South Africa: Now Golfers Know Wounded Tiger is Just As Dangerous

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Business Day (Johannesburg)

OPINION
17 June 2008
Posted to the web 17 June 2008

Colin Anthony
Johannesburg

WHEN Tiger Woods stood on the 18th tee of the US Open needing to birdie the par five to stay in the championship, the world held its breath and expected an eagle. He had, after all, eagled the same hole the day before and he usually chews up and spits out par fives.

Watched by clubhouse leader Rocco Mediate, Woods's drive went into a left fairway bunker; his second to the right rough was such a poor shot he threw his club in disgust, and the world thought maybe, this time, it had slipped away from him.

Don't be silly.

He pitched it to about 15 feet and the putt, which broke slightly left, rolled in as if it knew where it belonged.

Woods had done it once again -- producing a piece of magic when he most needed it. And he did so clearly still suffering from his knee operation, and having not played since the Masters. What a champion he is.

It is an achievement that would have been hailed as heroic had it been any other golfer; because it was Woods, we expect no less, such is his greatness.

Mediate got to the playoff with a solid game in which he scored 69, 71, 72 and 71. He could have had it wrapped up in regulation play but missed two short putts on the back nine, one from about three feet.

Early on, it seemed Tiger's luck, which had bordered on the eerie on day three, had deserted him on day four. His first drive was such a bad hook the ball carried the stretch of graduated rough on the left that the US Golf Association had so carefully planned. It landed in the trampled down spectators' area -- a place he'd spent much of day three as well, but each time he had a good lie and a wide, treeless corridor to the green.

But on Sunday his second shot, from a bad lie, was awful, hitting a tree and landing in more trouble on the left before he scuffed his third as well.

The end result was that he surrendered his lead with a double bogey and followed that up with a bogey on the second, a wayward drive again the primary cause.

He had never lost a Major when leading going into the final round; he had never won one coming from behind. Would he be able to regain and retain the lead having lost it so early and so spectacularly?

How different it was to the previous day when he admitted he'd been lucky. He rolled in an eagle putt from all of 60 feet on the 13th and then chipped in on the 17th with a shot that hit the pin on the second bounce.

He admitted afterwards he'd hit it too hard and he'd been thinking bogey before the flag came to his rescue. Then as if to confirm Lady Luck was his No 1 fan, he sank another eagle, only from about 30 feet this time, on the par-five 18th, and he was in the lead going into the final day of a Major. A position from which he has proved invincible.

On the fourth of the final day he found his first fairway and just when you were thinking he had finally set in his telescopic sights, he screwed a horrific slice -- the kind with which we high handicappers are all too familiar -- from the left edge of the fairway. Somehow, it got a kind kick off a bank and rolled on to the far side of the green and he managed a par. Then you knew he was in business.

It was his driver that held him back all tournament -- he hit just more than 53% of his fairways. On Sunday, as he had on the previous days, his sheer determination brought his game back under control and he played steadily before his first birdie, on the par five ninth.

One place his knee wouldn't affect him was on the greens and he never looked like missing a putt. And the better his game got, the less troublesome his knee seemed (odd that) and he took the lead with another birdie at the par three 11th.

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Bogeys on 13 and 15 left him one behind Mediate. When he sank the birdie putt on the 18th, it seemed the script had been written and it was his destiny to land his 14th Major.

The playoff over 18 holes, played last night after this column went to print, is fairer than the sudden death method; still, having stayed up so late on the four days it's a bit of a letdown having to wait so long to know who won.

--
Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
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