Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (32 page)

“People talk about the putt,” Rocco said. “The shot that saved him was the wedge. I’m not sure anyone else in the world could
get the ball that close from where he was. In fact, I’m pretty sure no one else could.”

Rocco had now gone from thinking he had a good chance to win to thinking a playoff was likely. “Again, anyone else, the odds
are he isn’t going to make it,” he said. “It’s a 12-foot putt on a bumpy Poa annua green where the ball is bound to bounce
before it gets to the hole. But it’s Tiger. That makes it all different.”

Westwood had to putt first. Amazingly, with a chance to play off for the U.S. Open at stake, he left the putt short. It never
had a chance, rolling to the right and checking up two feet from the hole. Westwood would talk later about how upset he was
not to get into the playoff, but then add that if someone had told him on Thursday he would finish third, one shot out of
a playoff, he would have been quite happy.

Which probably explains why he has won all sorts of tournaments around the world but never a major.

With Westwood finished, the stage was now cleared for Woods. He stalked the putt from every side while millions watching held
their breath. Most people thought he would make the putt for the simple reason that, historically, he always makes putts that
he absolutely has to make.

“I’m thinking, ‘This is not an easy putt,’ ” Mike Davis said. “But I’m also thinking, ‘Yeah, but it’s Tiger. He’s going to
make it.’ ”

In the NBC TV booth, David Fay wasn’t so much thinking Woods would make the putt as wanting him to make it. “Normally, the
last thing we want is a Monday playoff,” he said. “This was different. If it had been Westwood, I’d have been praying for
a miss. But since it was Tiger creating a Monday playoff, I wanted him to make it.”

Rocco expected Woods to make the putt. But he would not have been shocked if he had missed it.

“I knew the moment wouldn’t get to him,” he said. “He lives for moments like that. I knew he would read it right, I knew his
hands wouldn’t shake, I knew he would put a good stroke on it, and I sure as hell knew he wasn’t going to leave it short.

“But I also knew at that moment on that green he could do all those things and he still might miss. He could hit a perfect
putt, and if it hit a bump at the wrong moment it could swerve an inch outside the hole.”

Woods was thinking almost the same thing.

“The putt was probably about two and a half balls outside right,” he said. “The green wasn’t very smooth. I kept telling myself,
Make a pure stroke. If it bounces in or out, so be it, at least I can hold my head up high and say I hit a pure stroke. I
hit it exactly where I wanted to and it went in.”

It
just
went in, catching the right corner of the hole, spinning around, and, at the last possible moment, dropping in. It could
have, as Woods put it, “plinkoed in or plinkoed out.” It plinkoed in.

Woods, famous for his reactions to making crucial putts, went completely nuts — shaking his fists, screaming with joy — as
the crowd went crazy.

Even though he wasn’t surprised, Rocco’s heart sank when the putt went in. He had been one inch — almost literally — from
winning the U.S. Open. Now he had to go home, try to sleep, and come back the next morning to go 18 holes against the best
player in history.

Mark Rolfing was right there with an NBC camera seconds after the putt went into the hole.

“Unbelievable. I knew he’d make it,” Rocco said bravely. “That’s what he does. It was an amazing day out there, and I can’t
wait for tomorrow.”

Later, in the interview room, he said almost the same thing. He liked the 18-hole playoff format, going head-to-head with
Tiger was a dream come true, he had incredible respect for him but wasn’t afraid of him. As he got ready to leave, he had
one last thought: “I think we’ll give you guys a good show tomorrow. It’s going to be a blast.”

A
S
R
OCCO WAS LEAVING
the interview room, he encountered Woods, who was on his way in to give his version of what had just taken place.

“I guess we have a game tomorrow,” Woods said.

Rocco laughed. “You better be ready, big guy,” he answered. “I’m going to be ready for you.”

He had laughed and joked his way through his session with the media. He had never had a day like this one on the golf course,
he was living his dream, he was “toast,” but he would be ready by the time he and Woods teed it up at nine o’clock (Pacific)
the next morning.

He meant everything he said. He wasn’t afraid of Woods, because he knew there were only a handful of people in the world who
thought he had any chance to win. “Which meant,” he said, “that I had nothing to lose.”

