Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (27 page)

“I’m waiting for the year when they finally get nailed,” David Fay said. “Tiger and Phil will be going to the third playoff
hole and they’ll both say, ‘It’s too dark; let’s come back in the morning.’ ”

Fay acts as if the Masters is the only tournament that times its finish to accommodate TV. If anything, the USGA is
more
accommodating. In 2002, NBC asked for a 3:40 tee time for the final group of Woods and Sergio Garcia, which meant a finish
at about 7:45 local time. That would leave about forty-five minutes of daylight if all went well. In spite of the fact that
there were thunderstorms in the forecast, the USGA didn’t move the starting times up. It rained, there was a forty-seven-minute
delay, and Woods and Garcia finished in virtual darkness while Fay and other USGA officials cowered behind the 18th green,
terrified that the two players would say it was too dark to finish.

“We blew that one,” Fay said. “We were lucky Tiger had a three-shot lead or he might have insisted on coming back Monday morning.
I told the NBC people after that one that we weren’t going to schedule any finishes after seven o’clock local time. We need
that extra time in case of weather.”

The weather forecast for San Diego on the weekend was identical to what it had been all week: a little bit of June gloom early,
but perfect sunshine and cool, comfortable temperatures by the time the leaders teed off.

Rocco had contended in majors in the past, but he had never been in the last group on a Saturday or a Sunday. That certainly
upped the ante a little bit. Even though he would have loved to be paired with Woods, Appleby was, he thought, a good pairing
for him.

“Stuey is one of the good guys on tour,” Rocco said. “Plus, he’s been in situations like this before, so he’s going to be
relatively calm about it. I just hope I don’t jump out of my skin before we tee off.”

He was fine, going through his morning ritual much later than usual: Bruegger’s, Starbucks, and then the short drive to the
golf course. He walked to the range with Cindi and Matt and went through his usual warm-up, although he couldn’t help but
notice there were only a few players on the practice tee, since most of the field was on the golf course by the time he arrived.
He walked onto the tee seconds after Woods and Karlsson had departed. “Funny thing about the week was I never laid eyes on
Tiger except on a television set, until Saturday after we finished playing. Our paths just never crossed.”

As he had done on Thursday and Friday, Rocco got off to a solid start. His tee shot on number one just bounced into the first
cut of rough, but he had a good lie and was able to get the ball on the green for a routine two-putt par. “Deep breath after
that one,” he said. “That’s a hard enough opening hole that, especially with nerves in play, you can easily make bogey — or
worse.”

Woods had started with a double bogey on Thursday and had been saved by a lucky bounce on Friday. On Saturday he hadn’t been
as lucky. His third straight wild drive on the first hole led to another double bogey. Appleby also bogeyed the hole and,
just that quickly, Rocco, Appleby, and Karlsson were tied for the lead, with Woods two shots back.

“You can’t get caught up in that stuff on Saturday,” Rocco said. “You’re always aware of the scoreboard, but in a way it’s
exactly like the first two days. You just work your way around the golf course trying to make pars, throw in a birdie if you
get a chance, and most of all avoid big numbers. You know if you can do that, at the end of the day, you’re going to be in
position to win on Sunday. Which is ultimately what you want.”

Still uncomfortable on the second tee, Rocco again hit three-wood and again positioned the ball perfectly. Just as he had
done on Friday, he hit a solid second shot and drained a putt — this time a 12-footer — for birdie to get to three under for
the tournament and take the lead.

The third hole was playing remarkably short with a front hole location, so short that Rocco hit a pitching wedge. “Remember,
this is a hole I hit a three-iron on during a practice round,” he said. “I’d hit six-iron and seven-iron the first two days.”

His shot landed squarely in the middle of the green, but he ran his first putt six feet past the hole and missed coming back.
It was his first three-putt of the week. “Disappointing,” he said. “But it was bound to happen on U.S. Open greens. Still,
I hated giving the shot back that quickly.”

