Sunday, June 18, 2000
Pebble shows Tiger's game now
matches his mystique
By Blaine Newnham
Seattle Times
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — We mustn't,
in the magic of the moment, forget that Ben Hogan won four U.S.
Opens in six years, and that Jack Nicklaus won eight majors by
the time he was 27.
The world was ready to anoint Tiger Woods
as the greatest after he roared around Augusta to win the 1997
Masters by 12 shots.
The truth was, he wasn't.
Now he is.
The performance here, on the wind-scrubbed
bluffs above the Pacific, with the rough at 4 inches and the greens
I-5 hard, is far more impressive than what he did in winning the
Masters.
As he said, “you can bomb it out there
anywhere at Augusta. Here, you can't.”
No one in U.S. Open history ever led by
more after two or three rounds than Woods has here. Not in 100
years. Indeed, Woods has never had a bigger lead as a pro.
He scrambled yesterday on a particularly
windy, harsh afternoon to an even-par 71 that still left him 10
strokes ahead of the field.
Nobody else was under par, let alone in
contention.
Before Woods, the most that anybody had
ever been ahead after 54 holes was seven strokes, by Jim Barnes
in 1921.
Woods survived a triple bogey on No. 3,
a trip down the hillside to the beach on No. 10, and a course
that was having his competition for lunch and dinner.
He wasn't perfect, not in knocking a ball
in the ocean on No.18 en route to a bogey to finish up his morning
round of 69, and not in his profane expression of disappointment
— captured on television — after doing it.
Who knows what Hogan said if he ever missed
a shot? Times are different in the information age, and Woods
is going to have to adjust, as well as grow up.
And match his game, which is nearly perfect.
He shot 65 the first day when the scoring average of the field
was 75. He shot 69 the second when it wasn't any better, and 71
yesterday when the field was averaging nearer 80 than 70.
In the numbing wake of his win at Augusta,
I was sent to follow him around the long, tree-lined fairways
at Congressional for the U.S. Open. There was speculation he would
be the first player to win the Grand Slam.
He opened with a 74. He finished 6 over
par. He was 10 over the next year at Olympic. He couldn't handle
the trees at Winged Foot in the 1997 PGA championship, let alone
those the next year at Sahalee.
He finished tied for third in the Open at
Pinehurst last year, but he really never threatened to win, not
really. He hung on to win the PGA at Medinah but wasn't playing
like he has here.
Woods was wonderful at getting out of trouble.
He learned as a kid to be creative around the greens. He had all
the shots except the long straight one off the tee and onto the
green.
He couldn't depend on his swing or judge
its distance. On the final nine at Augusta in 1997, en route to
a 72-hole total of 18 under par, he was 30 yards off the fairway
after his second shot on No. 15 and his drive on No. 18. Both
shots on a U.S. Open course would have produced the big numbers
that had been holding him back.
Yesterday as Hal Sutton was shooting 83
and Kirk Triplett 84, Woods was hitting 85 percent of the fairways
and 66 percent of greens. His driving distance was 305 yards.
He went to work these past three years,
doing what NBA players don't, dealing with his weakness, checking
his ego at the door, learning to hit it with the precision of
Hogan so he could play like Hogan.
In other words, he can make a free throw
when he needs to.
There was a time that he could, if he wanted,
hit a 5-iron 250 yards. The problem was, he might when he didn't
want to. He couldn't control the distances of his clubs, or where
they were going.
On the first hole Friday, he hit a 129-yard
shot to the first green with a 9-iron, like everybody else. He
has his game under control, until he needs something special,
like the 205-yard 7-iron shot out of the rough and onto the green
in two Friday on the 524-yard par-5 sixth hole.
No one has questioned his heart. His comebacks
as an amateur are legendary. On this course in February he came
from seven back with seven holes to win the AT&T. When tied
or in the lead after 54 holes, he has won 14 PGA Tour events in
a row.
Now he has the game to match his mystique.
(c) 2000, The Seattle Times.
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