Monday, July 24, 2000
Woods adds to his legend by
running away with British Open title
By Joe Juliano
Knight Ridder Newspapers
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — His hands stuffed
in his pockets when they were not wrapped around a golf club,
Tiger Woods must have entertained a few profound thoughts as he
prepared to conclude his final trip around the game's holy land
on another date with history.
Surely, he could afford to daydream. He
entered Sunday's final round of the British Open with a 6-stroke
lead and was never even remotely threatened after the 12th hole.
Still, this was no time to think about his acceptance speech,
or the Grand Slam, or Nick Faldo's championship scoring record.
The inevitable was completed around 6:42
p.m., local time. With flashbulbs popping like lasers amid the
gray backdrop, Woods, wearing his customary Sunday red, sank a
four-foot putt to wrap up yet another dominating performance in
a major championship and complete the modern Grand Slam.
Five weeks after he had posted a 15-stroke
victory in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Calif., Woods captured
the British Open by a relatively pedestrian 8, thanks to a closing
69. His 19-under-par score of 269 was the best in relation to
par not only in the tournament's history but also in any major
championship. It also broke by 1 the record set by Faldo here
in 1990.
The victory also put Woods in select company.
He joined Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan
in the exclusive club of players who have won the Masters, the
U.S. and British Opens, and the PGA Championship at least once
each. At 24 years, 6 months and 23 days, he is the youngest ever
to do so.
Later, after the tournament was over and
he had shaken about 100 hands and hugged his mother dozens of
times, Woods let it be known what kept him driven on the way to
his coronation in front of the Royal & Ancient Clubhouse.
He had one thought in mind — shooting all four rounds in
the 60s.
“I couldn't care less about the record,”
he said. “All I wanted was four straight rounds in the 60s.
That was something I did not do at Pebble Beach and I did not
do at Augusta (Ga., in the 1997 Masters). To finally get the job
done with four straight rounds in the 60s in a major championship
is special.”
That's the way Woods is, setting goals for
himself when the outcome has been all but decided. Maybe that's
a means of giving himself a challenge, something the game's best
players have fallen short of recently. At Pebble Beach, he wanted
to go around on the final day without a bogey, and he succeeded.
Sunday, in winning for the third time in
his last four majors, Woods carded four birdies and one bogey,
raising his totals for the weekend to 22 and three, respectively.
After hearing all sorts of ominous warnings about the perils of
finding one of the 112 steep-faced bunkers on these ancient links,
Woods did not have to hit out of a single bunker — not one
— in four rounds.
Once again, he was on top of his game. Maybe
he was not as dominating as when he won the 1997 Masters by 12
strokes, or when he swept through the U.S. Open last month, but
no one challenged him here for much of the last two days.
“In one way, it is incredible to watch
a guy play so much better than the rest of the world,” said
Ernie Els, a runner-up for the third straight time in a major.
“In another way, it is tough to sit down here and talk about
him every time. I might have to get used to it.”
“Somebody out there is playing golf
on a different planet than the rest of us,” said Thomas Bjorn,
who tied Els for second.
As David Duval, Woods' partner in the featured
No. 1 vs. No. 2 pairing, said on Saturday, the final pairing was
a “circus.” The galleries were immense. Kids yelled
“Ti-guh, Ti-guh” as Woods walked by. Some spectators,
ignoring a rule to keep their cameras at home, snapped away from
behind the ropes or the massive grandstands that dot the course.
Woods stayed focused. He did not flinch
when Duval posted birdies on four of his first seven holes to
cut his deficit at the start of the day in half, to 3 strokes,
at the end of nine holes.
Instead, Woods stood up on the tees of two
shortish par 4s, the 379-yard 10th and the 314-yard 12th, and
drove both of them. He 2-putted each one for birdie, and when
Duval 3-putted No. 12 for bogey, the lead was back to 6. Duval
would make two bogeys and a quadruple-bogey 8 at the stressful
Road Hole to fall back from a challenging position into a tie
for 11th.
“I think it was a spectacular performance,
to say the least,” Duval said. “He simply did not make
the mistakes and capitalized on the holes you would expect him
to capitalize on.”
Woods came by this excellence and efficiency
naturally. He was a child prodigy, having hit golf balls on the
Mike Douglas Show at age 3 and played two holes with Sam Snead
at age 6. He won national amateur championships six years in a
row, wonderful preparation for his current success.
When he turned pro after his third straight
U.S. Amateur title in 1996, he thought he might have been able
to contend in the four majors by now. But win them? To Woods,
“that's a different story.”
“It would have surprised me to say
I would have (won) all four,” he said. “I think I would
have had a chance to win all four. That's probably how I would
have phrased it. I felt my game was good enough and I knew I had
the drive to compete, but you need to have luck on your side and
have the opportunity to get a few bounces.”
Sure, everyone gets “a few bounces”
when they win. But there must be something else, such as work
ethic, dedication and execution, qualities that are leaving Woods'
challengers far behind at the moment.
It almost seems as if Woods is a little
embarrassed by the one-sided nature of his victories, using terms
Sunday such as “lucky breaks” and “karma.”
Breaks, he said, “are the things you
need to have happen in order to win, in order to get momentum
going and go on and win by a big margin. Those are some of the
breaks I've gotten. I guess part of it is the hard work, but then
again, you need to have good karma, I guess.”
Karma was in short supply for Woods' fellow
competitors this week. Els shot a 69 to join Bjorn (71) in a second-place
tie at 277. Tom Lehman and David Toms were tied for fourth at
278, followed by Fred Couples at 279. Contenders such as Duval,
Darren Clarke and Loren Roberts slipped further back as the day
went on.
As dusk fell on the Old Course, the townspeople
and visitors went home pleased that they had witnessed history.
Then again, Sunday offered nothing new to anyone who saw Woods
at Pebble Beach. He is a special player. When he is on his game,
the world's greatest golfers are playing for second place.
(c) 2000, The Philadelphia
Inquirer.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site,
at http://www.philly.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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