He rebounded two holes later, again hitting a perfect cut off the tee — “People don’t think I can hit a cut, but I can when
I really need to,” he said — that led to a 10-foot birdie putt. The rest of the front nine was relatively routine. He missed
the green at the par-three eighth but pitched the ball to four feet and made the putt for par. His drive found the rough on
number nine, so he had to lay up.

“Even if I hit the fairway on that hole, I’m probably laying up,” he said. “The par-fives were really the only holes where
my lack of distance came into play. I think I hit one of them [the 18th, on Friday] in two. The longer guys, Tiger included,
of course, almost always had a shot to go for the green in two.”

Most players considered the front nine at Torrey Pines more difficult than the back nine — Rocco included. “The back has two
par-fives and a couple of short fours,” he said. “It should be the easier nine.”

After three days, Rocco had played the front nine in four under par. He had played the back nine through two days in one over
par. It was a pattern that would continue.

While Rocco was piecing together a steady front nine, players were going in all different directions around the golf course.
Woods had continued to struggle on the nine that he had annihilated the day before. He bogeyed the fourth hole before making
his first birdie of the day at the seventh. A three-putt par at the ninth frustrated him greatly and meant he made the turn
at two over par for the day and even par for the championship. At that moment, with Rocco a hole behind, Woods trailed by
three.

Up ahead, Lee Westwood was putting together an excellent round and had moved into second place, three shots behind Rocco.
The other contenders were falling back. The USGA had made certain the greens were stimping at 13 at the start of the day,
and the hole locations were a little bit tougher than they had been on the first two days. What’s more, Open nerves were now
very much in play.

The most surprising collapse of the day was Appleby’s. He was not a player who hadn’t been in the crucible of a major before.
Appleby was thirty-seven and had won eight times on tour. He had been part of a four-man playoff (won by Ernie Els) at the
British Open in 2002 and had played in the last group on Sunday at the Masters with Woods in 2007. He hadn’t fared well that
day — finishing in a tie for seventh — but that hardly made him abnormal. Playing with Rocco, the loose and easy motormouth,
should have been a far better pairing for him than playing with Woods.

But the day started poorly for Appleby, with a three-putt at the second and a four-putt at the fifth, and went downhill from
there. As focused as he was on his own play, Rocco couldn’t help but feel compassion for Appleby. “You know we all have days
like that,” he said. “It’s especially baffling when it happens after you’ve played well for two or three rounds and that much
more frustrating because it isn’t as if you can’t play. The day before, you
could
play. That’s the game, though; that’s why it’s the hardest game in the world.

“Here’s the thing about golf: If you go onto the golf course without confidence and without your best swing, you aren’t going
to play well. If you go onto the golf course with confidence and with your best swing, you might play well, but there’s no
guarantee.”

Appleby ended up shooting 79, which eliminated him from contention. After 36 holes in a golf tournament, a player who is 10
shots back or less still has a fighting chance to win (especially if his name is Woods), because two low rounds can get you
close to the leaders. After 54 holes, that number is usually cut in half. Once in a blue moon a player six shots back (see
Nick Faldo, Masters 1996) going into Sunday may win, but most of the time that involves a collapse by the leader (e.g., Greg
Norman) combined with few players ahead of him on the leader board. If someone is five or six shots back going into Sunday
and there are ten or twelve players ahead of him, he has virtually no chance to rally. After his 79, Appleby was eight shots
behind the leader and in a tie for 19th place. Game over.

The game was still very much on for Rocco, Woods, and Westwood. By the end of the day, they had created some separation between
themselves and the rest of the field.

For a brief moment, it appeared that Rocco might actually separate himself from everybody. He birdied the 10th hole to get
to four under par and at that moment led Westwood by three shots and Woods by four. Even then, he wasn’t focused on the margin
— too soon — but on trying to keep what was now a very good round — he was two under par for the day — rolling in the right
direction.

“Part of you is thinking, ‘Hey, just keep this going and if you can get it into the house at four under or if you somehow
can get it to five with two par-fives still to play, you’re going to be in great shape,’ ” he said. “But there’s this little
tiny voice in there that reminds you this is the Open and Tiger’s still out there and it isn’t going to be that easy. That’s
just not the way golf is.”

