Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (23 page)

“We have a tendency to go into a zone,” said Davis Love III, who has won twenty times on tour. “I know people would like to
see us talk more and smile more, but that’s just not where your focus is. There are exceptions. Trevino loved to talk, Arnold
always interacted with the crowd, and Rocco never stops. That’s his way of letting off steam. Most of us aren’t that way,
though. He’s an exception to the general rule.”

Woods and Mickelson didn’t only fail to talk when competing against each other. In 2004, American Ryder Cup captain Hal Sutton
decided to pair his best two players on the first day of the competition at Oakland Hills, hoping to get his team off to a
fast start and set a tone. Woods and Mickelson did indeed set a tone. They lost both their matches and never uttered a word
to each other during eight hours on the golf course as a “team.” Europe jumped to a huge lead and won that weekend going away.

No American captain since then has even thought about pairing Woods and Mickelson in either Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup play.

“I don’t think they hate one another,” Rocco said. “They’re just very different guys.”

That’s certainly true. Woods has actually grown far more comfortable through the years around his fellow pros. He enjoys “busting
balls,” as the players put it, and is good at being given a hard time in return. He calls almost everyone by some kind of
nickname — not necessarily clever ones, but adding a Y to people’s names or, in Rocco’s case, calling him Rocc, as many people
do.

Woods has loosened up a little when it comes to talking about his personal life since the birth in June 2007 of his daughter,
Sam. (Her name is Sam, not Samantha, because Earl Woods called Tiger Sam as a boy.) He will talk occasionally — though generically
— about the joys of fatherhood. But Elin, his wife, stays in the background almost all the time, and Woods doesn’t like anyone
in his entourage — caddy, agent, swing coach, clothing rep — talking about much of anything other than golf. He’s fired a
caddy, an agent, and a swing coach at least in part because they were too forthcoming with the public and the media.

Mickelson has had the same caddy and the same agent since he turned pro in 1992. When he changed swing coaches in 2007, going
from Rick Smith to Butch Harmon, he agonized over it and has made a point of staying friends with Smith since he made the
change. When Woods fires someone, that is usually the last time he speaks to him except perhaps in passing.

Mickelson is the father of three and loves nothing more than talking about how important his wife, Amy, is to his success.
Any time he wins a tournament there is usually a four-person stampede in his direction as he comes off the 18th green — Amy
and the three children. The day Elin Woods races onto a green to hug her husband after a winning final putt will be the same
day Bill Clinton or Barack Obama is voted most popular politician on the PGA Tour.

Woods is image-conscious in the sense that he tries not to say anything controversial and tends to steer clear of political
issues. He is one of the few players on tour who is not a registered Republican — he’s a registered Independent.

Mickelson is so image-conscious that other players call him Eddie Haskell. To his credit, he is the most accommodating player
on tour when it comes to signing autographs (Woods hates signing autographs), usually blocking at least forty-five minutes
after every round to sign. He also does things like referring to Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup captains as “Captain Nicklaus”
or “Captain Azinger,” when everyone else calls the captains simply by name — as in Jack or Paul (or Zinger).

To be fair, though, a lot of the animus through the years is simply the result of both being fierce competitors and the fact
that Woods’s presence on tour during Mickelson’s career has probably prevented Mickelson from going down as one of the great
players of all time. Mickelson had won three majors and thirty-four tournaments in all at the end of 2008 — Hall of Fame numbers
by a wide margin — but probably would have at least doubled his wins in majors if Woods had gone to law school instead of
playing golf.

In one of his most candid moments, Mickelson revealed what he honestly thinks about having to compete with Woods coming down
the stretch in majors. Tied for the lead after 54 holes at the 2004 Masters, he was asked if it helped to have Woods nine
shots back and (for once) not in contention. Instead of giving the standard “I just play the golf course and worry about my
own game” answer, Mickelson smiled and said, “It doesn’t suck.”

Now, as the 2008 Open began, Woods and Mickelson — along with the wounded Adam Scott — were on the golf course at 8:06 A.M.
surrounded by so many people it appeared as if most of San Diego County was following their group. For golf fans, the feeling
about the two of them being paired together at the start of the U.S. Open was pretty much the same as Mickelson’s feeling
in Augusta four years earlier: It didn’t suck.

