Tiger Woods is being touted here as potentially sport's first billionaire. This is the main element of a report in the current issue of Golfweek magazine, which estimates Woods's worldwide earnings last year at $15 million, including overseas appearance fees of $3 million. Significant endorsement income, however, enhanced the figure to a staggering $50 million. Which means that the 24-year-old's net worth is now set at $150 million, which prompted American financial analysts to hail him as a billion-dollar-man in the making.
Details of the player's earnings are quite mind-blowing, even in the context of today's multi-millionaire sportsmen. Last autumn, for instance, he signed a five-year contract with General Motors (Buick) for more than $30 million.
The magazine further claims that he is renegotiating a five-year, $40 million contract with Nike, which is due for renewal in August 2001. So, having earned close to $90 million over the last two years, his star remains very much in the ascendant.
"I told Phil Knight (the Nike chairman), `That's chump change - you make it back in one year'," the player's father, Earl, is quoted as saying. And Knight is reported to have replied, "I know, Earl, I know".
As president of the private ETW Corporation and charitable Tiger Woods Foundation, Earl Woods controls his son's money out of which the player is dolled out a "nice" annual salary. According to the father, remaining income is invested by three brokerage firms.
Woods Snr is quoted as saying that the portfolio of cash, stocks and bonds exceeds $150 million - "and not a nickel is taken out".
Then there is a so-called house development fund of $8 million, which has come solely from tournament earnings. This is to satisfy the player's wish to have earned his dream home. So he is selecting an architect to design a mansion on five-and-a-half acres in the exclusive Isleworth community near Orlando, Florida.
When Tiger moves in, his current Isleworth townhouse is expected to go to his father. But Earl Woods has claimed that he plans to continue living mainly in the modest family home of 25 years in Cypress, California, because he prefers "small, intimate houses".
Someday, however, the Cypress home will be turned into a "national historical monument, a Tiger Woods museum similar to Nixon House".
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Golfweek story, however, is that despite his wealth, Tiger Woods is seen to be largely unaffected by money. His attitude is: "I just feel if you work hard to get something, it's nice to reap the benefits of it."