Sure enough, it was a par-five that tripped him up and put his round into reverse. His drive at the 13th hole found the rough,
not a big deal in itself, since he was probably going to lay up anyway. He laid up well enough, but his wedge wasn’t especially
good, leaving him with a downhill 25-foot putt.

“It was one of those you aren’t trying to make, you’re just trying to get it close: have a tap-in par and get out of there,”
Rocco said. “But it was one of those putts where if I just breathed on it, I wasn’t going to be able to stop it.”

The putt rolled five feet past the hole and the par putt slid just low for an ugly bogey. There are few things golfers hate
more than a six on their scorecard. Rocco had avoided making one for 48 holes.

“It’s annoying, but you know it’s going to happen,” he said. “I mean, Tiger started his tournament with a six on a par-four
and he was still doing okay. I needed to shake it off. Unfortunately, I didn’t.”

He parred the 14th hole, but then came the par-four 478-yard 15th. “I hit two bad shots and got two bad lies there,” he said
later. “To be honest, I probably made a pretty good six.”

Though there really is no such thing as a pretty good six, this was something close to it. His drive went left into a hole
in the rough and he had to gouge the ball out. Still in deep rough, he came up short of the green with his third shot. From
there, he spun a pretty good wedge to about 15 feet and two-putted.

That made two sixes in three holes after none in 48. In three holes and 30 minutes, Rocco had gone from leading the championship
by three shots to trailing Lee Westwood, who had just finished with a one-under-par 70 to post 211 — two under par — for 54
holes.

Rocco was tied with Woods, who, as he so often does, had turned what looked like an awful day into a good one with one spectacular
hole. It was the 13th, the same hole that had started the trouble for Rocco. It wasn’t surprising to see Woods turn his day
around on a par-five, because par-fives are one of his greatest strengths. There aren’t very many that he can’t reach in two,
and when he doesn’t get on the green he is almost always somewhere around the green, where his superb short game frequently
leads to an up-and-down birdie.

Until that point, his play on the par-fives for the week had been ordinary, actually below ordinary for him. As he walked
onto the 13th tee on Saturday afternoon, he had played seven par-fives in the tournament and was four under par, pretty good
by most standards, not so hot for Woods. By comparison, after his bogey on 13 a few minutes after Woods played the hole, Rocco
would be two under par on the par-fives. Given that he had only had one chance to even think about going for a green in two,
this was a small margin.

It all changed for Woods beginning on the 13th, a hole he had eagled on Friday to turn his round in the right direction after
bogeying two of his first three holes. He was three over par for the day and one over for the championship when he reached
13, and he needed to make something happen.

Naturally, he did.

Just as naturally, he did it in a way only he could possibly even think about. His drive on 13 was way right, another off-line
tee shot in a day that was full of them.

“When I was warming up, I didn’t hit anything that was particularly crisp or clean,” he said later. “Even warming up, I had
a two-way miss going that I was trying to clean up where at least I just had a one-way miss, you know, miss it one way, left
or right. I went on the golf course and had a little bit of a two-way miss, but not as bad as on the range.”

This miss was well to the right, but as often happens with Woods, he caught a break. The ball landed behind a concession stand.
Since a concession stand is an immovable object but not a natural hazard like a tree, he was entitled to a drop. After looking
over his options left or right of the concession stand, he opted to drop on the left.

“My tee shot was a terrible shot,” he said, laughing. “When I looked to the right of the concession stand [which he didn’t
know was a concession stand until told later in the interview room], the grass wasn’t all that great. On top of that, I would
have had to try and carry that barranca on the right-hand side. If I didn’t get a good enough lie, I didn’t know if I could
carry that.

“So I went left. And if I happened to draw a poor lie there, at least I know I could wedge out to the fairway, bottom of the
hill, and try and make par and move on. If I happened to catch a good lie, then I could probably get to the green and maybe
steal a four out of there.”