Sunday, June 18, 2000
Tiger all about talent and
brains
By Mark Purdy
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PEBBLE BEACH — It is the varsity against
the junior varsity now at Pebble Beach, and the varsity has only
one player. And he didn't even win the coin flip to take the wind
Saturday at the U.S. Open. Instead, Tiger Woods beat down the
breeze and the thick grass and all of the other elements on Mother
Nature's golf menu. Oh, yes. Woods also beat a few humans along
the way. Beat them? If this were Little League baseball, the 10-run
rule would be in effect and today's final round would be called
off.
With 18 holes to play, Woods has a 10-shot
lead over his closest competitor. No one has ever been that far
ahead after 54 holes at the Open, which is America's national
golf championship. And no one has ever blown a 10-shot advantage
at any stage of the tournament, which is now officially Tiger
Woods' national championship. That is, unless the guy suddenly
joins a religious cult that doesn't believe in double-digit winning
margins.
“I'm not worried about catching him,”
said Justin Leonard, one of the players who will lose badly today.
“That train of thought is now gone.”
That train of thought, to be more accurate,
has left town and is now chugging toward the next major championship,
the British Open at St. Andrews next month. Of course, the train
will have to travel under water to get there. But the way he's
going, Woods might be able to arrange that, too.
Why, he even moved the earth at one point
Saturday. On the ninth hole, Woods' approach shot to the green
landed in scraggly gunk on the cliffside between the green and
the ocean. He assessed the situation and realized that if he wanted
to swing at the ball and put it onto the green, he would have
to smack a large stone in the same swipe.
“There was a rock right in front of
my ball,” he said. “I knew that in order to hit the
shot, I had to take the rock out. And I took it out.”
Ha! Who are mere flesh and blood human golfers
to challenge this man when he can conquer granite? Who was the
last major sports figure to do that? Hercules?
When the wind began to howl Saturday and
bend the flagsticks out by the ocean into twisted shapes, there
was the brief notion that it would humble Tiger a bit and allow
others to close the six-shot lead he had at the completion of
the tournament's second round.
Well, the course and the weather did humble
Woods. He made a triple bogey on the third hole, scoring a seven
on the par-4 when the wind knocked a shot into the ugly rough.
He also missed some greens and landed in some sand traps and wound
up shooting a par 71.
But guess what? Because of those same gnarly
playing conditions, only one player shot better than Woods, so
he added four strokes to his lead. Now, the only suspense is whether
Woods, who opened the tournament with a 65, can shoot a 66 today
and break the Open record of 272.
“There's nobody going to catch him
now,” said Rocco Mediate, another player who will be a loser
today. “I'd like to see Tiger break the record, to tell you
the truth. I don't know if they'll let him. They'll probably put
the pins in places no one can find.”
That could be true. The sponsoring United
States Golf Association is infamous for trying to keep par a sacred
score. But if the USGA goes nutty today and makes Pebble Beach
even more difficult, that will only make the final round more
of a joke, because Woods will still play it better than anyone
else.
Is there any possible way to build a case
for someone overtaking him today? In one word: Areyououttayourmind?
Woods has proved himself to be a great closer during his four
years as a pro. The chance to get him was Saturday. Conventional
wisdom was that Woods might start feeling some pressure if another
player could nudge up against his scores on the leader board.
We'll never know, because it didn't come close to happening.
Oh, to be sure, Woods did prove he was human
Saturday. Because of the fog delays, he had to wake up at 4:30
a.m. and finish his second round. At the 18th tee, he hit his
drive onto the rocks and uttered a combination of swear words
over national television that pretty much covered all the bases
of offensiveness. He regretted it and apologized on television,
but said the cursing allowed him to let off some steam.
Woods had plenty of other opportunities
to swear later in the day but kept his mouth shut. Perhaps that's
why he did receive one small break from the weather gods. At the
seventh hole, the par-3 stuck on a small ledge in the middle of
the ocean, the wind was blowing at gale force for much of the
day. Before Woods got to the tee, five of the previous 10 golfers
had made bogey. But as he addressed his shot, the winds suddenly
calmed. Woods knocked it seven feet from the hole. And made the
birdie putt.
“Tiger seems to be doing what the other
ones aren't,” said Tom Kite, who won the 1992 Open at Pebble.
“I think the thing that's most impressive is his putting.
He's putting right now like he did at the `97 Masters, where he
went the whole week and never missed a putt.”
There seems to be a mystery about why Woods
is so dominant and so good. There is no mystery at all. Ever since
he was young, he has worked at being dominant. When he saw a weakness
in his game, he went to the driving range or putting green and
drilled it into submission. In fact, that may be the only Tiger
comparison with Michael Jordan that makes sense. Jordan had the
tools to be a great player, but when he was young, he would play
a pickup game in the morning, practice free throws through the
lunch hour, then go find another game in the afternoon —
and a third one in the evening. He wasn't sitting around the house
watching “Laverne & Shirley” reruns.
Three years ago at his first U.S. Open as
a professional, Woods was frustrated by the narrow fairways and
rock-hard greens, and he stormed off the course one day. But in
the years since, he has game-planned the Open like a general approaching
a battle. He repeated the game plan Saturday: “Hit the fairways.
If I have a good situation, I'll go ahead and attack. If not,
I'll dump it on the side of the green and make my par.”
Talent and brains. It'll get you every time.
“Tiger is just better in all aspects
of the game now, especially mentally,” said Mediate. “Yeah,
he can be beat. But over 11 or 12 years, the rest of us have no
chance. Once in a while, we can beat him. He's not going to win
every week, just 10 or 11 times a year. There are still 40 other
tournaments we could win when he's not there.”
Today, of course, he is going to be there.
And unless he six-putts the first green, it won't even be a tournament.
Instead, it will be a golf version of the Rose parade, with Tiger
as the Mr. Vanquisher Of The Golf Universe float. And if he gets
close to the record ... well, look out, granite.
(c) 2000, San Jose Mercury
News (San Jose, Calif.).
Visit Mercury Center, the World Wide Web site of the Mercury News,
at http://www.sjmercury.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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