Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (28 page)

He caught a good lie. The rest became part of Open lore soon after. “I had 210 [to the] front and I hit a five-iron,” he said.
“I was actually aiming at the back bunker because I did not want to leave the ball short of that pin. It landed on the top
of the green, and I was surprised that it stopped. It somehow landed soft enough where it stopped.”

The ball actually hit on the front of the green, rolled all the way through the green, and stopped just on the fringe about
a foot from rolling into the back bunker.

Only Woods could hit a drive that far off-line and somehow end up looking at a putt for eagle. Granted, the putt was about
65 feet long, but at least, he thought, a two-putt would be good enough for birdie and get him turned around in the right
direction.

“Robert’s [Karlsson] ball, his mark, was off to the right-hand side and Stevie [Williams] and I read it and we were saying,
well, if you hit it just above there, if you die it on the high side of that, that should be about right. And I said, well,
if I just get the speed right, I should get inside three feet.

“And it went in.”

Ho-hum, a 65-foot eagle putt he was just hoping to get to within three feet after hitting an almost impossible shot to get
on the green. What’s more, it wasn’t a fluke putt by any stretch, one that happened to hit the hole going very fast. The ball
was never going anywhere but the middle of the cup. A perfect putt.

The roar that accompanied the putt dropping could be heard all over Torrey Pines and most of San Diego County. Woods, who
had been relatively unemotional for most of the week (perhaps not wanting to make any sudden movement that could jar his knee)
did one of his Tiger fist-pumps, a triple pump, in fact. “It’s all spontaneous,” he said later. “On that one, I went nuts.”

Back on the tee, Rocco certainly heard the roar. “I knew he’d made an eagle,” he said. “That definitely wasn’t a birdie roar;
it was an eagle roar.”

And so the 13th hole proved to be a turning point in the tournament for both Rocco and Tiger. It halted Rocco’s momentum and
it got Woods going. Rocco went 6-4-6 on the 13th, 14th, and 15th. Woods went 3-5-4, bogeying the 14th. That still represented
a four-shot swing. By the time Rocco reached the 16th tee, Woods had parred the 16th and was even par after 52 holes of play.
Rocco, who had been four under and five shots ahead of Woods a little more than an hour earlier, was now one shot ahead of
him and a shot behind Westwood, who was in the interview room at that moment, talking about what it would mean to him to win
a major championship.

For two days, Rocco had been doing one of two things off most tees: hitting a draw that found the fairway or the first cut
of rough or, on occasion, turning his draw into a hook and ending up in trouble on the left side. Standing on the 16th tee,
he felt a little bit frazzled for the first time all week. Two sixes will do that. So will leading by three one minute then
looking up the next and finding yourself in second place, with the third-place guy, who happens to be named Woods, just one
shot behind.

“It wasn’t like I was freaking out or anything,” Rocco said later. “But I didn’t have that sense of calm I’d had all week.
For the first time, I was a little upset with myself. I knew I had three holes to play and that I just needed to stay calm
and not do anything stupid the rest of the way and I’d be fine. Lee wasn’t going to win the golf tournament on Saturday. Neither
was Tiger, and for that matter, neither was I. I just needed to get a good tee shot, get the ball on the green, and get going
in the right direction again.”

He didn’t get what he needed. The 16th is a 225-yard par-three. It is long enough that Woods, during his warm-up, had practiced
hitting some cut five-woods, thinking that might be the club he would need later in the day at the 16th. There wasn’t quite
as much wind when he got there, and he had hit a four-iron. Rocco tried to hit a three-iron, but just as he had been doing
with his driver of late, he lost the ball left, landing in a green-side bunker. When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll. He
drew a difficult lie and was fortunate to get his shot from the bunker to about 15 feet. From there he two-putted for another
bogey, meaning he had played his last four holes in four over par.

He was now tied with Woods at even par for the championship. Westwood had a two-shot lead. When Woods hit another horrific
drive at 17, it looked as if Westwood would be the 54-hole leader. No one else had made any kind of move as the golf course
got tougher and tougher in the late afternoon and early evening. Geoff Ogilvy had managed to shoot 72 and was at one over
par through 54 holes. D. J. Trahan had shot 73 and was also at one over. Hunter Mahan, who had shot 69, the low score of the
day among the leaders, led a group of six who were at two over par.

