Tiger Woods has quietly made a milestone switch to two more
golf clubs from Nike Golf as he prepares for one of the biggest challenges of the 2003 season, The TOUR Championship this week at the Champions Golf Club in
Houston, Texas.

While the addition of Nike Golf's 56-degree and 60-degree Forged Wedges to Woods' bag may not stop presses or warrant expert analysis, it has spurred spontaneous high-fives at Nike Golf's world headquarters in Beaverton, Ore.
and at its club R&D facility in Ft. Worth, Texas.

The change had been nearly 20 months in the making and was set up by more than six years of trust and dedication — that's how long it had been since Nike Golf introduced its first Forged Wedges to the world, and respectively, how long Woods had been playing his previous wedges.

Confidently, Nike Golf introduced the 56-degree and the 60-degree at retail (Suggested Retail Price: $139 each) in March 2002 bearing a red underscore below the degree marks on the wedge heads. The markings, unbeknownst until now, were created in anticipation of Woods' eventual change.
Admittedly, designers and engineers with Nike Golf's 2-year old club team knew only one thing for sure — that getting Woods into the wedges would take time and a series of tests with no guarantees.

“Tiger is very methodical and takes one thing at a time,” said Nike Golf's
director of product creation, Tom Stites. “We worked hard at getting him into
a driver, then into our Forged Irons. His game is his livelihood and he is
not going to trust that to any piece of equipment that does not live up to his
high standards.”

Nike Golf will begin identifying the forged wedges at retail with stickers
and point of sale displays declaring “The New Choice of Tiger Woods.”

Woods first tested Nike Golf's Forged Wedges earlier this year. He put
the 56-degree Forged Wedge in play at the WGC — American Express Championship
in early October. Woods added the 60-degree Forged Wedge to his bag in time
for the start of the FUNAI Classic at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando,
Fla., October 23.

Woods now carries 12 (of 14) clubs from Nike Golf — a prototype Ignite
driver, Forged Irons (2-PW) and now the 56-degree and 60-degree Forged Wedges.
A putter and 3-wood remain out of the mix of clubs from Nike Golf in Woods'
bag but they are high on the list of projects for Stites and his team.

“We won't be completely satisfied until we've got everything in the bag,”
said Stites. “Most critics did not give us a chance of replacing any of the
clubs in Tiger's bag two years ago. I'm not sure what they are saying now,
but we haven't heard from them in a while.”