The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (25 page)

It was clear he was enjoying the challenge. Far from getting upset at poor shots, he was making a conscious effort to stay calm, accept the situation, and remain positive. It made me think of how much Tiger loved watching the video of the Navy SEALs’ “Hell Week,” when recruits are forced to endure being cold, hungry, wet, and sleep-deprived for five days and five nights or drop out of the program. It seemed to me that Tiger was framing his ordeal coming into the U.S. Open as his own Hell Week, reveling in accomplishing the mission. Also helping his perspective was that for one of the few times in his career, he wasn’t facing crazy expectations. Because he was injured, the pressure to win was largely off, and he basically had a free run. It all gave him the perfect attitude—highly motivated but with little to lose.

On Sunday we drove back down Interstate 5 to Torrey Pines, where Tiger checked into a second-floor suite at the Lodge, adjacent to the course. Steve was waiting, and the three of us went to the par-5 ninth hole, which was the closest to the hotel, to start a practice round. Tiger promptly hooked his first drive over a boundary fence on the left, out-of-bounds. He turned to Steve, who hadn’t seen him play since the Masters, and said in a deadpan voice, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got a new miss.” Steve and I laughed at Tiger’s gallows humor, and the mood remained positive.

After his bad first tee shot, Tiger played nine pretty good holes. One thing I noticed was that he was driving the ball farther than normal. His leg pain wasn’t slowing down his clubhead speed. And without the strength and stability in his lower body to “hold off” the clubhead from releasing, Tiger with his driver was hitting a lot of draws, which produce more run and overall distance than more controlled fades. For the week of competition, Tiger averaged 321 yards off the tee, second longest in the entire field.

It’s ironic because despite all that Tiger had to deal with to play at Torrey, the week was actually one of the easiest I ever had as Tiger’s coach. His more patient attitude, the fact that he could hit so few practice balls, and the lessened pressure on Tiger to perform all reduced both my workload and my stress. I also stayed at a hotel about a mile away, which kept me apart from the intense effort in the evenings to rehab Tiger’s leg. As much as I was part of helping Tiger at Torrey, I was also able to relax and observe his achievement from an enjoyable distance.

Tiger’s most important helper for the championship was Keith Kleven. For all his expertise and discipline, Keith is a soft, sensitive guy, kindhearted and very devoted to Tiger. Tiger appreciated Keith’s work and always felt that a visit to his clinic in Las Vegas was time well spent. Of course, Tiger didn’t always show it, and when Keith felt a cold shoulder, his reaction was to worry about what he’d done wrong, to the point that he’d sometimes blurt out to Tiger, “Are you mad at me?” Tiger didn’t have the time or the inclination to soothe Keith, which just made Keith more nervous.

Certainly Keith had been in some high-stress situations in his career, especially training boxers for big fights, but nothing like Torrey. He was more responsible for Tiger’s performance than he’d ever been, and it was a lot to ask of a guy in his 60s. “It was probably the toughest week I’ve ever had in any sport, and the most relieved I’ve ever felt about anything when it was finally over,” Keith would tell
Golf Digest
.

At Torrey Pines, Keith spent more time with Tiger than Steve did. He would get up early to supervise Tiger’s morning workout, which was intended to retain his leg strength, and follow that with long sessions of manual manipulation and icing designed to get the swelling out of the knee and block the pain. After Tiger played his round, he’d come back to his room nearly spent from the increasing pain, and Keith would work on him again in multiple sessions between dinner and midnight. “I broke it, you fix it” was Tiger’s refrain with Keith, as if he were a machine. But Keith knew that with each fix Tiger’s condition was deteriorating. The trauma from the stress fractures was getting worse, causing swelling and stiffness, so that Keith’s skills were in a race against the quickly diminishing strength and rapidly escalating pain in Tiger’s leg. It wasn’t a race he was confident he would win.

“That knee’s getting weaker every day,” Keith told me early in the week. “It’s getting harder to get that swelling out. He’s hurting more and more. I don’t know.”

