Are Woods' Tiger Slam clubs up for grabs at auction?
The clubs that Tiger Woods used during his 2000-01 Tiger Slam are up for auction for the first time since 2010.
Then the irons and wedges – 2-iron through to pitching wedge plus a 58˚ (bent to 56) and 60˚ wedges (the wedges have TIGER stamped on them) were sold for $57,242.
This time around they are expected to fetch near, or maybe more, than $1m. Bidding closes on April 9, the final round of the Masters, and the current winning bid is already halfway to the million and quickly rising. As things stand Woods is still listed as down to play though it would be a remarkable entry given that he's played once, and that being the Father & Son, since his accident in February.
The stand-out club is the 8-iron (pictured) where the wear mark is described as “otherworldly” by Golden Age Auctions.
Tiger is the only golfer to ever hold all four modern majors at the same time and he won the 2000 US Open, Open, PGA Championship and 2001 Masters, he then switched to a new set seven weeks after the '01 Masters. He gave the clubs to former Titleist duo Rick Nelson and Steve Mata, the latter owned them until putting them up for auction 12 years ago.
Golden Age have affidavits from both verifying their authenticity and a polygraph test from Mata along with a copy of a September 2000 Golfweek magazine article, which detailed the exact specs of Tiger's clubs used to win the 2000 PGA Championship.
Woods’ agent Mark Steinberg has since denied the legitimacy of the irons.
“Tiger has the authentic set of the Slam irons his his house," he said.
Something that Golden Age Auctions refuted, replying: “We would not put anything up for sale we weren’t wholly confident in.”