Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (15 page)

“I don’t think I was brooding during that period so much as I just wasn’t there emotionally,” Rocco said. “I was usually doing
one of two things: trying to find a way to get the pain to go away or, if I couldn’t do that, drinking scotch to mask the
pain. Either way, it wasn’t exactly ideal.”

He was also playing a lot of online poker. He had started playing when he was at home and couldn’t do anything except sit
around the house and hope the pain would go away. “There were days when I was home where I had nothing to do for seven, eight
hours because if I tried to walk down the hall, I risked falling down,” he said. “I was bored, so I started playing. For a
few years I was hooked on it, playing it for hours and hours. After a while I realized I needed to stop. It was like anything
you get addicted to — it was something I needed to stop. But it took me a while to get to that point.”

Life was equally difficult for Linda. She understood that Rocco was in pain and that he was upset about his golf. But the
drinking, understandably, bothered her. So did the obsession with poker.

“If he wasn’t playing with people in the house, he was playing online,” she said. “It was as if he needed that, since he couldn’t
compete the way he wanted to compete on the golf course.”

Discovering poker as an outlet wasn’t all that different for Rocco than discovering golf as a teenager had been. He wanted
to play all the time, compete all the time, and try to get better. In 2005, he made it to the World Series of Poker’s Main
Event — held in Las Vegas — and finished 600th out of 5,619 players. That was the good news. The bad news was that the time
spent playing poker was more time away from the family and, unlike golf, was not exactly a moneymaker for him.

By the end of 2004, Rocco was in a state of near panic about his golf future. At the urging of Leonard Thompson, one of his
tour buddies, he went to see Jimmy Ballard in Miami. Ballard has a reputation not only as one of the top teachers around —
he has worked with, among others, Curtis Strange, Steve Ballesteros, Sandy Lyle, Peter Jacobsen, and Hal Sutton — but as someone
who teaches a swing that relieves pressure on the back. That’s why Thompson recommended that Rocco go see him.

“It was one of the better moves I’ve ever made,” Rocco said. “Rick [Smith] understood. A lot of what Jimmy does is similar
to what Rick and Jim Ferree teach, but he has this ‘connection’ theory that relieves pressure on the back.”

Ballard believes that if Rocco had come to him early in his career, he never would have had back problems. “First time I saw
him was when he won at Doral in ’91,” he said. “He had a very good golf swing, but I could see it was putting pressure on
his back that was going to cause problems.”

Ballard learned his theory of the golf swing from Sam Byrd, who was once Babe Ruth’s backup on the New York Yankees. Byrd
is still the only man to play Major League baseball and win a tournament on the PGA Tour, and he lost to Byron Nelson in the
final of the PGA Championship (it was a match play event then) in 1945.

“Sam got the yips that day,” Ballard said. “Otherwise he’d have won.”

The Byrd-Ballard swing does take pressure off the back. Rocco adjusted his swing and it helped his back. “Didn’t cure me,
because I was already hurt,” he said. “But if I hadn’t gone to Jimmy and hadn’t changed my swing when I did, I probably would
have been done by the end of the next year, because it was getting nothing but worse. He saved my career.”

He still goes to see Ballard and in 2008 took Paul Azinger to see him when Azinger’s back problems flared again. “Because
of the guys I’ve worked with — Ferree, Smith, Ballard — and because of how much I’ve studied the swing through the years,
I know a lot about the golf swing,” he said. “Usually I would tell you that any player on tour who goes to another pro [which
happens frequently] for help with his swing is crazy — but I knew Jimmy could help Zinger.

Listening to Rocco and Ballard discuss the Sam Byrd theory of the golf swing is a little bit like listening to Swahili. They
are speaking another language, but it is one they are both quite comfortable speaking.

Playing on his one-time top 50 exemption in 2005, Rocco continued to struggle the first half of the year, with the exception
of a good week in Los Angeles, when the back held up and he managed to tie for 13th place. Everything else was either bad
or worse. He had to withdraw two weeks in a row in May, first in New Orleans and then in Charlotte. His spring résumé looked
like this: WD–WD–Cut–Cut–T65.

