Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (31 page)

Westwood had finally ended his slide at the 14th hole by driving the green and making a two-putt birdie to get back to even
par. Woods had actually been hurt on the 14th by his length off the tee.

Rocco and Westwood had each hit a three-wood to try to reach the green; Woods was actually between clubs. As he explained
at great length later — Woods loves to go into detail when describing clubbing decisions — he wasn’t sure whether a three-wood
or a five-wood was the correct shot.

“I couldn’t have had a worse number [yardage],” Woods said. “It was a five-wood front number for me, but it was into the wind.
I can’t get a five-wood there. Now, if I lean on a five-wood, which means it brings the left bunker into play, I don’t know
if I can get it all the way to that left bunker. If I bail right, I have absolutely no pitch. If I hit a cut three-wood, I
have a choke-down three-wood and hit a cut. That’s not exactly an easy shot. If I overcut, I’m in the right bunker with virtually
no shot. If that tee would have been on the back part of the tee, I could have hit a three-wood with no problem. But it was
on the front part, and I was perfectly caught between clubs. I said all right, no big deal, I can still make three laying
up. I laid up to a good number, had a little wedge, and hit it a little hard and ended up making par.”

For those scoring at home, that’s 179 words to describe one decision on one shot. The only thing that took longer was the
conversation between Woods and Williams before deciding to lay up.

Contrast that with the exchange when the condition of his knee (a fairly important issue) was brought up:

Q: You’ve been pretty forthcoming about the knee thing. So let me throw this one at you: Is what you are experiencing right
now residual soreness from the surgery or is this the way it is going to be forever and ever?

A: It’s different.

Of course that’s Woods. He will go into chapter and verse about anything relating directly to his golf game. Stray from that
even a little, and you will either get a two-word answer or a lengthy answer that means nothing. He is not only a master on
the golf course, he is a master of the sound-bite non-answer.

As Woods and Westwood stood on the 15th tee, Rocco again had the lead. Woods trailed by one, Westwood by two. But now it was
Rocco’s turn to be in trouble. After the interminable wait, he had hooked his tee shot on 15 into deep rough on the left.
From there, he couldn’t reach the green, and his pitch went 10 feet past the hole. A two-putt bogey dropped him back into
a tie with Woods and left him just a little bit angry as he headed for the 16th tee.

“I don’t like to make excuses,” he said. “But that wait definitely hurt me.”

Interestingly, in the “official annual” that the USGA puts out after each year’s Open, there is absolutely no mention of Mahan’s
problem or Rocco’s wait. It simply reports that he hooked his drive at the 15th, leading to a bogey.

Woods didn’t have to wait on the 15th, but his tee shot wasn’t much better than Rocco’s. He was also in the rough, and his
second shot was still in the rough. He hit a reasonably good pitch to 10 feet but missed the putt.

“At that point,” Woods said later, “it looked like I was shooting myself out of the tournament.”

He was far from out of it, but he was out of the lead with three holes to play. Rocco, having just parred 16, led by one over
both Woods and Westwood. Woods and Westwood also parred 16. Rocco’s lead was one, with two holes to play.

Back in Greensburg, Tony Mediate simply couldn’t sit still. He paced in and out of the family room while Donna sat patiently
and watched every shot. “He kept up a running commentary,” she said later. “It was ‘Oh, no, that’s too long a putt,’ or ‘I
hope he puts this one in the fairway.’ ”

“I wasn’t exactly Johnny Miller,” Tony said, laughing.

It was with Rocco on 17 that Miller got himself into trouble. Rocco hit an almost perfect drive that almost split the fairway
in half. He then hit a gorgeous floating seven-iron that checked up about 10 feet behind the hole, giving him a solid look
at a birdie putt that would give him a two-shot lead. With 18 being a par-five that Woods and Westwood could reach in two
(Rocco, not so much), a two-shot cushion would be almost immeasurably important.

It was after seeing Rocco’s second shot that Miller blurted out his soon to be infamous line about Rocco looking more like
Tiger’s pool boy than a U.S. Open champion.

