Sunday, June 18, 2000
Tiger leads by three strokes
after three rounds
By Hunki Yun
The Orlando Sentinel
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.—With its rough
and narrow fairways this year, the 2000 Masters looked a lot like
the U.S. Open.
At the Pebble Beach Golf Links, the U.S.
Open is beginning to resemble the Masters.
The 1997 Masters.
That tournament was Tiger Woods' coming-out
party, the event in which he demolished the course and the field
to shoot a tournament-record 18 under and win by a major-championship-record
12 shots over runner-up Tom Kite after holding a nine-stroke lead
after three rounds.
After three rounds of the U.S. Open, Woods
has a bigger lead. Woods returned Saturday morning to finish his
suspended second round at 69 and then shot par 71 in the third
round to finish at 8-under 205. He was 10 strokes ahead of his
nearest competitor.
Ernie Els, who had by far the best round
of the day with a 3-under 68 and was the only player to break
par on a difficult, windswept day, is second at 2 over. Padraig
Harrington and Miguel Angel Jimenez are 3 over.
Woods' 10-shot 54-hole lead is the largest
in U.S. Open history, bettering the seven-shot lead Jim Barnes
held in 1921. And it gives him a chance to break the record margin
of 11 shots set by Willie Smith in 1899.
But Woods is taking nothing for granted.
“You have to fight all the way until
it's completed,” Woods said. “That's what I did in `97
and in other tournaments.”
The owner of a swing that hits the ball
farther and straighter than anyone else in golf, Woods is nearly
unbeatable when he is putting well.
A wayward approach shot on the 10th hole
was indicative of his entire week. He climbed halfway down the
cliff toward the water, where a throng of interested beachcombers
below gathered to watch as Woods pitched over the cliff and made
a good bogey by holing a 6-foot putt.
“I played a couple of loose shots but
got away with them,” he said. “I've made my share of
mistakes, but I've made a few putts this week.”
And his putting was what saved him after
the round just began to get interesting.
Beginning the third round with a six-shot
lead and eight shots ahead at the time, Woods hit his approach
shot on the 390-yard third hole in the deep rough short of the
green. He tried hacking out sideways to avoid a deep bunker between
him and the ball. The ball barely moved—if at all—and
Woods made a triple-bogey on a hole in which he made seven swings
but hit the ball six times.
After holing out, Woods tossed his putter
next to his bag and reached his hand out to collect another ball
from his caddie, Steve Williams, before looking over at the next
hole with a wry smile.
Clearly, he wasn't worried.
Because he proceeded to make four more birdies
to erase the triple-bogey—playing most of the holes in the
worst of the wind.
To put it another way, Woods made a triple-bogey
and still gained four shots on the field by the end of the round.
That's not what the U.S. Open is about.
It's barely golf. But it is Woods.
“That's an exhibition comparable to
what he did at Augusta in `97,” said Phil Mickelson, who
was 12 shots behind. “Now, typically in the Open everybody
comes back. You have a little different sense of that with Tiger.”
Sure, Woods made some mistakes. But for
his pursuers, his performance has been nearly perfect, demoralizing
his competition.
“To tell you the truth, I wasn't too
impressed the first two days because he does it all the time,”
Rocco Mediate said. “But what he's doing is kind of scary
after making triple on one hole. It's amazing.”
The sense after the third round of the 1997
Masters was that the tournament was over, and the final round
would be little more than formality.
After playing with Woods in the third round
of that Masters, Colin Montgomerie said simply: “There is
no chance.”
(c) 2000, The Orlando Sentinel
(Fla.).
Visit the Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/. On America
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