Westwood was the only player in red numbers at that moment, with Woods, in trouble deep in the right rough on 17, and Rocco,
fuming as he walked off the 16th green, both at even par.

Woods hit an ordinary second shot, a seven-iron. The ball headed left, coming to a halt on a tongue of one of the bunkers
in relatively deep rough. He wasn’t that far from the hole, about 30 feet, he calculated later, but the ball was likely to
come out of the rough “hot” — moving fast — so he faced a difficult task to get the ball up and down for par. The ball was
on an uphill lie, and he had to stand awkwardly to keep from falling backward into the bunker. A tricky shot, to say the least.

“I hit it too hard,” Woods said. “It came out hot. And then one hop and it went in.”

Yup, went in. Even when he’s bad, Tiger Woods is good. If the ball hadn’t hit the flagstick it would have been at least —
according to Woods — eight feet past the hole. It might have been more. But it hit the flagstick dead-on and dropped straight
into the hole for a miraculous birdie. The roar was even louder than when the putt had dropped at 13, in part because the
ball’s going in was such a shock to everyone watching.

“When he makes a putt like the one he did at thirteen, it’s amazing, but you can see the ball rolling in the direction of
the hole, you know it’s a good putt, and then you start to think, ‘Hey, that might go in,’ ” Rocco said. “When he chips in,
you’re thinking, ‘Whoa, that’s moving fast;
oh my God, it went in.
Even for him, that was an amazing shot.”

Somehow, Rocco managed not to become unhinged by the roar echoing back at him and by the awful four holes he had just played.
He hit arguably his best drive of the day, and after Woods and Karlsson had left the green, he floated an eight-iron to about
10 feet. “I thought, ‘Wow, a makeable birdie putt; I remember what those look like,’ ” he said. “I also thought it would be
really nice to make one.”

He did just that, the ball dropping in the side of the hole, the speed close to perfect. His birdie wasn’t as dramatic as
Woods’s had been, but it was at least as important because it stopped the bleeding. He walked to the 18th tee one shot behind
Westwood and tied with Woods, who had found the fairway with a pretty cut shot off the tee.

When Woods reached his ball and checked his distance to the green and the hole, he almost smiled. Always meticulous in his
preround preparations, he had hit a number of five-wood shots during his warm-up, thinking he might need to hit a five-wood
off the tee at the 16th. The wind change had made the hole play shorter, but now he found himself 227 yards from the hole
— pretty close to the exact distance he thought he would hit his five-wood.

“I hit the same shot I had been practicing,” Woods said. “It carried to the middle of the green.”

The flagstick was up middle-left behind the water, so there was almost no chance to get close to it with a wood. Woods’s shot
landed on the front of the green and rolled hole high, about 30 feet to the right of the pin.

As he and Karlsson walked onto the green to a screaming ovation from the crowd, Westwood was leaving the interview tent figuring
that he would be tied for the lead with Woods at two under par or perhaps there would be three leaders if Rocco could also
birdie the 18th.

Naturally, Woods had other ideas. After he had looked the putt over from about fifteen different angles — no one in golf takes
longer looking over a putt than Woods, but the results often make the wait worthwhile — he gently rolled the putt across the
green. As the ball approached the cup and picked up some speed, it was apparent that it was going to be dead center. The only
question was whether the speed was right.

It was exactly right. The ball disappeared into the cup as the crowd noise got so loud that Rocco and Appleby, waiting in
the fairway, were practically knocked backward.

“I almost started laughing,” Rocco said later. “I mean, the guy is just ridiculous sometimes. He makes eagle from off the
planet on 13, chips it in at 17, and then makes another eagle at 18? Come on. That’s a joke.”

Woods’s reaction to the putt going in was different from his normal reaction to a monster putt. There was no fist-pumping,
just a big smile and a fist in the air for an instant. “I can’t tell you why,” he said. “At 13, I went nuts. At 18, I just
thought, ‘Sweet.’ ”

It was very sweet, because it jumped him over Westwood into the lead, the first time in three days he had been the outright
leader in the championship. It also put him in a place he had been thirteen times before — leading a major after 54 holes.
His record in those situations was decent: thirteen leads, thirteen titles. Everyone in golf was fully aware of that stat.

