Wednesday, June 14, 2000
Woods headstrong about winning
US Open
By DOUG FERGUSON
AP Golf Writer
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) — It might
seem hard to believe now, but there was a time when Pebble Beach
struck fear into the heart of Tiger Woods.
He was 13.
“When I first played on it ... I just
remember coming out here and finding the golf course so long,”
Woods said Tuesday. “I came back later and played the state
amateur when I was 17 or 18, and I thought how short the course
had gotten.”
Real or imagined, Pebble Beach is not the
same golf course for any of the 156 players when the U.S. Open
comes to town.
Neither is Woods.
He has demonstrated his wide range of shots
over the past year, during which he has won 11 out of his last
20 PGA Tour events and has been in contention every Sunday except
for one tournament over the past 13 months.
But for all the talent he possess, what
has separated Woods from the rest of the pack is his mind. That's
what makes him a heavy favorite this week in a U.S. Open that
tests mental toughness as much as any of the 14 clubs in the bag.
“I've always been pretty tough mentally,”
Woods said. “I've always felt that I've had a mental edge
over a lot of my opponents. My mind won me a lot of tournaments,
but physically, I always felt I wasn't as good as I could be.
And that's what I've been working on.”
He has arrived as the most dominant player
in golf since Jack Nicklaus, whose records Woods will continue
to chase on a course that has produced so many great champions
— Nicklaus in '72, Tom Watson in '82, Tom Kite in '92.
Woods kept a list of Nicklaus' accomplishments
tacked to his bedroom wall as a kid. One feat he probably left
out was that Nicklaus is the only player to have won the Pebble
Beach National Pro-Am and the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in the
same year.
Guess who won here in February?
In a final round that built up his own legend
and the mystique of the course, Woods made up seven strokes over
his final seven holes in a style symbolic of the energy he has
brought to golf.
He holed a wedge for eagle on No. 15, and
nearly holed another one on the 16th. He finished eagle-birdie-par-birdie
for his 8-under 64 and a two-stroke victory.
“He has the talent right now to dominate
the game for a long time,” Watson said. “Even though
we have a lot of great players out there, he's the standard. He's
the person on the leaderboard that everyone looks for. He's the
man.”
Watson gets no arguments from David Duval.
Duval was No. 1 in the world ranking at
this time a year ago, when a Woods-Duval rivalry was being built
along the lines of Nicklaus-Watson. Duval arrived at Pebble Beach
in good spirits, having lost in a playoff in the Buick Classic,
even though he hasn't won in over a year.
“You're doing a disservice by comparing
him to me,” Duval said. “Any time Tiger plays a tournament,
you've got to look to him as a favorite.”
And who would be a favorite this week?
“Whoever is on top of their game, and
on top of their wits and nerves and their attitude,” Duval
said. “That's the guy you need to look to as the favorite.”
Right now, that best describes Woods. And
he is only getting better.
He has found control off the tee, precision
with his length, imagination around the green and a putting stroke
that always keeps him in the game.
The result? Woods has finished out of the
top 10 in just two of his past 25 tournaments around the world.
And for those who wondered whether his game
would ever suit a U.S. Open, consider last year. Woods finished
two strokes behind the late Payne Stewart, missing two short par
putts on the back nine.
“You have to stay committed to each
and every shot, stay in the ball game,” Woods said. “You
can't afford to let your intensity down one bit, just because
of the fact that it can cost you a couple of strokes here and
there, and that can be the end of the tournament.”
The burden of being the favorite every time
he tees it up has not been a burden because Woods has grown accustomed
to it.
And while even a challenger like Duval tabbed
Woods as the player to watch, he also pointed out that a U.S.
Open rarely plays favorites.
“When you enter a U.S. Open, it's a
great equalizer,” Duval said. “It becomes a real patience
contest.”
One look around Pebble Beach makes that
clear.
Wind has always been the greatest defense
at Pebble, which sits along with rugged California coastline.
And with rough that is 41/2 inches high, lush and nasty, greens
that Watson said are already as small as dinner plates become
more like saucers.
“The harder the conditions, the more
it favors the person who's playing well,” Woods said. “I
think the U.S. Open historically has always been very difficult.”
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