The T65 in Washington was the first time he had played on a weekend since March. “Believe it or not, it gave me some confidence,”
he said. “It wasn’t so much that I played well as I played four straight rounds of golf on a good golf course [Congressional]
without any serious pain.”

That brief feel-good moment took him to Pinehurst for the U.S. Open. He opened there with a 67, which was good enough to tie
him with John Daly for the lead. He played solidly the last three rounds and even though he was never in serious contention
to win, he was thrilled to finish tied for sixth place. It was good for his confidence and it was good for his bank account.
Unlike the previous year, he had no fallback if he didn’t finish in the top 125. The thought of going back to Q-School a few
weeks before turning forty-three didn’t thrill him.

“All I could do was hope the pain would stay away,” he said. “The Open told me that when I was healthy, or even semi-healthy,
I was still plenty good enough to compete. The key was being able to walk 18 holes every day and take a full swing at the
golf ball. That doesn’t sound like much to ask, but for me at that point it was everything.”

The 2005 Open turned his year around. He ended up making 12 of his last 14 cuts and had to withdraw only one more time, and
that wasn’t until October in Greensboro. As a two-time champion, he felt bad about having to pull out, but he wasn’t going
to take any chances. By then, he had made enough money to preserve his spot in the top 125. He finished the year with $696,250,
which was good enough for 121st place on the money list. Hardly spectacular, but Rocco wasn’t complaining.

“I had kept my job for another year,” he said. “I understood that given my age and my back, that was no small thing for me.”

Unfortunately, the first half of 2006 didn’t go as well as the second half of 2005 had. The early part of the year was again
a struggle. He missed his first three cuts and four of his first five, a tie for 48th place at Doral being the only check
he cashed prior to the Players Championship, where he tied for 58th. His goal in the spring was to be healthy for the Masters.
Even though he hadn’t been in the top 100 on the money list for two years, he was still exempt into the Masters because of
his sixth-place finish at Pinehurst. He arrived at Augusta, having taken the week off prior to the tournament, feeling rested
and ready, he hoped, for a good week.

“Other than ’01, I had never really played very well there,” he said. “It wasn’t because I didn’t like the golf course, because
I did. It could have been because putting is so important there, and for a long time I wasn’t a great putter. But really,
if you think about it, striking the ball there is extremely important because if you don’t drive the ball to the right spots
on the fairway, you have almost no chance of getting close to the pins. You have to be in certain places to have a chance.
That part of my game has always been a strength.”

He got the week off to a good start on Thursday by shooting a four-under-par 68. The golf course had been lengthened to more
than 7,500 yards by the Augusta National membership as part of a redesign that began soon after Tiger Woods shot an 18-under-par
270 there in 1997, so any under-par round at Augusta National was now a good day. Winning scores have been consistently higher
in recent years at the Masters, topping out in 2007, when Zach Johnson won at one-over-par 289 after a week in which the winds
blew every day.

In 2006, the tournament was plagued by rain delays. By the time darkness closed in on Saturday, most of the leaders were still
in the early stage of their third rounds. Rocco, who had shot 73 in the second round to stay within striking range of the
leaders, had played only four holes. The players had to return to the golf course to resume play at 7:30 the next morning,
meaning about a 5 A.M. wake-up call for most.

Rocco continued to play well Sunday morning. He was three under par for the tournament, trailing Phil Mickelson by only two
shots, when he arrived at the par-five 15th hole. He hit a perfect drive down the right side of the fairway and had a three-iron
to the green.

“The ball was a little bit above my feet, but it was still a shot I felt good about,” he said. “The ground was still wet from
all the rain. When I swung down at the ball, my foot slipped.”

Rick Smith, who was out walking with Rocco, saw his foot slip and saw him reach for his back. “I knew it was trouble right
away,” he said. “I’d been thinking I’d have both my guys in the last group for the afternoon [Smith was also working with
Mickelson back then], and then I saw Rocco grab his back. My next thought was, ‘Can he finish the round?’ ”

He finished, still in contention at two under par, tied for fourth place just two shots behind Mickelson, who had made a late
bogey to fall to four under. Rocco went straight to the fitness trailer to be worked on before he had to tee it up for the
final round.

