HILLS ARE ALIVE!
It’s been 10 years since Tiger won at the Open as he heads to Shinnecock
A DECADE SOMEHOW has passed already since Tiger Woods, on a shredded left knee that would require reconstructive surgery on a torn ACL eight days later, legendarily outlasted Rocco Mediate in a 19-hole playoff at Torrey Pines to capture the 2008 U.S. Open title.
It marked his 14th major championship by the age of 32, and even with a daunting medical condition worsening and in need of repair, it was incomprehensible to fathom on that June afternoon that Woods would remain four majors from the seemingly inevitable — matching and eclipsing Jack Nicklaus’ all-time record — and still seeking elusive title No. 15 a full 10 eventful years later.
Tiger’s ensuing tale, of course, has been littered with unfathomable twists and turns, both professional and personal, on the course and off, in the years between that victory and the 2018 U.S. Open, which brings him and rest of the PGA’s best to eastern Long Island this week, the fifth time America’s premier open tournament is to be played at the everdemanding Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton.
Debilitating and career-threatening back injuries have required four subsequent surgeries — most notably a spinal fusion in April of last year — which kept Woods sidelined for all but one tournament (a missed cut back at Torrey Pines at the Farmers Insurance Open in 2017) over a dark 29-month span before he returned to the tour at the same event in January of this year. And then there was that memorable Thanksgiving night car accident in 2008 and the extramarital affair scandal that followed, tarnishing his squeaky clean public persona.
The superstar golfer also was found to have painkillers, Xanax, Ambien and an ingredient active in marijuana in his body when busted in his home state of Flordia in May 2017 for driving under the influence.
Since returning to the PGA Tour, however, Woods has posted two top-5 finishes in nine starts this season, even with a disappointing showing (tied for 32nd) at The Masters in April.
Tiger even surged into a tie for the lead on the back nine last Saturday at The Memorial (in Dublin, Ohio), a tournament he’d won five times previously. But a couple of late bogeys in that round dropped him off the pace before his putter betrayed him on Sunday to finish in a tie for 23rd place, six strokes behind winner Bryson DeChambeau.
“Well, it’s incredible to be able to play golf again at this level,” Woods said following his final competitive tune-up ahead of Shinnecock. “Not to have any worries about being able to walk again, like I was. I was struggling there for a while, and now I’m on the other end of the spectrum. I don’t have the pain, which is incredible, and I’m able to do this again, something I love and something that I’ve been doing for a very long time.
“Golf’s been a part of my life ever since I can remember, and I didn’t know if I could ever be a part of the game again. As I said, there was a point in time where I couldn’t walk and this is part of the game. And so I’m able to do this now at this level and go hit the shots I’m hitting and compete and I’ve had a chance to win a few times so far this year.”
Woods, now 42, even has zoomed back from a ranking outside the top 1,000 golfers in the world last summer to No. 80 presently, but his recent play and past reputation have earned him the fourth-best betting odds entering this week’s Open according to VegasInsider.com at 14-1.
That leaves Tiger behind only Dustin Johnson (9-1), Rory McIlroy (10-1) and Jordan Spieth (12-1) and ahead of No.1 ranked Justin Thomas (15-1) and fellow top-10 players Justin Rose, Joh Rahm, Rickie Fowler and Jason Day.
“Overall, my game is where it needs to be heading into the U.S. Open and that’s something that’s very positive,” said Woods, who will be part of a marquee grouping with Thomas and Johnson — the top two ranked players in the world — for the first two rounds beginning Thursday. “I just need to hit better putts. (At The Memorial) I didn’t really have, didn’t feel comfortable with my lines and my feel was a little bit off.
“Consequently, I missed a bunch of putts. But I hit it really good this week, so that’s a positive going into Shinnecock, where ball striking is going to be a must … It will be a very different golf course, but overall if I hit the ball like this, I’ll be pleased in two weeks … I haven’t hit it like this for a while.”
Nor has he come close to adding to his total of major championships in quite some time, with his best finish since the 2008 Open coming as the runner-up to Y.E. Yang in the PGA Championship the following year.
“It’s hard to believe,” Phil Mickelson told Golf Week magazine earlier this month. “Not only is (Woods) going to win again, but I think he’ll win more majors. I don’t think (2008) was his last major.”
Mickelson, of course, is still seeking his first U.S. Open championship after a record six second-place finishes, the only one of the four majors he’s yet to win. Lefty played the course a few times late last month and called Shinnecock “the greatest setup going that I have seen in my 25-whatever years of playing the U.S. Open.”
Still, all eyes, at least to start this week, will be affixed on Woods, who pulled into Gurney’s Yacht Club marina in Montauk in his 155-foot boat named Privacy earlier this week. He finished tied for 17th at Shinnecock in 2004 and will be appearing in his first U.S. Open since failing to make the cut at Chambers Bay in 2015.
Woods also won the U.S. Open in 2000 at Pebble Beach and in 2002 at Long Island’s Bethpage Black course.
“I’ve had my chances,” Woods said. “And for some reason I just either have not hit the ball well enough or haven’t putted well enough, or haven’t put the two together. There was always some missing piece.”
The missing piece last Sunday came on the greens, but Woods was encouraged by the similar links-style layout at Shinnecock to the course he just played so effectively off the tees and from the fairways at The Memorial, which he described as a “ball-striker’s” golf course.
“Shinnecock, the way it’s set up with the rough and the fescue and the 7,500 (yard track), par 70, I mean it’s a big, big ballpark,” Woods said. “Overall, if I just keep building on this, with how I’m hitting it right now, I’m in good shape for (the U.S. Open).”
We’ll know if he’s right in just a few days.