Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (24 page)

“Initially that was the plan. But the more we thought about it, the more we all liked the idea of creating a true risk-reward
finishing hole. If a player needed a birdie at 18, he would have a decision to make on his second shot if he found the fairway.
And, even though the green was reachable, with the pond and the length of the hole, it wasn’t one of those par-fives where
a good drive means you’re hitting six-iron on your second shot.”

The hole played at 573 yards, which by today’s standards isn’t that long. In fact, it was the shortest of the three par-fives
on the golf course: The 9th was 612 yards long and the 13th was 614. Once upon a time, a 600-yard hole was an anomaly and
considered completely unreachable in two shots. That had changed as equipment — clubs and golf balls — improved through the
years. In 1997, when the Open had been played at Congressional Country Club, no player in the field had attempted to reach
the 602-yard ninth hole in two. Eight years later, when the Booz-Allen Classic was played at Congressional, players were using
irons for their second shots to the hole.

Rocco has never been one of the longer players on tour. When he was younger he would rank somewhere between 80th and 100th
in driving distance on the tour. Nowadays, he is never in the top 100 — even though he hits the ball about 25 to 30 yards
farther off the tee now than when he first came on tour.

“When I was first out here I probably averaged 260 to 265 off the tee, and I was pretty average in length, usually in the
top 100. Now I hit it about 285 typically, and I’m nowhere close to the top 100. [In 2008, his average drive was 278.6 yards,
which ranked 170th on the tour.] If I was still hitting it the same length as I hit it when I first came out, I wouldn’t be
in the top 100 on the
ladies
tour. That’s how much it’s changed.”

Rocco’s strength is in his accuracy off the tee. In ’08, even though he didn’t play especially well in the fall, he finished
86th in driving accuracy. A year earlier, he was 38th. In 2003, before he hurt his back again, he had finished 21st on the
tour in driving accuracy.

The 18th was anything but an automatic two-shot hole for him. “Only if I hit a perfect drive,” he said. “Even then, it was
a three-wood for me and there was some risk in the shot.”

As it turned out, the 18th was the one hole on the golf course where Rocco’s inability to bomb the ball like some others —
Woods included — would turn out to be critical. For the week, Woods would average just over 320 yards per drive — 40 yards
more than Rocco. But on Thursday, Rocco wasn’t concerned with that. He was more than happy to lay up at 18, hit his wedge
close, and make his birdie. Having turned in 35 — one under, thanks to the USGA’s decision to make 18 a par-five — he was
feeling very comfortable with his game and with the way his first round was going.

Unlike Woods, he found the fairway at number one and parred the hole. After a par at number two, he walked onto the tee at
the third hole and was stunned by what he saw. The hole is 195 yards long, but since it is close to the water, how it plays
depends on the direction of the wind.

“When Lee and I played it on Sunday, I hit a three-iron to get on the green,” Rocco said. “They had moved the tee up a little
bit, but the wind was with us. Matt and I had to decide between six-and seven-iron.”

They finally decided on the six, and that turned out to be the right decision. “For a second I thought I’d holed it,” Rocco
said. “It rolled just past the hole.” That shot led to a tap-in birdie. He then birdied the fourth, and as he walked off the
green, it struck him that he was — at that moment — leading the championship.

“It wasn’t yet noon on the first day,” he said. “Half the guys weren’t even on the golf course. Still, it was kind of a cool
feeling. It’s the kind of thing you’d sort of like to take a picture of. I mean, how often can you say you’re leading the
U.S. Open? I certainly don’t think I’d ever done it before — even for a hole.”

He only had one hiccup over the last five holes. At number seven, a hole he would struggle with all week, his drive found
a bunker down the left-hand side of the fairway. “The hole really sets up best if you cut the ball around the dogleg,” he
said. “I can play a cut sometimes. At the fifth I cut the ball off the tee all week. But I really thought if I started the
ball out right with my draw, I could keep it on the fairway. Problem was, instead of hitting a draw, I kept hitting hooks.
That’s what got me into trouble.”