Miller is so famous for saying things that get him into trouble that the Golf Channel actually put together a thirty-minute
show dedicated to his ten most outrageous comments. In truth, this one was pretty innocent. He was simply expressing amazement
that on the 71st hole of the U.S. Open, the 158th-ranked player in the world, a forty-five-year-old with a perpetually sore
back, was standing toe-to-toe with Woods and clearly not cracking under the pressure.

“That’s exactly the way I took it,” Rocco said later. “When I heard him say it on the tape, I laughed. I know he didn’t mean
anything by it other than expressing amazement that I was playing so well. Hell, I was pretty amazed by it myself.”

Rocco looked over the birdie putt at 17 with a little more care than usual. He read it as having a slight left-to-right break,
a putt that if he got it rolling with any speed at all in the direction of the hole would feed down into the cup.

“I hit that putt exactly the way I wanted to hit it,” he said. “It could not have felt better coming off the putter. When
it was halfway there — I’ll never forget this — the thought flashed through my head, ‘I’m going to win the U.S. Open.’ I thought
it was going in and I was going to win.”

Somehow, the putt didn’t take the final turn to the right that Rocco had been certain it would take. It stayed just above
the hole and went five feet past. Rocco had to take a deep breath, regroup, and make sure he hit a solid putt for par. It
went straight in, and he walked to the 18th tee still leading by one but knowing the chance — perhaps of a lifetime — had
just come and gone.

Westwood and Woods both made par at the hole, Woods having to make a five-footer but, steely as always, rolling the putt in.

One hole to play. If Rocco could make birdie, he would force Woods and Westwood to have to go for the green in two and make
eagle. “I was thinking I needed birdie to win,” he said. “I was fairly certain at least one of them would make a birdie.”

He aimed his tee shot down the middle and watched it drift a little farther left than he wanted it to. It found the left rough,
in decent enough shape, but the lie took away any chance he might have had to go for the green in two.

“To be honest, if I’d been in the fairway, I’m not sure I would have gone for it anyway,” he said. “I just over-hit my drive
and it went a little left. I did that a few times down the stretch. I had 247 to the front and that’s a long shot for me.
I might have gone for it and aimed the ball right to stay away from the water, but I’m not sure. Being in the rough eliminated
any doubt. I had to hit a good layup and try to make birdie from there.”

He laid up to 106 yards, a perfect wedge shot. “Maybe I was just a little more excited than I thought,” he said. “I wasn’t
scared of the water or anything; I wasn’t worried I was going to spin the ball back into the water. I just hit the ball about
six or seven yards farther than I wanted to hit it.”

The pin was up front on the right side of the green, and Rocco’s wedge landed behind it, took a hard hop, and rolled to a
stop 35 feet away. As Rocco and Matt approached the green, Ogilvy dropped back so that Rocco could walk onto the green alone.
The ovation was almost overwhelming.

“I’d never heard anything quite like it in my life,” he said. “I mean, the crowds had been loud all day. But at 18, it was
amazing.”

He gathered himself for the long birdie putt. “I wanted to give it a chance,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave it short.”

He didn’t leave it short, but it was moving to the right of the hole several feet before it got there. He tapped in for an
even-par 71, which meant he had finished 72 holes at 283 — one under par for the championship. Now came what would be the
hardest part of his day: the wait.

L
EE
J
ANZEN HAD GOTTEN BACK
to the hotel while the leaders were playing the 15th hole. When he saw what the situation was, he left Connor and his friend
to watch on TV while he headed to the golf course.

“It was such a zoo I actually had trouble getting back,” he said. “Even with my player badge I had trouble talking my way
through all the crowds to get where I wanted to go — which was behind the 18th green. I wanted to be there when Rocco finished.”

He made it and actually saw Cindi first. She had managed to get Steve inside the ropes, and the two of them were standing
in the tunnel behind the green that led to the scoring area while Rocco finished. Janzen hugged Cindi, who was hanging on
to her emotions for dear life at that point.

After Rocco tapped in for his final par and shook hands with Ogilvy, the first person he saw when he reached the tunnel was
Janzen. “Rocco had been the first person there when I won in ’93,” Janzen said. “I wanted to do the same for him. I would
have loved to have said, ‘My God, you won the Open.’ Instead, I just said, ‘No matter how it turns out, I couldn’t be more
proud of you.’ I wanted him to know that was the way I felt.”