“Keith, you’re doing great,” I told him, trying to give him a boost. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Complicating the matter was that Tiger wouldn’t take any strong painkillers, as he had at the Masters. Keith told me that to avoid his putting touch being affected, Tiger was taking only Motrin or Advil at Torrey Pines. Somehow, though, what Keith was doing was working, because, in his practice rounds at least, Tiger was limping less. While all the other players knew that Tiger was coming back from surgery, none knew about his ACL or that he had stress fractures and was fighting pain. They seemed to figure that Tiger’s nine-hole practice rounds were a precautionary measure and that he wasn’t significantly impaired.

Because he was hitting so few practice balls and was skipping any post-round sessions, Tiger wanted me to discuss with him in depth what he needed to do in his swing, so each evening we talked on the phone for about 20 minutes. We reviewed basics and specifics, in particular combating his new tendency to hook because of his less dynamic lower body. I could tell the next morning how well he’d been listening by the way he’d very deliberately execute what we’d talked about. And all week he hit the ball superbly in his warm-ups. He hardly missed a shot, working quietly, calmly, and methodically through the bag, his concentration at its highest. At Torrey Pines, more than anywhere else, Tiger was the model student.

In the more than a week that Tiger was at Torrey Pines, I never once saw him limp or wince in pain on the practice tee. This would lead some people to surmise that Tiger was being overly dramatic or even faking by grimacing on the course. But I think his lack of pain early in the day was a tribute to Keith’s work. As the hours went by, and Tiger’s leg began to tire, the discomfort would increase. Mostly it was blunted by adrenaline, but at certain moments or with certain shots, pain flashed through Tiger’s system and left him in the same pose I’d first seen in his kitchen.

Besides pain, Tiger’s biggest problem at Torrey Pines was his opening tee shot. The first hole was a tough uphill par 4 of 448 yards, but it didn’t have an out-of-bounds or any hazards. Yet in four rounds, Tiger hit three awful 3-woods from its tee, leading unbelievably to three double bogeys. Apart from the psychological blow of beginning the day so poorly, producing three double bogeys over 72 holes is usually enough to preclude a victory.

Because Tiger had hit the ball so well in his warm-ups, I knew the issue wasn’t his injury or his swing mechanics. It went back to a growing difficulty he was having with the opening shot of the day—in plain terms, first-tee jitters. When he violently hooked his first tee shot 40 yards left of the fairway on Thursday and made a double, my thought walking to the second tee was,
Well, this could be a short week
.

But Tiger steadied and battled back. Steve told me later that all week, especially when things got tough on the course, Tiger would repeat a refrain that became an all-purpose saying between them. “Stevie, I don’t give a shit what you say, I’m going to win this tournament.” He said it early in the round on Thursday, and they’d laughed and Tiger had played better. Though he had another double bogey on the fourteenth hole, in the first round in which he’d walked 18 holes since the Masters, Tiger shot a respectable 72.

It wasn’t what he wanted, but he didn’t show any disappointment when he came off the course. When he saw me, he was direct. “My knee is killing me,” he said. “We’re not practicing. I’ve got to go have Keith work on me. I’ll talk to you tonight.”

Tiger started his second round on the back nine, and promptly bogeyed the tenth hole. He was three over for the championship when he made the turn, but birdied the first hole and came home with a five-under-par 30 for a 68 that put him among the leaders. Even though he knew bad shots lurked because of the instability in his leg, he was finding a way to get around the course. That’s when I thought,
He’s really going to do this
.

Maybe I would have felt differently if I’d been in Tiger’s suite late at night as Keith desperately tried to revitalize that leg. Steve told me that at one point, with Tiger clearly in pain, Mark Steinberg yelled, “Keith, you’ve got to do something!” nearly bringing Keith to tears. The next morning, Tiger laughed as he re-created the scene. “I had to be the referee,” he said. “Here I am with my leg falling apart, and I’ve got to be the calm one. I’m going to make it. But I don’t know if Keith is going to make it.” The retelling brought some needed levity to an otherwise grim situation. It also brought more drama to the special achievement Tiger was trying to pull off, which further fed his motivation.

Tiger began his third round on Saturday with a pushed 3-wood into deep rough and another double bogey on the first hole. But he stayed in a good place mentally and rebounded on the back nine by making monster eagle putts on the par-5 thirteenth and the eighteenth, and pitching in from the rough for a miracle birdie on the seventeenth. His 70 gave him a one-stroke lead over second-place Lee Westwood. Even though he was making many of the mistakes that lose tournaments, he was also producing the miracles that win them.