He had to lay up out of the bunker and missed a 10-footer for par. That dropped him to two-under. He parred the eighth and
the ninth — there was no chance to go for the green at nine — and was very happy to sign for a two-under-par 69.

He was also exhausted. “Whether you’re playing well or not, 18 holes of Open golf is draining,” he said. “There’s pressure
on every shot, not just because it’s the Open but because there’s so little margin for error. Sometimes you don’t realize
how hard you’re grinding until the round is over and you feel like you want to just go curl up somewhere and sleep for about
ten hours.”

Of course he couldn’t do that. It was early in the day, and the USGA was planning on bringing all of the Big Three into the
massive interview room once they finished, so they didn’t want to back up traffic in there. Players who play well on Thursday
and Friday but aren’t considered interview room–worthy are taken to what is known as the “flash area,” behind the 18th green.
There is a small podium, and TV cameras can be comfortably set up a few yards from the player. Most players would much rather
go to the flash area than the interview room, which is usually far enough from the clubhouse that one needs to be taken there
in a cart. What’s more, with a large media contingent in the interview room, there are more questions and the sessions last
longer.

At Torrey Pines the media tent was next to the second fair-way of the north course, which meant a cart ride for those asked
to go there to talk. Even so, Rocco would have been fine going to the interview room. He’s one of those rare players who enjoys
the give-and-take with the media. “I know they like me because I tend to tell them the truth,” he said. “And I like talking,
so why wouldn’t I enjoy it?”

He was perfectly happy to go to the flash area, especially since he was tired. Someone asked if he liked being under the radar.
“I’ve been under the radar my whole career,” he answered, laughing.

He was asked a total of seven questions — the last one, naturally, was about Woods and how tough it might be to come back
after such a long layoff.

“I’ve been injured over the years and come back, but not obviously so that everyone knew or made it a big deal. Everyone is
watching him, everything he does is news, and he is the best player that ever walked on grass.

“So yeah, it’s got to be really hard, but he’s — look, everyone has asked me and my friends, Is he still the favorite? Absolutely
he’s still the favorite. No disrespect to anyone else, but he’s still the favorite. He’s the best player in the world. He
has some rust going maybe, but if he shoots around par, even par, one-under, one-over, he’ll be very happy.”

At that moment, Woods was playing the 17th hole and he wasn’t especially happy. He had hit another wild drive, this one at
the 14th hole, and it had led to his second double bogey of the day. That put him back to one over par for the tournament.
When he three-putted the 18th for par, he finished the round at one over par, shooting 72. By then, though, he was far more
sanguine than he had been walking off the 14th green.

“In all, I’m happy with where I am,” Woods said. “I felt okay out there, and even though I made a couple mistakes, I’m still
in a good place, just a few shots back. I can’t imagine anyone is going to go very low on this golf course.”

That analysis would prove correct. At the end of the day, the leaders — as is often the case at the Open — were a couple of
unknowns. One was Justin Hicks, who had been the only other player to make birdie on the first playoff hole along with Rocco
ten days earlier in Columbus. He had shot 68. Hicks was thirty-three, a player who had conditional status on the Nationwide
Tour and had made a little more than $8,000 coming into the Open. The other leader was Kevin Streelman, a twenty-nine-year-old
PGA Tour rookie who had played solidly the first half of the year and would go on to a superb second half, making more than
$1 million for the year, finishing 74th on the money list.

No one thought that either Hicks or Streelman was going to be a serious threat to win the Open. In fact, you probably could
have gotten better odds that night on one or both missing the cut than on either of them winning the championship. A first-day
leader missing a cut is rare in majors but not unheard of: In 1993, Joey Sindelar led the Open at Baltusrol on Thursday and
didn’t play the weekend. Six years later at the British Open, Rod Pampling did the same thing.

The list of players people thought might be in contention late on Sunday began with the four players at 69: Geoff Ogilvy,
the 2006 Open champion; Stuart Appleby, an accomplished player who had come close to winning majors in the past; Eric Axley,
a past winner on tour but still considered a long shot; and Rocco — also considered a long shot but someone the media was
hoping to see continue to play well because he was, they all agreed, a good story and a great talker.

