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LOS ANGELES – Cypress, California, is about an hour drive in L.A. traffic south of Riviera Country Club.
But for a teenaged Tiger Woods, it must have felt like a different world.
Throughout the early 1980s and into the ’90s, Woods’ father, Earl, groomed his soon-to-be world-beating son at the Navy Golf Course near his childhood home. A testament to his time is still kept on the Navy’s Destroyer Course, the “Tiger Tree” next to the 18th fairway where the teen would land monstrous drives.
By the early ’90’s, Woods had established himself as a local legend, a golf prodigy whose renown had grown beyond Cypress and the Navy course.