had not won on tour since 2013.
But Nike — Woods' primary sponsor since he turned pro in 1996 — also stood by the star.
Several years after the controversy erupted, the brand signed him to a fresh $200 million deal.
After 27 years as a Nike athlete, the legendary golfer announced in early 2024 that he and the sportswear brand were going their separate ways as Woods prepared for "another chapter." He went on to thank Phil Knight, Nike's cofounder and former CEO, and employees at the company.
On Instagram, Nike shared its own statement on Woods' departure, with an image of the golfer emblazoned with the words, "It was a hell of a round, Tiger."
Woods doesn't solely rely on his golf winnings and endorsements to fund his extravagant lifestyle.
When Nike got out of the equipment business in 2016, Woods signed with Bridgestone to use its golf balls. He also signed in 2019 with TaylorMade for its golf clubs.
They released his first set of signature irons, which sold for $2,000, and Woods was heavily involved in the design of the clubs. TaylorMade reportedly spent "hundreds of hours" on testing and building several prototypes until it got them just right for Woods.
He also runs a golf-design business. He opened his first US course in Houston in 2015 and was said to be designing a Trump International Golf Club course in Dubai. And in 2020, he partnered with PopStroke to design miniature-golf courses.
But Woods continues to live a lavish lifestyle.
After the divorce settlement, there were reports that he considered selling his 155-foot megayacht, Privacy, for $25 million. The boat was not sold, however, and Woods now docks it in North Palm Beach, Florida.
He even stayed on the yacht on Long Island during the 2018 US Open at Shinnecock Hills.
He likes to travel in style.
Tiger owns a Gulfstream G550 private jet, worth about $54 million. But in 2017, for the first time in 10 years, Woods took a commercial flight, from Los Angeles to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Woods also boasts a stunning real estate portfolio that includes homes across the United States and abroad.
He owns a 12-acre property on Jupiter Island on the coast of Martin County, Florida. The home is about 50 minutes away from West Palm Beach by car.
Woods originally purchased the oceanfront property in 2006 for $40 million, but it took $55 million to build a custom mansion worthy of golf's leading man. The property boasts a 3.5-acre golf course, a tennis court, an oxygen therapy tank, a media room, a full gym, and several pools.
In addition to owning various other properties in the Sunshine State over the course of his career, Woods purchased homes in Corona del Mar, California, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Lake Mälaren, Sweden. He also helped fund a 600-acre luxury resort in New Providence, Bahamas, and owns a restaurant near his home in Jupiter.
When he's not in Jupiter, he likes to bring some of the comfort of home along with him. ESPN columnist Rick Reilly said in 2013 that Woods was rumored to replace all the furniture in the houses he rented during tournaments with his own, even if he was there for only a few days.
He invests in his hobbies and passions, too.
Woods loves spearfishing so much that he once called in sick to a tune-up tournament before the Open Championship so he could spend time catching fish.
He's a massive fan of the Las Vegas Raiders and tries to find time to support the silver and black whenever he can. He even has a Raiders-themed pool table in his house.
Woods is a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, too, and turned out for multiple games during the 2017 World Series. He likes tennis, too, and has been spotted watching friends like Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams compete while seated in their player boxes.
Woods says he likes to practice all day, but when he was recovering from surgery, he filled his time by playing "Call of Duty" eight hours a day, with a 30-minute lunch break. Despite that, Woods said he was still getting beat by 7-year-olds when he played online.
He also spends lots of time working out.
Aside from playing and watching sports, Woods also likes to spend his time working out — maybe too much at times during his career. His old coach Hank Haney once said, "My opinion is he really overdoes that."
Haney would also suggest that Woods pushed himself physically because he wanted to be viewed as an athlete, saying that Woods viewed injuries as "a way of being accepted into the fraternity of superstars who played more physical sports than golf."
But sleep hygiene is one area of his health he has less of a handle on. His friends, like fellow golf star Rory McIlroy, say "he struggles to sleep, which I think is an effect of overtraining."
"So I tell him to calm down sometimes," McIlroy said of Woods. "He'd be texting me at 4 o'clock in the morning: 'Up lifting. What are you doing?'"
Woods is very philanthropic.
He devotes a ton of time and money to his at-risk youth charity, the Tiger Woods Foundation. According to the PGA, Woods gave $12 million to the foundation in 2012. Additionally, he works with kids through the TGR Learning Lab, which provides opportunities for students to explore their passions by combining science with everyday tasks.
Still, Woods has been accused of being cheap despite his incredible wealth, lavish lifestyle, and charitable efforts. According to one story, Woods wanted to be just one of the guys when he was having lunch with a group of Navy Seals and did not pick up the check, irritating and confusing the seals.
He seems to be close with his two kids.
Woods has two children from his marriage to Nordegren. His daughter, Sam, is 16 years old, and Woods has said she taught him to be more patient.
His son, Charlie, is 14 and has already shown some serious promise on the golf course. Not only is he the spitting image of his dad while playing the sport they both love, but Charlie has even started to out-drive Tiger.
Woods also has two dogs: a pair of Border Collies named Lola and Bugs. They keep him company when he's on the practice putting green in his backyard, and they've even been trained to fetch golf balls.
Woods is fairly quiet about his private life.
He spent a lot of time with Erica Herman at the Presidents Cup in 2017, and was seen at several other tournaments, including Tiger's win at the Masters in 2019. She was the general manager for Woods' restaurant.
They dated for about six years, but broke up in late 2022 or early 2023. Herman has since asked a court to allow her out of a non-disclosure agreement that Woods had her sign. She is alleging the NDA is no longer valid, citing the Speak Out Act, which prohibits enforcement of NDAs in cases of sexual harassment or assault.
That was Woods' first public relationship since Lindsey Vonn. In 2017, someone hacked them and distributed nude photos of the couple.
Woods' pro career was derailed again in 2021 with a major car accident.
In early 2021, Woods was involved in a horrific car accident that left him with several severe leg injuries. That accident, which nearly ended his career, kept him off the course for more than year.
But even while he was sidelined, Woods still made a lot of money from the PGA Tour. He took in $8 million from the PGA Tour's inaugural "Player Impact Program." The award goes to the tour's most popular player based on metrics such as social media.
He went on to make a stunning comeback to compete in the 2022 Masters, but Woods is not golfing in events as much as he once did. Still, he spends a lot of time on the course, caddying for his son, Charlie, or playing in father-son tourneys.
He also may have turned down $700 million to join rival tour.
In late 2022, Greg Norman told Tucker Carlson that he had offered Woods $700 million to join the new Saudi-backed LIV golf league. Norman later clarified that the money was not offered up front but was an estimate of how much Woods would have earned during his time with LIV.
In response, Tiger and his aforementioned pal, McIlroy, launched a league of their own. The PGA Tour announced a number of changes late in 2022 aimed at combatting the defection of golfers to LIV Golf.
One of those was a partnership a new tech-based golf league backed by Tiger and McIlroy. The league has teams made up of tour golfers that compete in a "tech-infused" stadium setting in primetime in hopes of appealing to a younger audience.
We probably will never see Woods play full time again, but he is likely to still shoot for wins in the majors.
Woods' age and injury-laden career have taken a toll on his body. Still, as he approaches 50 years old, he's committed to competing in the biggest tournaments his sport has to offer.
He famously pulled out a stunning victory at the 2019 Masters — well after the peak of his golf career. Woods' 15 major championship wins is three shy of the record, which is held by the legendary Jack Nicklaus. And while he's unlikely to match that mark, he's just one triumph shy of taking sole ownership of the record for most PGA Tour wins ever, which he currently shares with Sam Snead.
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