Tuesday, March 27, 2001
Tiger finally adds Players
Championship
By BOB HARIG
St. Petersburg Times
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — If he were
so inclined, Tiger Woods could quit golf today and possess one
of the best records of all time. He's won all four major championships,
he's won the tournaments with big-name tournament hosts, and he's
won World Golf Championship events.
Now he's got a Players Championship title,
too.
Playing the PGA Tour's headline event, with
the biggest purse and best field in the game, Woods solidified
his stature as the No. 1-ranked player in the world, shooting
a 5-under-par 67 Monday in the final round at the TPC-Sawgrass
Stadium Course to hold off Vijay Singh.
Two weeks ago, the golf world wondered what
was wrong with Woods after he had gone eight PGA events without
a victory. Not any more.
Now he has won two straight tournaments
to vault to his customary spot atop the PGA Tour money list. He
will take momentum to next week's Masters, where he will go for
an unprecedented fourth consecutive major championship as one
of the biggest favorites in tournament history.
“It's super-human, some of the stuff
he does,” said Paul Azinger, referring to the miraculous
60-foot birdie putt Woods made at the 17th hole Saturday and the
90-foot chip-in for eagle he had Sunday. “That's what makes
the guy that good. It's just weird. I don't know what else to
say.”
Woods, 25, started the rain-delayed final
round at the 10th hole Monday and promptly hit his approach shot
to 6 inches for an easy birdie. He added birdies at the 12th and
16th holes, narrowly averted disaster at the par-3 17th, then
bogeyed the last hole for a one-shot victory over Singh.
The $1,060,000 Woods earned pushes him past
Joe Durant to the No. 1 spot on the money list with $2,255,857.
It was the 26th victory of Woods' five-year
career. You would be hard-pressed to name a tournament of significance
that he has not claimed. He joined Jack Nicklaus as the only players
to win all four majors and the Players Championship; he has won
Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament, Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Invitational
(twice), the Byron Nelson Classic. He has won two World Golf Championship
events, along with the Tour Championship.
Not that Woods is in need of any motivation.
He would love to become the first player to win the Players Championship
and the Masters in the same year. And, of course, winning at Augusta
National would make him the first player in history to hold all
four majors at the same time.
“I feel as if I'm headed in the right
direction, no doubt,” Woods said. “The shots that I
am hitting now, I feel very pleased at what I am able to do on
the golf course. They are starting to come together.”
But Woods needed some good fortune as well.
His birdie putt at the 17th Saturday was one for the ages, a putt
he admitted would be difficult to duplicate. His tee shot there
was inches away from rolling into the water, and he managed to
convert a clutch par putt to keep a two-shot lead. And then his
hottest pursuer, Singh, inexplicably made a triple-bogey Monday
at the 14th hole before almost catching Woods at the end.
“One bad swing,” said Singh, who
will defend his Masters title coming off of four consecutive top-four
finishes on the PGA Tour (along with two victories in Asia). “That's
all it took for me. I was playing pretty good. I was feeling really
comfortable out there. But one bad hole; 14 was my killer blow
this week. And I guess that's all it takes when you are playing
the final round of a tournament this big. You cannot make mistakes
like that.”
Singh had planned to fade his ball into
the fairway off the tee but pull-hooked it instead into the water.
After a drop and a 3-wood third shot, Singh missed the green,
chipped past the hole and two-putted for a triple-bogey 7.
But he didn't give up. He eagled the par-5
16th — turning his putter sideways to be able to hit it from
the wooden edge of the water hazard — and birdied the par-3
17th to pull within one, before Woods followed with a birdie at
the 16th for a two-shot cushion. That allowed Woods the luxury
of making a bogey at the 18th.
“I expected everything I saw,”
said third-round leader Jerry Kelly, who played with Woods in
the final pairing and shot 73 to finish fourth, one shot behind
Bernhard Langer. “He's the best player in the world. He showed
it. I mean (5 under) on Sunday on a fantastic golf course. All
the credit is to him.”
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service,
http://www.shns.com.)
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