There were five players at 70 — most notably two-time Open champion Ernie Els and Lee Westwood, one of Europe’s best Ryder
Cup players, who had flirted with winning major championships in the past. That made eleven players under par, just about
right for the first round as far as the USGA was concerned.

Seven players were at even par 71, among them Mickelson and Vijay Singh. Woods was in a group of twelve players at 72, and
Adam Scott had shot 73. It was exactly the kind of bunched-up leader board one would expect at the Open.

Woods had accomplished two goals on Thursday: He’d gotten through the round without falling or doing any more damage to his
knee (as far as anyone knew), and he had done what all great players try to do on Thursday at a major: not lose the tournament.
One of golf’s oldest sayings is that you can’t win a tournament on Thursday but you can certainly lose it. Sitting just four
shots behind the leaders — three behind those he would have considered serious threats — Woods had every reason to sleep well
on Thursday night, especially since he didn’t have to be on the first tee the next afternoon until 1:36. This was the USGA’s
dream: Woods and Mickelson teeing off together late afternoon on the East Coast, their round stretching well into prime time
— it would be well after nine o’clock in the east before they finished — with both still in contention

Rocco’s round was also scheduled to start relatively late — at 1:03 Pacific time. He felt great about the way he had played
on the first day but knew from experience that a good first round, even a great first round, was a long way from being in
contention on Sunday afternoon.

“I slept much better that night,” he said. “What the first day told me was that I hadn’t been fooling myself when I thought
I could play well on the golf course. I didn’t want to get too excited — it was much too soon for that. I told myself, ‘Keep
having fun and you’ll be fine.’ ”

He smiled. “Of course, that’s a lot easier said than done — especially at the Open.”

T
HE
J
UNE GLOOM THE
USGA had been concerned about made an appearance on Friday morning. It wasn’t a heavy fog, the kind that made it impossible
to play, but it was enough to make the morning temperatures a little warmer and the wind a little less brisk.

“I had thought playing in the afternoon Friday we’d get some wind and a very fast-running golf course,” Rocco said. “But the
fog coming in made everything softer. You don’t really expect relatively soft greens playing in the afternoon on Friday at
the Open, but that’s what we got.”

Players will always tell you they prefer playing in the morning than in the afternoon. Most golfers are by nature morning
people, accustomed to getting out of bed early to get to the golf course either to beat summer heat or the crowds or to play
and then get on to whatever else is on their calendar for a given day. And there is usually less wind and the greens are more
pristine — fewer spike marks, since many players on tour still wear metal spikes — earlier in the day than later.

“More important than that, when you play in the morning you have less time to think,” Rocco said. “That’s a bigger factor
on a weekend when you’re in contention, but it’s true on Thursday and Friday too.”

On tour, everyone plays early one day and late one day during the first 36 holes of a tournament. The same is true at an Open,
only more so because the USGA stretches the tee times out a little more than other tournaments do to take into account the
difficulty of the golf course. Most PGA Tour events have a nine-minute gap between threesomes, occasionally going to ten.
The USGA separates each Open group by eleven minutes — meaning the last tee time of the day is about an hour later than at
most events.

That’s why Rocco, even though he and Thompson and Bryant were in the fourth group of the afternoon wave of players, didn’t
tee off until 1:03 P.M. This time they played the front nine first. Once again, Rocco was very happy to find the fairway with
his opening drive and perfectly satisfied when his five-iron landed 30 feet from the hole on the putting surface.

But he got a little jumpy on his birdie putt and watched helplessly as his ball ran a good 12 feet past the cup. “I forgot
that when you’re putting toward the water, which I was, you have to figure the ball is going to pick up speed even if it’s
not straight downhill,” he said. “I just kind of mind-blocked for a second.”

He took his time with the par putt and managed to sneak into the right side of the hole for a deep-sigh-of-relief par.