Back in the fairway, Rocco knew that Woods had the lead after his putt went in. He was a little more than 100 yards from the
flag, having laid up to comfortable wedge distance, hoping for a birdie-birdie finish. While Appleby was playing his third
shot, Rocco walked over to Mark Rolfing, who had been walking with the group all day for NBC, and asked him if a birdie would
put him in the final group Sunday with Woods.

“No,” Rolfing answered. “Westwood’s at two [under] already. Since he finished first, he goes last.”

“Damn,” Rocco said, disappointed.

Somewhat surprised, Rolfing reported Rocco’s reaction to Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller in the tower. None of them was accustomed
to someone actually wanting to play with Woods on the last day of a major.

As it turned out, it was a moot point. Rocco had to make sure he didn’t leave his wedge short and bring the water into play,
so his shot went about 15 feet past the flag. His putt slid to the right, and he tapped in for par and a one-over-par 72.
Given that only three players had broken 70 that day — led by Brandt Snedeker, who had made the cut on the number and had
shot 68 to move into a tie for 15th place — and only six others (Woods included) had shot 70, that was a solid round starting
the day in the last group, especially when compared with the scores of some other players who had started the day in serious
contention.

In addition to Appleby’s 78, Karlsson had shot 75, Davis Love had come in with a 76, and Ernie Els had produced a 74. Any
hopes of a miracle rally by Phil Mickelson had gone aglimmering when he made a nine on the 13th hole after being 80 yards
from the flag in two.

“I’ve made nine on that hole before,” Mickelson said afterward. “I was eight years old at the time, but I have made a nine
there.”

He limped home with a 76, leaving him at nine over par (12 shots behind Woods) in a tie for 47th place. He was behind — among
many others — Rocco’s amateur playing companion of the first two days, Michael Thompson, who had shot a very respectable 73
to finish the day at seven over par for the championship, tied for 35th place. Mickelson would be on the tee Sunday morning
at 9:20, meaning he would be finishing his round right around 1:30 — the last tee time of the championship — and exiting the
golf course just as Woods entered it. There was some sort of symmetry in that, though no one was exactly certain what that
symmetry was.

The pairings for the final day were now complete: Woods and Westwood would be the final group, with Rocco and Geoff Ogilvy
— who trailed Woods by four shots — right in front of them. D. J. Trahan and Hunter Mahan would go right before them, with
Robert Allenby and the rapidly rising youngster Camilo Villegas, both at two over, directly in front of them. Those who still
had an outside chance if they could somehow go low, very low, were Ernie Els, Mike Weir, and Sergio Garcia, who were all at
three over par.

“Catching Tiger from six shots back,” Els mused later when the subject came up. “Not something I would count on.”

Catching Woods at all on a Sunday at a major had never been done, so Els’s analysis, though simple, was almost certainly going
to be accurate.

A
S SOON AS HE SIGNED
his scorecard, Rocco headed for the flash area. On the last two days of the Open, the USGA asks the leaders to go through
two interviews: a relatively brief one in the flash area that is for TV crews who just want a quick sound-bite or two about
the round and for deadline-rushed writers. On a Saturday night (early deadlines), with the round ending after ten o’clock
in the east, quite a few people were in that situation.

Woods was just finishing his session in the flash area when Rocco walked in and saw him departing the podium.

“Excuse me, Mr. Woods, can I ask you a question?” he said, acting as if he were a reporter. Seeing Rocco, Woods smiled. “Are
you out of your mind with what you’re doing out there? Are you sick or something? I mean, come on!”

Woods laughed and high-fived Rocco as he departed. It was the first time the two men had been face-to-face all week.

Rocco was now very much in the spotlight. Woods had played the last six holes in four under par to take the lead and he had
hit extraordinary shots at 13, 17, and 18. His limp was becoming more pronounced with each passing day, and he admitted that
it was getting worse. He was clearly everyone’s lead story. Most of America’s columnists would be waxing eloquent about the
greatness of Tiger in the Sunday-morning papers.