Please stop asking Cheyenne Woods about her famous uncle

Cheyenne Woods graciously responds to questions by reporters and other golf watchers about her famous uncle, but you will have to forgive the LPGA Tour rookie if she’s had it up to the swoosh on her golf cap with comparisons to Tiger Woods.

“I mean, I get it -- he’s one of the most famous human beings on the planet and we share a last name as well as a profession,” the 24-year-old Woods wrote in an article published on The Players’ Tribune. “But let me clear something up once and for all: I love my uncle, and I treasure the advice he gives me when we speak every few months, but I am not Tiger Woods.”

Since hitting the junior circuit as a youngster, Cheyenne Woods has received a career’s worth of attention, thanks to the renown of her last name. Long before winning her first significant professional event last year in Australia and earning her 2015 LPGA card, the younger Woods garnered attention that established and far more accomplished players can only imagine.

Along with the acclaim normally reserved for someone a tad higher than 267th in the world rankings (just 47 slots lower than Tiger’s current position) come the inevitable queries about, and comparisons to, one of the most prominent public figures, let along golfers, in history. But that’s par for the course when you choose the same vocation as one of the greatest ever to play the game.

“How often are you asked personal questions about your uncle?” she wrote on the website Derek Jeter designed for athletes to tell their first-person stories. “Once a month? Once a year? Never? For me, it happens almost every day. But that’s just kind of how it works when you’re a professional golfer and your uncle happens to be Tiger Woods.”

Curiously, while chiding journalists for interrogating her about Tiger -- and pretty much asking them to stop doing so -- the younger Woods once again followed in her superstar relative’s footsteps by taking her pleas to Jeter’s media-free website. Her piece, entitled, “What’s In a Name?” came after Tiger in November penned an angry rebuttal to a biting story from Dan Jenkins in Golf Digest.

“I’ve had many interactions with reporters where the only topic of conversation was my uncle,” Woods said. “This is hardly surprising because, in the golf world, the main question on everyone’s mind is always, ‘Who is the next Tiger Woods?’ -- just ask Rory or Jordan Spieth. With me having the name and being related to him, it’s very easy [to] figure, ‘Well, maybe she’ll dominate the women’s game like Tiger dominated the men’s game when he was her age.’”

Tiger set the bar impossibly high, having claimed three U.S. Amateur and two major titles by the time he was Cheyenne’s age, and his niece acknowledged being burdened by assumptions that she should match her uncle’s prowess.

“I’d be lying if I said I don’t constantly feel the pressure of that expectation,” she wrote. “It’s impossible to ignore. When I was developing my game, I wasn’t dominating. I still haven’t really dominated. And because of that, for a while, I felt like I wasn’t doing well enough. I felt like I could never live up to what people were expecting of me, and that’s difficult to cope with.”

Cheyenne also debunked the widely held notion that Earl Woods was her mentor.

“My grandfather Earl (Tiger’s father) and I were very close, but I was never his protégé,” she said. “In fact, I only went out on the golf course with him twice.”

She did, as legend has it, pick up her first club when she was just three in the same garage that launched Tiger’s career, and Earl Woods “taught me how to truly love golf and instilled an important confidence in my game, but he was my grandfather, not my coach.”

Similarly, Tiger offers advice when he and his niece speak “every few months,” but Cheyenne hoped to succeed in her chosen profession as her own person.

“I don’t need to be the next Tiger. I just want to become the best version of myself,” Woods wrote. “Of course, I realize that regardless of what I accomplish in my career, there are probably going to be plenty of people who always consider me ‘Tiger’s niece.’

“I’m very proud to be related to my uncle, but it’s not what defines me as a golfer or a person,” she said. “Yes, my last name is Woods -- but you can call me Cheyenne.”

Woods, who finished T64 at last week’s Walmart NW Arkansas Championship, told LPGA.com that she looked forward to being a regular contributor to Jeter’s website.

“I hope to continue a relationship with them,” Woods said on Saturday after carding a 2-under 69 in the second round of the 54-hole event. “They said whatever I feel like I want to get out I can just reach out to them and hopefully I’ll have a few more coming out in the future.”

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