Book Excerpt: R-O-C-C-O!

By John Feinstein
Photo By Walter Iooss Jr. June 2009

In the 108 years that the United States Open golf championship has been played, there has never been an Open like the one last June at Torrey Pines.

It matched the greatest player in history proving once again how great he is -- even doing it on one leg -- against the 158th-ranked player in the world, a motor-mouthed 45-year-old whose career had been plagued by back problems. But Rocco Mediate stood toe to toe with Tiger Woods for 91 holes: 72 holes of regulation play, an 18-hole playoff and then a sudden-death playoff.

It's the kind of stuff that can even affect Wall Street (months before the economy crashed). According to market analysts, during the 4½ hours that Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate were on the course on Monday, June 16, trading volume on the stock exchange dropped 10 percent. During the last few holes, according to estimates, the drop doubled.

There are all sorts of stories like that one. Joan Fay, the wife of USGA Executive Director David B. Fay, wanted to stay in San Diego on that Monday for the playoff, but she had commitments back home in New York on Tuesday. She arrived at the airport Monday morning, comforted by the fact that JetBlue provides TV service.

While waiting for her plane, she ran into several NBC executives, also flying home because of commitments. They were glum because the airline they were on had no TV service.

"I think there are seats on the JetBlue flight," Joan said, and the NBC execs made the switch. As luck would have it, the plane landed in New York just as Woods and Mediate were playing the 18th hole. It taxied to the gate, and the jetway pulled up.

"No one would get off," Joan says. "I mean, no one."

Another plane had just landed in Hartford, Conn. It was carrying golfers and their families from the Open to the next tour stop. Needless to say, everyone on the charter flight had been watching the playoff. When the plane landed, it pulled up to a private hangar, where tournament officials and volunteers were waiting. But no one got off the plane.

"They couldn't have gotten me or anyone else off with a court order at that point," says Lee Janzen, a teammate of Mediate's at Florida Southern. "We just told the flight attendants to go inside and let the tournament people know we'd deplane as soon as it was over."

The notion that the Everyman from Greensburg, Pa., could somehow beat the world's best-known athlete was must-see TV. Johnny Miller, the longtime NBC analyst, summed it up on Sunday afternoon when he said, "He looks like the guy who cleans Tiger's swimming pool. . . . Guys with the name Rocco don't get on the trophy, do they?"

Miller caught a lot of flak for that from Italian-American groups and had to publicly apologize, but no one understood the comment better than Rocco.

"Johnny called me to apologize," he says. "There was nothing to apologize for, and I told him that. If I had been sitting at home, I would have been saying, 'There's no way this can happen,' just like everyone else was saying it."

Through the years, other players had been fazed by Woods. "What people didn't understand was, I wasn't afraid of him," Rocco says. "Not because I don't think he's great -- I do think he's great. He hasn't got a bigger fan in the world than me. But why would I be afraid of him? No one expects you to win -- he's Tiger Woods, and you're not. To be in that arena with the greatest player of all time? If you're a golfer, why wouldn't you revel in every second of it? If there's one thing that makes me happy about all this, it's that I don't have to look back and say, 'Gee, I wish I'd been able to enjoy it and savor it while it was going on.' I did do that. Every second of it, right until I missed the last putt. I loved it all."

An early friendship
When Woods turned pro in 1996, some players snickered at his occasional off-the-course gaffes -- there wasn't much they could criticize on the course -- but Rocco never went that route. He understood from the beginning what Woods was going to mean to golf and to all those who played the game. Plus, as he put it, "I liked the kid."

Woods was initially shy around his peers, in part because most were older than he was, in part because he understood the resentment some of them felt. But the more he got to know other players, the more comfortable he became. And the more comfortable he became, the more they realized that they liked him.

"Tiger is a guy's guy," Rocco says. "He likes to tell bad jokes and talk about ball games and give everyone a hard time. Plus, he can take it when he gets it back. Once people got the chance to know him, they liked him."

Not surprisingly, Rocco was one of the players who went out of his way to make Woods feel comfortable. "I try to do that with all the young players," he says. "I remember how intimidated I felt when I first came out, and how much it meant to me when guys like [Raymond] Floyd and [Tom] Weiskopf and Curtis [Strange] went out of their way to try to help me."

One morning in 1987, Rocco's second year on tour, he walked into the locker room at Muirfield Village Golf Club, the site of Jack Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament. It was pro-am day, and Rocco was wearing a pullover sweater and comfortable pants. "They were kind of puffy," he says. "Not all that sloppy, but not exactly dressy."