It's been a whopping 12 years since Tiger Woods last got his hands on the Claret Jug.
That’s right, the world’s richest, most famous and followed golfer has not won The Open Championship - the world’s oldest major - in a dozen years dating back to 2006 when he became the first golfer to win back-to-back Open Championships since Tom Watson achieved this feat in 1983.
The victory at Royal Liverpool was Woods’ third Open title in the space of seven years, and in total his 11th career major.
The 42-year-old, who has not won a major of any sort since 2008, has only finished in the top-10 of The Open leaderboard once since that third victory, but he now heads to Carnoustie this week determined to end this drought.
So, what was the world like when he last hoisted the famous Claret Jug in the air?
In a sporting sense, Italy had just been crowned World Cup winners - they didn’t even feature in the 2018 edition - Greece were the reigning European Champions, while Jose Mourinho had led Chelsea to back-to-back Premier League titles, and Liverpool pipped West Ham on penalties in a thrilling FA Cup Final. The future 2018 World Cup star Kylian Mbappe was just seven-years-old.
England held the Ashes trophy, Usain Bolt had yet to win an Olympic medal or break any world records - the 100m record was 9.77 - Roger Federer had just claimed his fourth successive Wimbledon, while the current men’s champion Novak Djokovic had yet to win a major, and Amelie Mauresmo held two of the four women’s slams.
Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl XL, Barry Bonds had broken Babe Ruth’s career home run record - his record now stands at 762 - and the 93rd Tour de France was later awarded to Oscar Pereiro of Spain after the original winner Floyd Landis was disqualified for failing a drugs test.
Elsewhere Canada’s Julie Wafaei had recently become the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean from mainland to mainland.
Over in the political sphere, Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the UK, Brexit wasn’t a word, George W. Bush was President of the United States, whereas Donald Trump was gleefully hiring and firing people on The Apprentice.
In popular culture Lily Allen was top of the UK charts with Smile, Reese Witherspoon and Philip Seymour Hoffman were Oscar winners from earlier in the year, and Goal! had just been released in cinemas.
Twitter was launched in July 2006, while no one had a clue what Instagram, Whatsapp, and SnapChat were, or Twitter in all honesty. A few weeks before Woods’ win Richard Branson had sold Virgin mobile to NTL for a staggering £962.4m, and the following month in August Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet”, and on the natural wildlife front the West African black rhino was declared extinct.
...let’s hope Woods bags another Open Championship soon!
