Saturday, September 9, 2000
A real rush for Tiger
By DOUG FERGUSON
AP Golf Writer
OAKVILLE, Ontario (AP) — Tiger Woods
was in a hurry Friday — first to make his tee time, then
to get into contention in the Canadian Open.
Woods had to scramble to get to the 10th
tee, scrambled to save his round on the first couple of holes,
then put it all together with a birdie-eagle-birdie-eagle blitz
that thrust him into the thick of a shootout.
He finished with a 65 and was at 7-under
137, four strokes behind Grant Waite.
Woods could not remember a stretch quite
like that one, except for the time he had a 59 while playing a
friendly round with Mark O'Meara in Florida a week before his
record-setting Masters victory in 1997.
And he can't remember the last time he almost
missed a tee time.
He and caddie Steve Williams thought they
went off at 8:57 a.m. for the second round, when instead it was
7:57 a.m.
“I got here early to eat some breakfast
and the lady came up to me and says, 'Well, you have 15 minutes
until your tee time,'” Woods said. “So I ran down there
and got on the range. Actually, it was probably a blessing in
disguise because I'm not really feeling my best physically. It
was nice to not wear myself out on the range.”
Williams was waiting for him on the range
when he saw Davis Love III hitting balls and couldn't figure out
why he was out there so early, especially since Love was two groups
behind Woods.
Williams realized something was wrong when
he saw Jesper Parnevik, who played with Woods the first two days,
also warming up.
Back in the clubhouse, Franklin Langham
was surprised to see Woods kicking back instead of loosening up.
“I said, 'What are you doing, Tiger?'
He said he just ordered an omelet, and then one of the ladies
told him he was supposed to tee off pretty soon,” Langham
said.
While Woods said the hurried start to his
day wasn't a factor, it sure looked like it. He had to save par
with a delicate bunker shot to a green sloping away from him,
then took bogey on the par-3 12th when he badly missed a 4-foot
putt.
He had to work for every par, and appeared
to be going through the motions at 1 over through five holes,
in danger of missing the cut for the first and only time since
the 1997 Canadian Open at Royal Montreal.
Within an hour, he was two strokes out of
the lead.
It began with a harmless 8-iron on the par-3
15th to a pin cut over a ridge on the back of the green. It was
pure, the best swing he had all week. The ball covered the flag,
spun back to 4 feet and started an incredible string on his scorecard
— 2-3-3-3.
“I just tried to keep the same feeling
I had on that one shot for the rest of the day,” Woods said.
“I hit some beautiful shots.”
He hit some long ones, too.
His drive rode the breeze on the par-5 16th,
348 yards down the fairway, leaving him a 9-iron from 163 that
landed 3 feet from the hole for a tap-in eagle. He pulled his
driver on the 17th into a fairway bunker, but caught a 6-iron
clean to about 4 feet for birdie.
His final hole on his first nine was the
stuff of legend — a 380-yard drive, with a breeze at his
back, that left him a 60-degree sand wedge into the green on the
par-5 18th.
Even Woods had a hard time containing a
sheepish grin explaining a drive so far that Parnevik hit his
third shot before Woods hit his second.
“It's one of those shots I hit solid,”
he said.
No kidding.
His wedge spun back to 6 feet for another
eagle, and Woods found himself among the leaders once again.
“Once you see Tiger on the leaderboard,
you know that you can't make any mistakes because he doesn't make
any mistakes,” Sergio Garcia said.
As long as Woods knows when his tee time
is Saturday, he should be in good shape.
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