When Did Tiger Woods First Make a Cut on the PGA Tour?
Woods chose a good place to make his first cut: Augusta National Golf Club. The first PGA Tour event in which Woods survived the cut to play the weekend was the 1995 Masters Tournament. He was 19 years old at the time.
That was also Woods' first appearance in any of the professional major championships. He got into that Masters by virtue of his victory in the 1994 U.S. Amateur Championship.
Woods opened the 1995 Masters with a score of 72. Another 72 in the second round put him at even-par 144. Woods was the only amateur in the field who made the cut, which means that, even though he carded a 77 in the third round, then another 72 in the final round, he earned low-amateur honors. Woods finished at 5-over 293, tied for 41st place (47 golfers made the cut).
Prior to the start of the tournament, Woods had played practice rounds with Nick Faldo, Raymond Floyd, Greg Norman, Fred Couples and Nick Price, and he played the par-3 course with Gary Player. Player, after watching Tiger, commented, "Certain players, you look at them once and you see something. As soon as I saw Tiger Woods swing today, I thought, man, this young guy has got it. It's the way he puts his hands on the club, the way he stands over the ball. It's agility. It's speed."
After the 1995 Masters, Woods played in six more PGA Tour events as an amateur, making the cut in four of them and missing the cut in two. Then he turned pro in the second half of 1996, and the rest is history.
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