By Tim Rosaforte August 15, 2007
The scary thing is, this is just the opening act.
If you listened to Tiger Woods closely on Sunday, this was the message that came through when he was asked about tying Bobby Jones' record, with his 13th major championship.
"Any time you're in conversations with Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus, Walter Hagen?it makes you understand you've had a nice run," Woods said in humble tones. "And I could not ask for a better start to my career."
In other words, between now and the 2008 Masters is considered intermission.
If this is the start, I want to be around when the curtain comes down and Woods goes off to coach the Little League team in Hobe Sound. If this was the start, what are those final numbers going to be, what are we about to see?
Well, besides more of Tiger in that skin-tight shirt on Sunday raising trophies, we'll witness history being made. And that is always good. History without the asterisk, as there was to Barry Bonds scaling past the home run record of Henry Aaron. We're watching not only America's hero but also the world's hero in the final countdown to one of the greatest records in sports. It's T-minus 5 for Tiger to the Jack Nicklaus record of 18 major championships.
This latest was hardly the picture of Tiger in the shade. How can one man sweat that much and still look so cool under pressure as Tiger did at Southern Hills? Then you go back and look at the pictures of Tiger's first 12: They weren't all 15 at Pebble, 12 at Augusta and 8 at the Old Course. There were some bloodbaths in there, were only the son of a Green Beret and a Thai mother would survive the jungle. We talk all about Butch Harmon vs. Hank Haney, and yet, when it comes right down to it, Tiger wins on the greens, and by out-toughing everybody with a Zen like special-forces mentality. He wins, because as Scott Verplank said after their Saturday pairing, "I have never seen a better putter." He's a better putter because it requires more will.
The level that Woods is on is so far beyond that of a Woody Austin, it's not close: But even compared to Ernie Els, the difference was never more glaring than that two-hole stretch at 9 and 10 when Ernie stuck brilliant iron shots inside 6 feet and failed to convert both. It came at a time when Tiger was vulnerable, going through a patch where he was fighting his game just a little, when things got interesting inside that ring of fire.
When it's time to man-up, it's hard to find a testosterone level that Tiger doesn't have. Bathed in sweat, with all the heat you'd ever want in your life, he kept making putts. And they weren't just leaking in the hole. They were going in at perfect speed every time. Starting right from the first, Woods had his A-stroke working. So as the field moved closer, and the cushion he built up with 63 on Saturday started to shrink, Woods had to douse his head with the contents of a water bottle, towel off, and win the wet golf shirt competition.
"Not only does his ball striking sounds different, his putter sounds different," a putter rep told me Monday when we were talking about it. "I bet you there's a spot on his putter size of pinhead, and he hits it every time." Mike Eggeling of Never Compromise went to tell me about a scene on the practice green at Congressional a couple of weeks ago during Tiger's tournament, the AT&T Classic.
"Tiger was putting this 8-footer with a 6-inch break," Eggeling said. "He had two tees set up and he was putting between the tees. Tiger missed his first putt. Then he made 58 in a row. How do you have the concentration to do that?"
Plug that into the back nine at Southern Hills. Or the way Woods was thinking on Saturday, when he was giving the field his Heisman, playing his form of thinking man's golf, in a tree-lined version of what he did to Royal Liverpool last summer.
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