Monday, June 17,
2002
The
'I-Can't-Beat-Tiger-Club' adds a member
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
FARMINGDALE, N.Y.
(AP) - The latest member of the "I-Can't-Beat-Tiger-Woods"
club almost seemed too young to join.
But like membership
in the mob or AARP, it's one of those offers you don't have the
option of turning down. Sergio Garcia's lodge brothers know all
about that.
The 22-year-old Spaniard
is four years Woods' junior, which means that unlike charter members
Davis Love III, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els, there's
still a chance Garcia can opt out. Then again, Woods dismissed
and then dismantled the youngster so convincingly Sunday that
the relationship may already be set in stone.
They were never rivals,
no matter how promising that prospect appeared when they first
crossed competitive paths three years ago at the PGA Championship,
or even after Garcia beat a fatigued, flu-weakened Tiger in the
made-for-TV "Battle at Bighorn" the year after that.
Now it appears they will never be equals, either.
At the start of the
final round, a brief chink appeared in Woods' armor. After just
one three-putt over the first 54 holes, Tiger three-putted the
first two greens. Garcia, who started the day at 1-under and four
strokes behind Woods, made routine pars and suddenly found himself
just two back.
One group ahead,
Mickelson had birdied the first hole to reach 1-under and the
possibility they would tag-team Woods _ so that one or the other
could wrestle away the trophy at the end of the afternoon _ seemed
very real.
And if the crucible
of a U.S. Open final round wasn't testing enough, the raucous
New York galleries lining every fairway and green at Bethpage
Black made each hole sound and feel like an NFL stadium. Tougher
still, the crowds seemed less intent on choosing sides than making
sure every competitor suffered at least a little.
They all did.
But only one got
to celebrate afterward.
"This one was
hard fought," Woods said. "It was brutal how hard this
golf course played."
Which is why _ once
Woods battled the weather to a standstill in the second round
and put some distance between himself and the rest of the field
_ the outcome was never really in doubt. Tiger already has his
Ph.D in toughness.
When he was young,
his father, Earl Woods, used to jangle coins, drop clubs or cough
in the middle of the kid's backswing to maintain his focus. Other
times, he kicked Tiger's golf balls into ruts or bad lies, teaching
him to deal with adversity.
The lessons went
on for years, and Sunday, sitting in a hotel room nearby and watching
the drama unfold on TV, Earl Woods recalled what he told Tiger
at the end.
"I told him,
'I promise you one thing: You'll never meet another person as
tough as you,'" Earl recalled. "He hasn't. And he won't."
Letting Earl stay
back at his hotel instead of coming to the course and fighting
the crowds was the only Father's Day indulgence he asked his son
to grant. And just about the time Tiger smoked a long iron to
reach the par-5, 13th green in two, Earl's memory seemed less
a boast than a simple statement of fact.
Mickelson had made
birdie there just moments earlier to scale Tiger's lead back to
two strokes. But Woods nearly sank his eagle try, and by the time
he tapped in for birdie to restore a three-stroke edge, Earl's
gaze was already fixed on the distance.
"If you look
at it objectively, you see him improving, right before your eyes,"
he said.
What a scary thought.
Tiger has now won seven of the last 11 majors, two more than anybody
else over the same span and as many in three years as Arnold Palmer
did in his entire career. Tiger's total of eight ties him with
Tom Watson. Completing the Grand Slam _ in a calendar year _ would
enable him to pass Gary Player and Ben Hogan (9 each) and leave
only Walter Hagen (11) and Jack Nicklaus (18) to be reeled in.
Nicklaus has been
the goal all along, the player whose achievements Tiger taped
to his bedroom wall before beating him to every one. As one signpost
after another recedes in the distance, the question of whether
Woods' competitors simply choke or gag because he forces them
to seems irrelevant now. The only rival Tiger has is history.
Nicklaus said recently,
"The whole world isn't going to fall down forever. They'll
figure it out. It's going to happen."
But Nicklaus had
no way to know how helpless his competition felt. The great ones
never do.
"Going head-to-head
against Nicklaus in a major was like trying to drain the Pacific
Ocean with a teacup," Tom Weiskopf said in a recent interview
with Golf Digest. "You stand on the first tee knowing that
your very best golf might not be good enough."
Woods' contemporaries
know the feeling.
"Coming into
this week, I thought that even par would be an incredible score.
I did that," Mickelson said. "But now I realize I've
got to raise that level if I want to win tournaments when Tiger
is playing."
Garcia was born the
same year that Nicklaus won the last of his four U.S. Opens and
five PGAs.
"I didn't see
Jack Nicklaus in his prime," Garcia said. "But it doesn't
get much better than this."
___
Jim
Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press.
Write to him at jlitke@ap.org
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