After Rocco signed his card, he sat in a small room next to the scoring area and watched Woods and Westwood play the final
hole. Cindi, Steve, and Janzen were all there. So was Jon Miller, executive vice president of NBC Sports. His job was to make
sure Rocco didn’t somehow disappear if he became the U.S. Open champion.

“We lost Jim Furyk in 2003,” Miller said. “He signed his card and instead of going to do his postmatch interview with us,
he went into the flash area and was talking to some of the print guys. We need to get the winner right away, before the awards
ceremony, before he talks to anyone else. My job since 2004 has been to make sure the minute we know who the winner is, we
get him on the air.”

Woods and Westwood could still win if one of them made eagle on the 18th hole. But that chance virtually evaporated the moment
each teed off. Woods’s drive was left, finding a fairway bunker. Westwood also found a bunker — on the right side.

Westwood had no chance to go for the green and laid his second shot up. Woods caught such a good lie that he actually thought
for a moment about taking a shot at the green.

“If it had been a practice round, I would have gone for it,” he said. “Any other day I would have given it some serious thought.
But not now. Too risky. I had to figure I had a good chance to make four if I laid up.”

He took a nine-iron and produced one of the worst under-pressure swings of his career. The ball flew almost straight right
and landed in deep rough to the right of the fairway. Furious with himself, Woods let out a couple of profanities and slammed
his club on top of his bag. He knew he would now need an up-and-down that was, to say the least, difficult in order to force
a playoff.

Rocco was stunned when he saw Woods mis-hit his second shot. “It’s just not like him,” he said. “At that moment, just for
a second, I let myself think that I might win.”

Westwood was actually now in better position to make birdie than Woods, since he had found the fairway with his second shot.
But almost no one watching was even thinking about him.

“To be honest, I completely forgot that he could birdie to force a playoff,” Lee Janzen said. “I was totally focused on Tiger.
I’m not completely sure I even knew Westwood was just one shot back.”

At Oakland Hills, Rick Smith had been joined in the upstairs locker room by several friends. But the place was completely
quiet as Woods and Westwood approached their third shots. “My mouth was completely dry and my hands were sweating,” Smith
said. “I couldn’t have talked if I wanted to talk. I knew Tiger had a really tough third shot. I also knew if anyone could
pull it off, it was Tiger.”

Westwood played first and, like Rocco a few minutes before, he allowed his adrenaline to take over. He hit a shot similar
to Rocco’s, landing it well behind the flag and watching it roll 30 feet past the pin. He still had a chance, but it was a
slim one.

Woods took a long time deciding what to do with his third shot. As he would say later in another lengthy explanation, he was
again between clubs. “I had 95 [to the] front and 101 [to the] hole,” he said. “It was just a perfect number for my 56, but
I didn’t think I could stop a 56 — if I hit a 56, I had to hit it short of the green, bounce it in, and that wasn’t going
to be the shot. We decided to go with 60, hit it hard, make sure you play to the right, just in case it doesn’t get there.”

The number references are to the loft on wedges. Once upon a time, a golfer carried two wedges: a pitching wedge and a sand
wedge. Now there are players who will carry as many as five wedges. The higher the loft, the higher the ball flies coming
off the club and the more likely it is to spin and stop quickly. Woods was afraid that his 56-wedge wouldn’t put enough spin
on the ball to stop it near the hole. Instead, he opted to try to hit his 60 hard, knowing if he got the ball on the green,
he would be more likely to be able to get it to spin to a stop.

He had also caught a lucky break — the kind that only he seems to ever catch. Rocco noticed it right away. Few others did.

“He was in a divot,” Rocco said. “Normally that’s the worst break you can catch. But in this case it helped him because it
made the ball spin more than it would have if he had just been in the deep rough over there. He actually had a better chance
to get the club on the ball the way he needed to because of the divot.”

After his lengthy conversation over club selection with Steve Williams, Woods finally got over the ball and hit a spectacular
shot. The ball flew just the way he wanted it to, checked up, and then rolled back toward the hole, stopping 12 feet away.
It was a near-miraculous shot.