TIGER’S MIRACLE
He was told to pull out but played on one leg over FIVE rounds. No wonder his last major win 10 years ago is known as...
TEN years on, the astounding manner in which Tiger Woods won the United States Open at Torrey Pines still causes Robert Karlsson, his thirdround playing partner that week, to blow air into his cheeks and break into a broad smile.
‘It is one of my greatest memories in golf and always will be,’ says the gentle Swede, a former European No 1 who will be a vicecaptain at this year’s Ryder Cup.
‘The idea that a man could win a major championship while so badly injured still causes me to shake my head in wonder. By the time we got to the 17th, Tiger was struggling so badly I asked his caddie Steve Williams whether he thought he would even be able to play the final round, let alone think about winning.
‘The way he put that third round together, the pain he went through, the two eagles he made in the last six holes from impossible places, it’s so special looking back. And the atmosphere, wow! How do you begin to describe that?’
Only when it was over, after Tiger had not only turned up for the final round but a play-off the following day that lasted 19 holes, did the full story of his injury emerge. Of how he arrived at Torrey Pines having played only nine holes since the Masters in April, which he completed in 53 shots.
Of the meeting three weeks earlier with his specialist, who told him to forget all about golf for the rest of the year, as he had a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and two stress fractures of his tibia — and Tiger’s defiant response.
‘You can do what you want with my leg at the end of June, doc,’ he said. ‘But I’m playing the US Open. I’m going to win.’
He seemed like Superman on that Monday afternoon when presented with the trophy but what a price he would pay. It would prove the last of his 14 major championship victories, as wondrous feats gave way to a heart-breaking divorce and its tawdry aftermath.
Now, he’s back again, marking the 10th anniversary as one of the favourites for this year’s edition at Shinnecock Hills.
‘Sitting here, I guess the 10 years have gone by quickly but there were certainly times when I wasn’t well when every second felt like 24 hours,’ said Woods last week. ‘I think there are four major victories that stand out for me because I didn’t miss a putt inside 10 feet at any of them — the 1997 Masters, the 2000 US Open (Pebble Beach), the 2000 Open (St Andrews), and Torrey. But the last one was when I needed to putt like that. I didn’t hit the ball anywhere near as well that week as the other three.’
Is there anyone still out there who thinks he’s got no chance at Shinnecock, that people at 42 don’t suddenly remember how to win majors? If so, let’s rewind to five unforgettable days when he completed mission impossible.
The drama began the Sunday before, when Woods realised he could not rest his ailing knee any longer. ‘I played Big Canyon down the road, the course I grew up on, and I was still trying to work out how I was going to play wearing a knee brace,’ recalled Tiger.
‘So I shot 50-odd for nine holes doing that and, on the drive to Torrey I threw the brace in the trash and said to my trainer, “Now, I have to figure out how I am going to play without it”.’
There was no evidence he had solved the conundrum by the first hole, as he marked down a doublebogey six. Woods stumbled on to card 72 to lie four off the lead.
‘I thought he would withdraw and was amazed when he turned up for the second round,’ said then USGA president Jim Vernon.
ON DAY two, jaws went slack as Woods came home in 30 shots for a 68 to lie tied second with Karlsson. ‘ That was the moment when something rather magical began to unfold,’ said USGA chief executive Mike davis.
day three has gone down as one of those ‘only Tiger’ days, when the pain was at its height and Karlsson had a ringside seat.
‘On the back nine he hit it so poor because the only way he could actually get through the ball with his knee was by hitting a massive slice off the tee,’ he told
Sportsmail. ‘On the 15th he couldn’t do that because there was a tree on the left of the tee. He knew what was coming next. He said to me not to wait for him after he hit his drive. Now he stuck a perfect draw, the best shot he hit all day, but the cost was clear. He stood on the tee just hyperventi- lating. After I walked on he was still on the tee, trying to recover.’
Woods hit it everywhere over that back nine. On the 13th his drive finished in a toilet. On the 14th he missed the fairway by 50 yards to the right. At the 17th he was short and in a horrible lie in two. None of it was reflected on his scorecard.
‘Everything went for him,’ said Karlsson. ‘He got a free drop from the toilet at the 13th and made an eagle. At the 17th he chipped in. At the 18th he was 80 feet away in two but by then we all knew what was going to happen. I remember watching his putt thinking, surely not, but it kept going and going and fell into the hole. Outside the Ryder Cup, the roar was the loudest I’ve ever heard.’
Yet how could Tiger carry on? ‘That might have been the most incredible thing of all, that he came back for the fourth day,’ said Karlsson. Woods started with a double bogey, and followed it with a bogey. Again he wouldn’t give in.
On the agony went until he got to the 18th, needing a birdie to tie underdog Rocco Mediate, as did playing partner Lee Westwood. Clearly seething after leaving his own 20-foot downhill effort short, the Englishman couldn’t watch as Woods stood over his 15-footer.
‘I didn’t need to watch anyway,’ recalled Westwood. ‘He always holes those putts, doesn’t he?’ One more putt duly dropped and, in a rare contrast of emotion, Woods’s face was creased with rapture, rather than pain. And back we came for a fifth day. Eighteen-hole play- offs staged on Mondays are usually anticlimactic, but not this one.
Three shots behind with eight to play, Mediate benefited from bogeys from Woods at the 11th and 12th and then went ahead with birdies at 14 and 15. Once more, Woods needed a birdie at the 18th to tie; once more he delivered. Now it became suddendeath, and that was where Woods got his hands on the trophy.
Mediate sums up the week. ‘It was five days of controlled insanity,’ he said. ‘And it was the golf experience of a lifetime.’
Two days later, Woods went into hospital to have his knee surgically rebuilt. It would be eight months before he reappeared, but he would never be the same player again. It was the debt owed for perhaps the most courageous US Open victory of all.