Tiger Woods reflects on playing Par 3 Contest with his kids as caddies

In 2004, Tiger Woods made a hole-in-one on the ninth hole in the Par 3 Contest playing alongside Mark O’Meara and Arnold Palmer.

“I still have the scorecard with Arnold Palmer’s signature on it,” Woods said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY Sports during a promotional tour for The 1997 Masters: My Story (Grand Central Publishing, released March 20). “He played in subsequent Masters, of course, but at the time he was retiring, and I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world that I made a hole-in-one with Arnold. I thought it couldn’t be any better, but yes it could.”

Fast forward to 2015.

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In the book, Woods reflects on his life inside and outside the ropes that led to his historic march to the green jacket in 1997. Throughout the book Woods writes to the special relationship he has with Augusta National and the Masters. Among his fondest memories came in the 2015 Par 3 Contest when his two children caddied for him for the first and only time. His daughter, Sam, was 7 and his son, Charlie, was 6.

“For them they don’t really understand what I’ve done there,” Woods said. “I’ve tried to share with them what it means to me, and what it means to walk around this hallowed ground. And I know they don’t get it, and they probably won’t for a number of years, but they kind of understood a little bit for what it was like behind the ropes. It was eye opening for them to be in that moment, to be in a competition … this is how it feels to be inside the ropes. It was so important for me but also so important to them, for them to see a side of me that they haven’t seen before.”

PHOTOS: MASTERS WEEK