The group eating Fleming’s steaks out of plastic containers in room 1422 at the Hilton was the same as the night before: Rocco
and Cindi, Sticky, Gary, Michael, and Vince. Everyone ate dinner and watched replay after replay of what had just taken place.

All of which made Cindi nervous.

“He was getting a lot of love from the commentators, from everywhere,” she said. “But it had been
so
close, and it hadn’t happened. I thought it was actually energy sapping to sit there and watch it over and over. Plus, it
was starting to get late and, unlike the last three days, he had a morning tee time, which meant we had to be up early. I
knew he wasn’t going to sleep much, but I wanted him to at least have a few hours to lie down and close his eyes.”

Cindi finally got everyone to leave at about 11:30. Rocco still wanted to watch TV. The Golf Channel was showing the last
few holes and the post-round interviews and commentaries over and over.

“I probably would have stayed up all night watching if she hadn’t stopped me,” he said. “I was mesmerized by everything that
had happened.”

He slept better than he thought he would, no doubt completely exhausted by the events of the day. When he woke up, shortly
after 6 A.M., Cindi did her usual morning work on his back and then he showered and went to get dressed.

“I only had one clean shirt left,” he said. “It was red.”

Woods has made the red shirt his Sunday trademark. Rocco wondered if he would wear red for a Monday playoff or if the color
was reserved strictly for Sundays. Either way, he had no choice. “My options were a red shirt, a dirty shirt, or no shirt,”
he said. “I went with red.”

The hotel lobby felt empty early in the morning, since most of the players had already flown home. He and Cindi got in the
car and drove to Bruegger’s. As soon as they got out of the car, Cindi cringed. “It was closed,” she said. “They were tearing
it apart. The sign said, ‘Closed for renovations.’ I guess they had stayed open through Open Sunday and then started the work
first thing Monday morning.”

Rocco shrugged it off, but Cindi was not happy. “Bad harbinger,” she said. “He’d had this perfect routine going for four days:
Bruegger’s, Starbucks, golf course. Now it was broken.”

They still went to Starbucks for Rocco’s quadruple shot of espresso, but Cindi was already feeling queasy when they pulled
into the virtually empty players’ parking lot at eight o’clock. She couldn’t help but notice that the range was completely
empty, which made sense, since there were only two players left competing for the championship.

“I like to go out on the range with him when he warms up,” she said. “I feel comfortable because I know everyone now and they
know me. Plus, if he needs that last stretch before he goes to the tee, I can do it right there and it literally takes a few
seconds. But with no one out there and so much media around, I felt like I’d stand out. I couldn’t blend in the way I normally
do. So I decided not to go.”

Cindi was already nervous about media attention. A number of people who regularly covered golf knew her and knew she had been
traveling with Rocco regularly. He had confided to a few friends in the media that he and Linda were getting a divorce. Rich
Lerner from Golf Channel had walked nine holes with Cindi on Saturday, and Jeff Babineau from
Golfweek
had secured her media armband to get her inside the ropes on Sunday and Monday.

Now, though, with Rocco suddenly in the spotlight, a lot of people who didn’t cover golf as often were wondering who she was.
The simplest answer was that she was his physical therapist, the person who had helped him overcome his back problems. That
in itself made her a story. Cindi knew a number of members of the national media wanted to talk to her in more detail about
her relationship with Rocco. She wanted none of that.

“I just wanted it to be about him,” she said. “If I talked to them at all, it became at least in part about me, and I didn’t
think that was right.”

She made herself scarce, hiding out in the player-family dining area while Rocco warmed up. He was the first one on the range.
Woods arrived a couple of minutes later and walked over to say hello. Only he didn’t say hello.

Dressed in his Sunday red for a Monday, Woods walked over to Rocco, hand extended, and said, “Nice fucking shirt!”

Rocco cracked up. Instead of explaining that this was his only clean shirt, he said, “I thought you only wore red on Sundays!”

That set the tone for the day.

“I know how he is, especially when he’s got a major on the line,” Rocco said. “But I wasn’t going to change who I was. I was
going to talk because that’s what I do. I was going to have fun because that’s what I do. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t trying
to kill him and he wasn’t trying to kill me, but it just wasn’t going to get tense like I know it does sometimes with him
and some other players.”

