Personality is important when analyzing an athlete because it can give key information that will help determine what type of athlete the person is, as well as how dedicated they are to their craft. In the case of Tiger Woods, his personality shows that he is one of the best golfers in history, while also staying humble enough to know that he needs to continuously work and grind to improve his skills in order to stay relevant.
Big 5 Personality The first concept to look into to get a better understanding of Tiger’s personality would be the Big 5 Personality. This is an excellent tool because it can be applied to any person, looking at their core personality traits, making it a great way to differentiate people from one another. The five factors in this model are; openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Deluga, 2016). Regarding the first factor, Tiger is described as a person who is open to all types of experiences. One of the aspects of his jobs is that he has to travel the world and meet all types of people. Tiger fully embraces and enjoys these experiences and was for a long time a figurehead of the PGA because of his ability to be open and honest (Kennedy, 2013). As for the next factor, Tiger would score very high in conscientiousness because he is extremely driven. He has a methodical approach to all aspects of the game of golf as well …show more content…
The concept of perfectionism can destroy an athlete due to the overarching obsession of being perfect, or it can benefit an athlete with the ability to motivate. Tiger can be described as having a perfectionist personality, but not the detrimental form, rather the beneficial form, which is referred to as adaptive perfectionism and it comes in two forms with Tiger (Deluga, 2016).
The first form is self-oriented perfectionism, where a person sets extremely high personal goals and regularly practices stringent self-evaluations (Deluga, 2016). Tiger has told the media that he is constantly setting goals for himself, whether on or off the golf course. For example, those goals could be that he wants to go out and shoot 5 under par, or that he wants to hit a certain weight on the bench while in the gym. He finds the drive inside to achieve those goals and will stop at nothing to complete them. He has admitted that it’s a constant chase to achieve perfection because he has never obtained it. Tiger said, “Within a round you can experience a kind of perfection. Maybe it’s just one pure shot… The game of golf is not a game of perfection, it’s a game of misses” (Woods, 2010). This reveals that he doesn’t get down on himself when he doesn’t perform perfectly because he knows it is a constant pursuit. He is his own harshest critic at times and when it comes to the situation where he may fall short, it