R
OCCO’S TEE TIME ON
T
HURSDAY MORNING
was 7:33. His pairing was a young-old one: One of the other players was twenty-two-year-old Michael Thompson, who had gotten
into the Open by finishing second in the U.S. Amateur Championship the previous summer. The other player was fifty-two-year-old
Brad Bryant, who had gained an exemption by beating Rocco’s hero Tom Watson down the stretch in the 2007 U.S. Senior Open.
Rocco was the only player in the group who had made it to the Open through qualifying.

He was up at 4:30 that morning after a restless night. “It was one of those deals where you’re trying so hard to relax and
stay calm that you can’t,” he said. “I was keyed up because I really thought I had a chance to do something, to play well.
I finally got up because I couldn’t sleep anymore. I wanted to get to the golf course and get started as soon as possible.
If they had put up lights for us to tee off, I’d have been ready to go.”

He and Cindi went through their preround routine: forty-five minutes on the table as soon as they woke up to get him loose,
then a search for bagels and coffee. That turned out to be easy: There was a Bruegger’s bagel shop near the hotel with a Starbucks
next door. After his bagels, Rocco bought a four-shot espresso before they headed to the golf course. “That’ll get you going
early in the morning,” he said, laughing.

He was in the clubhouse by 6:30, meeting Matt on the range to go through the warm-up ritual. He was teeing off on the 10th
tee, so he needed to give himself a few extra minutes, since players going off the back nine had been instructed to be ready
to be transported out to the 10th tee at least fifteen minutes prior to their tee time. Torrey Pines is not a golf course
that comes back to the clubhouse after nine holes, so players teeing off on number 10 had to be driven to the 10th tee.

The Open has only used two tees on Thursday and Friday since 2002. Until then, everyone went off the first tee, with tee times
as early as 6:30 A.M. and as late as 4:30 P.M. With the pace of play in golf slowing with each passing year, it became almost
impossible — even on two of the longest days of the year — to get all 156 players around 18 holes by sundown. The two-tee
start provided a lot more flexibility, with the latest tee time at Torrey Pines being 2:42 in the afternoon. That meant even
if the late groups needed six hours — not uncommon at the Open on a difficult golf course with fast greens — they would be
able to beat darkness.

Of course, getting players to the 10th tee can be an issue. In 2002, at Bethpage Black, the easiest route for transporting
players went through a Superfund cleanup zone, and the Department of Environmental Protection was willing to allow the vans
to go through the area only if everyone in every van stopped to sign a waiver sheet each day. The USGA opted for a different
route.

Each player at Torrey Pines was allowed to bring two people with him in the van when being driven to the 10th tee: his caddy
and one other person. In Rocco’s case it was Cindi, who was almost as nervous as he was as they made the drive out. Rocco
was wound up but ready. “If you don’t have some butterflies on the first day of a major, something is wrong,” he said. “I’d
have been worried if I didn’t have them.”

This was also the first major for Matt, since Rocco hadn’t played in the Masters. He was also keyed up, but he looked okay
to Rocco. “I was actually amazed at how calm he was,” Rocco said later. “I’ve seen caddies freak out in pressure situations.
Matt did great, not only that morning but the entire week.”

They arrived on the tee just as the group of K. J. Choi, Steve Stricker, and Jim Furyk was walking down the fairway. They
went through the usual pre-tee-time rituals: handshakes with everyone within a mile of the tee, the other players and caddies,
the starter, the rules official who would walk with the group, the standard-bearer who would carry the board showing their
score for 18 holes, and the scorekeeper.

“You can have a sore hand before you tee off if you aren’t careful,” Rocco joked.

At precisely 7:33, starter Jim Farrell began introducing the players as each stepped to the tee. At a lot of tournaments,
the starter will mention everything a player has ever done in his life back to and including what role he had in his high
school play. At the Open the introductions are simple. If someone has won the Open, he will be introduced as an Open champion:
“From Windermere, Florida, the 2000 and 2002 U.S. Open champion, Tiger Woods.”

