Every golf fan owes a debt of gratitude to a 33-year old man who, for the last 5-days, dragged his surgically repaired left knee some 22-miles around the Torrey Pines’ south course defeating all comers in the 108th US Open Championship. 358 times, Tiger Woods exerted corkscrew-like downward pressure on that knee, swinging a metal club sometimes at speeds greater than 150 mph and producing shots mere mortals perform only in our dreams.
Torrey Pines is carved out of rough southern California canyons and built on a bluff over-looking the Pacific Ocean. It is one of the finest links golf courses in the world. Set up for an Open Championship, the rough was taller, fairways narrower and greens much faster than normal. The USGA sets a standard for where par should be the winning score (as opposed to the -7 to -12 on average of other 4-day PGA events). When all was said and done, only one man, the champion, posted a score one stroke better than par from a field of 144 of the best golfers in the world. Had he been 100% healthy, he may have posted the greatest winning margin in the history of US Open Championships. We just get to say in our twilight years, “we were lucky enough to see the greatest golfer ever to pick up a mashie.”
His victim this weekend was a game, jovial journeyman golfer named Rocco Mediate, who at the start of the tournament had played in 18 tournaments this year, made the cut 9 times, finished in the top-10 twice, won a comfortable $317,000 and was ranked 158th in the world. Woods by comparison, has been injured and missed two of his favourite non-major tournaments, the Byron Nelson and Players Championships over the last five weeks. Until the Open began he had yet to walk an 18-hole round on “the knee.” So he had “only” played in 6 tournaments.
The difference is, he won four of them, his worst finish was 5th(!), he’s amassed $5.7 million dollars in winnings and just won his 14th major in pursuit of Jack Nicklaus’ 18 career major total. In his 10th year on the tour, he has only missed 14 cuts out of 236 total tries. He has 196 (or 88%) top-25 with an astounding 150 top-10 finishes. 65 times he has hoisted the winner’s trophy above his head amassing more than $82 million dollars in winnings.
When he sank a difficult putt on Sunday to force the play-off, Rocco Mediate smiled to the camera and said, “hey, I knew he was going to make it, he’s the best in the world.” You would think Rocco never had a chance but down three strokes with six holes to play, television sets around the world switched off thinking this was over… game, set and match to Tiger. But in the space of three holes they were level and on 15 the fans cheered on the huge underdog Mediate to an improbable 1-stroke lead. At 45, Rocco knew this could be his one last chance to grab a major trophy and he played with the heart of a champion.
Woods though played with the heart of a Tiger and kept the relentless pressure on catching Rocco on the 90th and last scheduled hole to force a Sudden Death play-off. So they were again all square and it would end tragically for Mediate on the next hole as his putt to tie and extend the Championship slid by the hole. It was one for the ages.
From the USGA’s deliberate 1st and 2nd round match-up of the three best in the world… Woods, his nemesis Phil Mickelson and world number three, Adam Scott, you knew this would be a special week. Mickelson would rally to finish a respectable +6, 7-strokes back whilst Scott fell completely off the radar screen.
Thanks to the band of idiots running Rupert Murdoch’s SKY+ (our TiVo), I was able to follow 89 and 7/8th of 91 holes when I wanted to, as their coverage inexplicably stopped taping (again) as Woods lined up a birdie putt to extend the Championship for the second time in as many days. As one of many to curse the callous Aussie billionaire, I ran down to the computer to catch the highlights of what I missed and the press conference on the Internet.
The main concern is how badly is the knee hurt and what will be required (besides possibly losing the rest of this year to recover) to get him ready to play again? When asked in each interview over four days how the knee was, Tiger would say simply, “it hurts” then look at the interviewer as if to say next question… Even if he lost, (I cannot even type that with a straight face) he would never, ever blame his knee.
This private warrior never shows his cards or weakness to an opponent. No one knew he was going in for surgery until a press release on his website said the surgery was completed and he would miss five weeks and be ready for the US Open or be back sooner.
So the moral of this story is, never corner this wounded Tiger, he will fight back with everything he has and we are so lucky to have been able to see it.
