Tiger's first design: at age 11, the champ designed a killer hole for us

Golf Digest, Dec, 2002 by Ron Whitten

Ever wonder when Tiger Woods might show some interest in designing golf courses? He already has--15 years ago. In September 1987, Golf Digest introduced its first Armchair Architect contest, challenging readers to design a new closing hole for imaginary Designer Hills, a course hoping to snag a future U.S. Open. We provided a topographical map on which to draft flights of fancy. First prize was a trip to Bermuda to chum with real architects Pete Dye and Robert Trent Jones. Among the 22,000 entrants to that contest was 11-year-old Tiger Woods.

You had to be 18 to enter the contest, so Tiger had his father, Earl, submit the entry as his own. Not that it mattered. The drawing shown below didn't make it past the first round of consideration--one of the few cuts Tiger has failed to make. But we saved it, along with every entry, figuring some entrants might someday be famous. Good guess.

Tiger's design is a horseshoe-shaped par 5, sporting the popular fashions of the day: an island tee, island green, island bunkers, railroad-tie bulkheads and ball-deflecting mounds scattered across the fairway. He was a bit off in scale--the drawing shows a 250-yard tee shot the same length as the short approach to the green. Points off, too, for misspelling the word "elevation." But give him extra credit for understanding contour lines. No flipping a wedge from tee to green on this hole--he drew contours for a 120-foot high ridge between the two to prevent that. Of course, the Tiger of today could rocket a wedge over that mini mountain to leave himself a double-eagle putt.