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Tiger: Owning All Four |
They said it couldn’t be done, and virtually the entire golfing public believed them. For a man to win all four major championships in his lifetime was a feat of, well, major proportions. To win all four in succession should have been an impossibility.
Tiger Woods by now should have accustomed us to the idea of doing the ‘undoable.’ He won all of them – the Masters, the U.S. Open, the Open Championship and PGA Championship – in a one-year span covering 2000 and 2001. While it wasn’t the “Grand Slam” – winning all four in one calendar year – nonetheless it was still the only time in history that a competitor won all four in succession. Sportswriters dubbed it the “Tiger Slam.”
And he not only did something that was previously unbelievable, he accomplished each in unforgettable fashion: for the first, the U.S. Open, he won by an incredible 15 strokes at one of America’s most important courses, Pebble Beach; at the Open Championship, he won by eight at St Andrews, perhaps the most famous course in the world; at the PGA Championship, he not only played the first two rounds with Jack Nicklaus, the pair’s only competition playing together, but he won in a thrilling playoff over Bob May; and to complete the Slam, he prevailed over the last nine holes at the Masters in a grinding duel with Phil Mickelson and David Duval at a time when those two opponents were among the most important competitors in the game.
“You never get to where you want to be. That’s the beautiful thing about the game, because tomorrow can always be better.” -- Tiger Woods
Tiger himself was bowled over by what he had accomplished.
“The first two that I won probably could not have happened on two better sites. It's not too often you get to play Pebble Beach and St Andrews. Pebble Beach is probably the greatest golf course we have over here, and St. Andrews is probably the greatest course in the world.
“And to win at Valhalla (PGA Championship) under those conditions, having to make birdie after birdie after birdie, just to hang in there, that was tough. And then to do it (at Augusta National) … again, one of the most historic sites in all of the world, it's pretty neat.”
The story begins in 2000 at Pebble Beach with the 100th playing of U.S. Open. Woods had yet to win the tournament. He opened with a 65, just one shot better than Angel Cabrera (who would edge Tiger Woods to win the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont). In the second round he posted a 69, but the average score was almost 76. Tiger would have done even better, but on the 18th he deposited his drive in the Pacific Ocean and went on to make double bogey. But following that mishap, his lead was still six strokes.
The third round was a huge eye-opener. With the average score standing at 77.12, only Ernie Els was able to break par. The field hit only 43 percent of the greens as the winds off the Pacific soared. But Woods, after an adventure at the third hole where he made triple bogey, was the exception. He hit 12 of a possible 14 fairways, and though he had to battle to shoot a 1-over 71, he turned the tournament into a joke. His lead after three rounds was a whopping 10 shots.
“I knew that if I shot even par or something close to that, I’d pick up a shot or two just because the conditions were so severe out there,” Tiger said when he came off the course Saturday. Little did he know at the time that he had made the fourth round just a formality.
Sunday was a formality indeed – to everyone but Woods. He continued to bear down, and on the final nine holes he birdied 10, 12, 13 and 14. The last four holes were a coronation of his 15-shot victory.
“He’s in another dimension,” said a disbelieving Els … “I don’t know what we’re going to do with him.”
Then it was on to the Open Championship and storied old St Andrews. By virtue of his win at Pebble Beach, Tiger had completed his mission of winning all four majors, though not in succession. Amazingly, he had done in at age 24. And, he was just in his fourth year as a professional.
He would completely dominate at St Andrews, shooting 67-66-67-69, the best 72-hole score ever shot at an Open on the Old Course. And he won by eight strokes, the most in any Open since 1913.
“My Dad always told me that you always have a choice. You may not like the choice, but you always have one.” - Tiger Woods
It almost defies the imagination to state that Woods was never in a bunker. St. Andrews has 128 of these sandy hazards, and Tiger avoided them all over his four-day run. And he birdied 22 holes, almost one in three.
Woods had grabbed the lead at the end of the second round with his 66 and by the end of Round 3, had stretched it to six. Duval posted a mild threat in Round 4, at one point coming within three strokes of Tiger with 11 holes to play. But Duval posted a 43 on the final nine after taking four shots in the Road Hole bunker at 17. Tiger breezed home the winner by eight.
Tom Watson, himself a five-time British Open champion, could only exclaim, “He’s raised the bar to a level only he can reach.”
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posted on 8/18/2008 by |
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