On Sunday, Tiger was paired with Westwood and primed to put together a patented closing round in a major. But incredibly, he again hooked his opening 3-wood into the trees and made another double bogey. He also bogeyed the second hole to fall three strokes behind. Walking along, I started to think that it was a bridge too far.

But his resilience at Torrey was amazing. He played one under the rest of the way. I again thought he’d blown it when he pulled his second shot on thirteen into a hazard and made a bogey 6 on a birdie hole. He also bogeyed the fifteenth. But he was the only one of the contenders to make a birdie on the eighteenth, and it was an all-timer.

He needed it to tie Rocco Mediate, who’d already finished. Tiger pulled his drive slightly into a fairway bunker. Having to play short of the pond in front of the green, he pushed his second into the rough, about 100 yards from the hole. From there, Steve made a courageous call under the greatest pressure, convincing Tiger to hit a 60-degree wedge rather than the 56-degree wedge he’d wanted to use. Tiger was originally going to try to land the ball short of the green and have it bounce toward the hole, but Steve felt the slope in front of the putting surface would kick the ball too far left. He made a case for Tiger taking the higher-lofted club and hitting it an extra 20 yards by swinging hard, in the process creating enough spin to fly the ball all the way to the pin and stop it. Tiger pulled the shot off, leaving himself a 12-footer for birdie.

There will always be mystery as to what makes Tiger Woods so amazing under pressure. I still don’t exactly know, and I wonder if he does. But what was revealed in his thought process before that putt was not a hard “this ball can only go in” mind-set, but rather a healthy, almost Zen, fatalism. Some of it might have had to do with Torrey Pines greens, which are notoriously bumpy, especially late in the day in the final round of a tournament. But I found it amazing that for a person who was so bent on having control, Tiger instinctively knew when he had a better chance of success by surrendering.

“You can’t control the bounces,” Tiger said he later told himself. “All you can control is making a pure stroke. Go ahead and release the blade, and just make a pure stroke. If it bounces off line, so be it, you lose the U.S. Open. If it goes in, that’s even better.” When that putt went in, because of all that Tiger had sacrificed to get to that moment and all that winning a major meant to him, it immediately went down as one of the most clutch putts in history.

Because so many people were following Tiger on Sunday, it got almost impossible to see, so on the front nine I went into the Buick corporate tent and watched the rest of the round on a big-screen television while sitting at a table. As Tiger stood over his putt on the last green, I leaned back on my stool and saw a penny on the floor. I thought about what my mom always said, “Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck.” I bent over and picked it up, and he made that putt. The next day, during the 18-hole playoff, I would keep that penny in my pocket.

Sunday night, Tiger seemed more worried than elated. He’d mentally geared up for his leg to survive 72 holes, but now he had to go at least 18 more, and it meant digging even deeper than he’d anticipated. He knew Rocco was going to be steady, but his biggest concern was himself. He was focused and responsive during our swing discussion, which was brief as we emphasized the anti-hook keys that had proved most reliable during the week. Keith worked longer than ever in his evening and morning sessions before the playoff, and Tiger came out ready. He warmed up well, and managed to put his 3-wood into the fairway on the first hole and make a par. He led by three after nine holes. But he made two bogeys early in the back nine, and when Rocco rallied with a couple of birdies, Tiger suddenly trailed by one with three to play. As I walked along the fairway, somehow I wasn’t worried about how devastating a loss would be. I just kept telling myself,
He’s Tiger Woods. He’ll figure something out
.

He still trailed by one on the eighteenth. Taking every precaution we talked about against a hook, he faded his drive into the fairway and, after Rocco laid up, faded his 5-wood onto the green. Tiger still had to get down in two from 50 feet, and he ran the first putt four feet past but made the slider for the tying birdie. One hole later, making a par to Rocco’s bogey, he’d done it.

For a long moment, it didn’t seem real that it was over and Tiger had actually won. I waited until after the trophy presentation on the eighteenth green to congratulate him. Words seemed inadequate, and all I could manage was, “Great job, bud. Incredible win. The most amazing win there has ever been.” There was too much commotion for Tiger to be reflective, and he quickly answered, “Thanks for your help.”