“We had a couple hours,” he said. “By the time I got out of there, I felt a lot better. I thought I might be able to make
it through the round.

“So much can happen there on Sunday afternoon,” he said. “Even with all the changes to the golf course, you still have holes
where you can go low and you can go high. I was as excited going into that last round as I think I’ve ever been at a golf
tournament. I thought if the back would hold up I had a legitimate chance to win.”

He felt exactly the same way standing on the ninth tee that afternoon tied for the lead. The ninth hole at Augusta National
is a short but extremely difficult par-four. Players drive the ball straight down a hill and then must play their second shot
straight up a hill to a green that tilts back to front. The Sunday pin placement is always near the front of the green. Any
shot that lands pin-high or below the pin almost always rolls off the green and back down the hill, leaving a difficult pitch
to try to get close enough to salvage a par.

In 1996, still leading Nick Faldo by three shots playing the ninth hole, Greg Norman hit a second shot that landed no more
than a foot from the hole. But the ball spun back off the green and halfway down the hill. Norman made bogey; the lead, which
might have jumped back to four shots had he hit his second shot a few feet farther, went to two shots; and Faldo ended up
winning by five shots as Norman completed one of the most famous final-day collapses in major championship history.

Ten years later, Rocco hit a perfect drive down the hill but knew he had a problem when he got to his ball. He was on a sidehill
lie, and he was afraid that when he swung he might slip again. “I tried as best I could to stay absolutely still over the
ball,” he said. “The amazing thing is I hit a hell of a shot.”

The nine-iron shot flew directly at the hole and hit the bottom of the flagstick. It could have dropped in or it could have
stopped near the hole. It did neither. If it had just missed the stick, it might have settled close to the hole. Instead,
it bounced backward off the green and halfway down the hill. At that moment Rocco didn’t really care where the ball was. His
back had gone on him again the instant he followed through on the shot.

“I hit the ball pretty much exactly the way I wanted to hit it,” he said. “For a second I thought it was perfect. In a sense,
it almost was. But I knew my back was gone. I could barely get up the hill to where my ball was. For an instant I thought
I might go down, which I certainly didn’t want to do with all those people around the green, not to mention all the people
watching on television. Sunday at the Masters — how many people do you think are watching? A billion, a trillion?”

Certainly millions. Rocco managed to make it up the hill to his ball and, under the circumstances, made a miraculous par,
chipping the ball to four feet and making the putt. But as he walked off the green, he knew he was in serious trouble.

“I’d felt that pain enough times in my life that I knew exactly what it was and exactly how badly I was hurt,” he said. “If
I hadn’t been so high up on the leader board, I would have walked straight off the green and into the clubhouse because, realistically,
I knew I was done. But given where I was, I had to at least try. I was about 99.999 percent sure I wasn’t going to win. But
I was hoping I could somehow get through the back nine and still finish at least in the top ten.”

He couldn’t. Walking down the hill on the 10th fairway was murderous, and by the time he reached the 12th tee he was one over
par on the back nine (having just missed making a five-foot par putt at the 11th), in extreme pain, and fading fast.

The 12th hole at Augusta National is a tiny little par-three that is listed on the scorecard as being 150 yards long. It is
the middle hole on the treacherous three-hole swing dubbed “Amen Corner” by the great Herbert Warren Wind because players
in contention on Masters Sunday pray they get through these holes — water is in play at each of them — unscathed.

The 12th at Augusta has frequently been the hole where Sunday dreams come to die at the Masters. Although players rarely hit
more than a nine-iron off the tee — often only a pitching wedge is called for — they must carve a precise shot over Rae’s
Creek to a tiny green. Miss short and you are wet. Miss long and you are in a bunker or a flower patch, aiming your second
shot downhill in the direction of the creek.

“Any time you are in contention and you stand on that tee, you get the shakes,” said Fred Couples, the 1992 Masters champion
who may have caught the luckiest break in Masters history on 12 the year that he won the tournament. His tee shot came up
short of the green and seemed destined to slide back into the water. Somehow, the ball got stuck on a tuft of grass and stayed
there, allowing Couples to chip up, make par, and win by two shots. “I knew when the ball stayed up it was my day to win,”
he has often said when the subject of that shot comes up.