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Friday, January 12, 2001
Planted in KAPALUA, Maui -- Tiger Woods hit his second shot off the ninth fairway that was as wild as the West Maui wind.
deep rough, Tiger
still goes for it
He scrambles for a bogey
and thinks he still could
have made parLeonard leaps into lead
By Paul Arnett
Star-BulletinThis ball landed far off course on a grassy mound usually reserved for the weekend hacks. ESPN analyst Andy North later joked with reporters about all the golf balls everyone found, before finally locating the one with the distinctive Nike swirl.
Unplayable. Get out of town. After everyone tramped around for a while, the lie wasn't quite as formidable as it looked on TV. Woods selected an iron conducive to coming out of the tall grass and landed it in a green-side bunker.
The sand shot fell a grain or two short, forcing Woods to settle for an uncharacteristic bogey on a par-5. He eventually shot a 3-under 70, three shots behind front-runner Justin Leonard in yesterday's opening round of the $3.5 million Mercedes Championships.
But had that shot got away back on the ninth, his record-setting streak of 48 consecutive rounds of par or better might have been in jeopardy. Not that Woods thought about that as he surveyed his third shot on the par-5 ninth. Going for it is what this man lives for on the PGA Tour."I could still have made a par from the back of that bunker," Woods quipped with reporters after he signed his scorecard. "Was I surprised I found that ball? It was pretty deep, but the grass growing on the top of that mound is not that high. Everybody was stomping around, so it was nice.
"I found five golf balls. (His caddy) Stevie found five. Andy found four. Mine was under the grass some. But I could still get the club on the ball. The problem is, if I caught it absolutely clean, that ball is out of here. I had to try to take a little off with my left wrist. I probably could have gone a little harder, but I was protecting a little bit."
Most folks would have asked for relief. Even if they did manage to get the club on the ball, they would have been yelling "fore" soon after. For Woods, he had a distinct shot in mind.
"I played the shot down, trying to hit a high fade," Woods said. "I laid the shaft down and tried to hit the ball from the inside. And hit the ball high. The only difference was I got the club down and flipped it."
That ball landed in the back of the green-side bunker, forcing Woods to take his time before taking aim on the hole. A mistake here and suddenly a snowman is coming into view.
"The reason why I took so long, I was digging in and where my feet were, there was no sand," Woods said. "If I go ahead and hit the shot the way I'm supposed to, this ball could be out of here, too.
"You just try to play the front-edge of the green and if it comes out hard, then it's perfect. If it doesn't, it should get on the front and kind of trickle on, and try to make a 10- or 15-footer. It came out a tad-bit short."
Woods went on to shoot a 2-under 35 on the back nine to keep the leaders within sight. Last year, he shot an opening-round 71 en route to winning the first of nine events, the most by anyone since 1950.
Ernie Els, who finished second to Woods in last year's Mercedes Championships, was second to Leonard yesterday with a 5-under 68. Last year, Els could only stand and watch as Woods dropped a 40-foot putt on the third playoff hole to begin one of the more memorable seasons in PGA Tour history.
After hearing what Woods did yesterday on No. 9, Els shook his head slowly, then smiled.
"All I can say is he's got that shot in his bag," Els said. "And I think he's the only one of us who does."