Right after Thompson had hit his tee shot, Rocco heard McCarthy say simply, “From Naples, Florida, Rocco Mediate.”

It was time to play.

T
HE 10TH HOLE AT
T
ORREY
P
INES
is probably one of the easier par-fours on the golf course — a much easier starting hole than number one. Starting there,
as opposed to number one, on the first day with Open nerves rumbling and the weather still cool — in the 50s — was an advantage
for Rocco.

“All I wanted to do was get the ball in the fairway and not do something goofy to start the tournament,” he said. “When I
saw the ball come off the club and I knew it was going to be in the fairway, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. My thought
was ‘Okay, that’s over. Now let’s see what we can do out here.’ ”

He hit a six-iron into the middle of the green just as he had planned in his mind’s eye the night before and two-putted from
25 feet for a routine par. Everyone on earth would love to start an Open with a birdie. No one on earth is unhappy with a
par.

“All I wanted to do was get through the first few holes without any trouble,” Rocco said. “Once you get out on the golf course,
you almost forget for a while where you are. It’s just a round of golf. But you need a little time to settle yourself down.
That’s why the first few holes are so crucial. I probably talked the ears off poor Brad and the kid [Thompson] the first hour.
That’s how I relax myself.”

He got off to exactly the sort of start one wants at an Open. He parred the difficult par-three 11th hole, parred the 12th,
and then birdied the first par-five he played, the 13th. That was the first time he noticed his name on a leader board. At
one under par, with only a couple dozen players on the golf course, he was tied with a handful of players who had also gotten
off to solid starts.

Thirty-three minutes after Rocco’s group teed off, the Woods-Mickelson-Scott group went off number one. Just the fact that
Woods had gotten onto the golf course and to the first tee was a source of great relief to the USGA, to NBC, and to ESPN.

That said, Woods got off to a less than auspicious start. His opening tee shot on the 448-yard first hole sailed left into
deep rough. By the time he had hacked the ball out and gotten it onto the green, he had taken four swings. Two putts later
he walked off the green talking to himself after a double-bogey six.

Though some people instantly began murmuring about the knee, Woods’s being wild off the tee — especially early in a major
— was hardly a new phenomenon. If he’s had anything approaching an Achilles’ heel during his career it has been his driving.
One of the reasons he so often pulls off spectacular recovery shots is because he puts himself in position to need spectacular
recovery shots. At the 2003 British Open, he had started the tournament by actually losing a golf ball in the deep rough off
the first tee at Royal St. George’s. So a poor drive and a lousy opening hole were not new items on the Woods résumé.

As if to prove that this wasn’t going to be a Winged Foot redux, Woods proceeded to make three birdies on the front nine —
at the difficult par-four fourth hole and then back to back at the par-three eighth and the par-five ninth. Thus, he made
the turn at one under par, looking very much like the real Tiger Woods.

Rocco also made the turn at one under. He had bogeyed the 14th after his birdie at 13. The 14th was arguably the most interesting
hole on the golf course. It could play as long as 435 yards and as short as 269 yards, the USGA having agreed to Jones’s idea
to have a tee that appeared to be almost on top of the green to create the possibility of a drivable par four. The hole was
being played from the back tee on Thursday, though, and Rocco missed his first fairway, leading to the bogey. He bounced back
at the par-five 18th, laying up with his second shot and then pitching the ball to five feet. From there, he made the putt
to turn in 35 — one under par.

There had been some debate within the USGA about how to play the 18th hole. During the San Diego tournament it had always
played as a relatively short par-five, reachable in two as long as a player hit his drive in the fairway and made sure to
clear the pond that fronted the left side of the green.

“Traditionally we would have turned the hole into a long par-four for two reasons,” David Fay said. “The first is, we usually
like to play the Open on a par-70 golf course. [Pebble Beach, normally a par-72, had played to a par-71 in 2000 after the
USGA turned the par-five second hole into a par-four.] Second, we normally end the tournament with a long, difficult par-four,
which is what the hole would have become if we had converted it.