The Roc

He has had his share of misadventures, but Rocco Mediate keeps coming back for more

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By Nick Seitz

AP Photo

April 2002

It's fitting that Rocco Mediate is the poster boy for the National Weather Service lightning campaign. He's never been hit himself, but he's often felt like a lightning rod for bolts out of the blue. Maybe it's Rocco's ear-tickling name, suggesting a Sopranos wiseguy. (He loves the show.) Maybe it's his physique: broad hips in roomy slacks distracting from a regimen that has helped him lose about 70 pounds since back surgery in 1994. Maybe it's the unorthodox putting style -- he was the first to win on tour with a long putter, adopted to favor the bad back. Maybe it's his fresh opinions, as when he reacted to news that Augusta National was lengthening the course by saying, "They're telling most of us we're just going to take up a spot in the field and walk around on the nice grass."

This is not your typical, mass-produced tour pro.

His magnetism owes at least partly to a few of us in the media being extra clever. Previewing the Masters, one magazine reported that "there's no cooking on the course, so random smells won't mess with Rocco Mediate's next triple bogey." Most of the time Mediate (ME-de-ate) grins and bears such high humor.

There are exceptions. A defective folding chair collapsed under him on the clubhouse porch at the 2000 PGA Championship, which some writers found humorous. "Roc fell off a chair," he says with his staccato chuckle but without the grin. "It nearly ended my career. My neck, shoulder and back were affected, and it took me four months to feel normal." A lawsuit against the manufacturers of the chair was settled for an undisclosed sum, as they say on the courthouse steps.

Mediate had won the Buick Open the week before, his fourth victory on tour, and believes the freakish accident probably cost him spots in the Presidents Cup, the Tour Championship and the Ryder Cup. He continued to test his body late in 2000, only to be singled out as the leading example of why the so-called Silly Season is dead. Another magazine called him "a bottom feeder" filling in for bigger names who no longer need to bother. "I got barbecued" is all he'll say.

But it takes a lot to rock the Roc, who finds a fun lining in most challenges. At the Phoenix Open, the tour's answer to "Animal House," Mediate has finished first, second and second over a three-year span. "It gets a little crazy, but I love it," he says. "Only the strong survive."

In 1999 he was paired with Tiger Woods the last day when an unruly fan in their gallery was caught carrying a gun. Another connoisseur loudly urged Tiger to hole a putt "and Rocco will fold like a cheap suit." Mediate held up like a thousand-dollar suit and beat Tiger by three. "I want to play where Tiger plays," he says.

He marvels at Tiger's composure, while Tiger says of Mediate, "Roc's become one of my buddies. He has a big heart, and he's honest and truthful. You have to appreciate that."

At the infamous par-3 16th hole in Phoenix, Rocco goes out of his way to enjoy himself with fans. "You don't want to make them mad," he says. "Duval got upset and said something, and they absolutely killed him. If you don't like it, don't play there. They boo me for a bad shot, I figure I deserve it. I was sorry they moved the bleachers farther from that green. They'd chant my name, one side going 'Roc' and the other side going 'co.' ... 'Roc-co! Roc-co!' You gotta love it."

Interviewers relish his freewheeling commentary. The Golf Channel has called Mediate "the best sound bite on tour." Marino Parascenzo, a Pittsburgh writer who has known Mediate since his amateur days, says, "I'd rather interview Rocco finishing fourth than most players winning."

I first spend time with Mediate the week of the 2001 Colonial in Fort Worth and quickly find there is much more to him than his lightning-rod image, but he is lightning fast. He talks fast, walks fast, drives fast. We go to the fitness trailer and chat while he rides a recumbent bike that puts less strain on his back. His trainer, Frank Novakoski, tells me later that an athlete's back is not exactly fine after surgery. "It's a disability requiring constant maintenance," he says. "Rocco doesn't know why his back went bad, but since the surgery he works with machines, free weights, medicine balls, stretching exercises. He understands that the need to work on his whole body never ends."