The only U.S. Open playoff that may have been comparable to this one in terms of contrasting personalities had taken place
at Merion in 1971 between Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus. Trevino, a nonstop talker like Rocco, had tossed a fake snake at
the ever-serious Nicklaus on the first tee to loosen things up. Whether that played a role or not, Trevino won the playoff
by three shots. Rocco wasn’t going to throw any snakes, but he also wasn’t going to let Woods go into one of his no-talking
trances for 18 holes.

“I wasn’t trying to psyche him out by talking,” he said. “In fact, I think it probably loosened him up a little. But I had
to go out there and play and act the way I would play and act on any other day on the golf course.”

T
HE
USGA
IS GOLF’S LAST GOVERNING BODY
that still clings to the 18-hole playoff format. The Masters has played sudden death since 1979, and the British Open and
the PGA Championship both conduct four-hole playoffs.

Eighteen-hole playoffs are anachronistic, almost always boring and anticlimactic, and are a logistical nightmare for almost
everyone involved.

People count on a Sunday finish for golf tournaments. Players are accustomed to going back out on the golf course on Sunday
to play off when tied for first place. TV has to juggle schedules if a tournament bleeds over into Monday. Volunteers, who
are critical to any golf tournament, most often are scheduled to go home or back to work (or both) on Monday. Airplane flights
have to be changed. And yet, the USGA won’t let the 18-hole playoff go.

“I hear all the arguments, and they make sense,” David Fay said. “And I’ll admit we’ve had our share of clunkers. But I still
think eighteen holes is the fairest test; there are no fluke winners. And I like the fact that we’re the only ones still doing
it. It makes us different.”

True enough. But the USGA has abandoned 18-hole playoffs in its other championships, so the implication is that the U.S. Open
is more important than the U.S. Women’s Open or the Senior Open. Which, to be fair, it probably is — except to the people
playing in the other Opens.

The USGA didn’t actually settle on the 18-hole format until 1950, when Ben Hogan beat Lloyd Mangrum by four shots at Merion
Golf Club outside Philadelphia to climax his miraculous comeback less than a year after he almost died in a car accident.
There were actually people trying to compare Woods’s playing on a bad knee to Hogan’s comeback, which, as Woods himself pointed
out, was patently ridiculous.

Prior to 1950, there had been 18-hole playoffs, 36-hole playoffs, and, in 1931, a 72-hole playoff, Billy Burke beating George
Von Elm 296 to 297 at Inverness after they had tied at 292 at the conclusion of the first 72 holes. Woods versus Rocco would
be the fourteenth 18-hole playoff since the 18-hole format had taken root. The last one had been in 2001: Retief Goosen beating
Mark Brooks by two shots at Southern Hills in one of Fay’s “clunkers.” That had been the Open in which Rocco finished fourth,
his best previous finish in a major.

By now, Cindi and Rocco had developed a pre-tee-off routine, stopping several yards from the first tee, around a corner where
they were just outside the view of the grounds and the TV cameras. “This is exactly what I’ve waited for my entire life,”
he told her, his voice very soft. “I know,” she said. “Go get it done.”

Cindi headed back inside the ropes, carrying her trusty pen. When the two players arrived at the first tee, the mass of humanity
they found there was remarkable. The USGA would report later that 25,000 people were “scanned” coming through the gates that
morning. That was fewer than the 42,500 who showed up each day of the tournament, but it was a huge throng for a Monday playoff,
especially when one considered that every one of them was following the only twosome on the golf course.

“It just shocked me when I walked on the tee,” Rocco said. “You expect it to be crowded, because even if the overall crowd
isn’t that big, we’re the only ones playing. But it was just unbelievable. Everywhere you looked, all you could see were people.”

Woods was in his third playoff in a major championship. He had beaten Bob May in a four-hole playoff at the 2000 PGA and Chris
DiMarco in sudden death at the 2005 Masters. Overall, he had been in eleven playoffs as a pro, winning ten of them. His only
loss had been to Billy Mayfair in Los Angeles in 1998. Rocco was 2–0 in playoffs, having beaten Curtis Strange for his first
tour victory at Doral in 1991 and Steve Elkington — on the fourth hole — at Greensboro in 1993.