Posted 4/14/03 9:57 am ET

Up and down

From peak to valley, Tiger has never lost his focus

Woods played an all-time margin of victory standard at Pebble Beach with a 15-stroke triumph over Ernie Els without a single three-putt on the treacherous greens. His swing instructor, Butch Harmon, said he thought Woods putted better than he had ever seen him putt for 72 holes. "He played well but putted miraculously," Harmon said. Jonathan Ernst The Augusta Chronicle

By Scott Michaux
The Augusta Chronicle

It started where it ended - on the 18th green.

The birdie putt that sealed the 2001 Masters Tournament victory and the Tiger Slam that went with it wasn't the only thing drained on the final hole at the Augusta National Golf Club.

Tiger Woods was drained. He walked to the edge of the green, pulled his hat down over his face and gave in to the moment that had built up so feverishly.

"When I didn't have any more shots to play, that's when I realized what I'd done," he said. "I won the tournament, and I started getting a little emotional."

He'd won more than just a tournament. More than just a major championship. Tiger Woods had done something never accomplished before, something that might never be done again.

"You never think of winning a slam," Woods said. "It's not your main priority. Your main priority is winning major championships. The slam just gets in the way of that. It's one of those things. It's just a product of trying to win major championships and then ultimately winning those majors."

His emotional release on the 18th green was a harbinger. Woods was starting to feel a little flushed from allergies during the late stages of the round. By that evening, he was well on his way to a bout of flu - and he begged out of the traditional Sunday night dinner with the club members.

"I wore myself out that week," he admits. "I got really sick, and I was in bed for three days after the tournament and had a 104 temperature. I put so much into that event trying to block everything out that it finally caught up with me. My body finally broke down. It took me awhile once that was over to start feeling better."

Just how much did Woods put into that tournament? Just how much pressure did he apply to his quest for the previously unattainable?

More than anyone knew, it seems.

"Pop, I've got to nail this one," he told his father before arriving in Augusta, "or all those other three are wasted."

Wasted? The 15-shot demolition at Pebble Beach? The 19-under blitz at St. Andrews? The breathless duel at Valhalla?

All wasted without another green jacket to wrap it up?

"Let's face it," explains Earl Woods, a father who is no stranger to reducing any moment to its starkest superlative. "In the eyes of many people in the world, press included, he would have been a failure because he did not win all four. Darn the fact that nobody in the history of the world has ever done it. But for him, it would have been a failure. Therefore he really had to sharpen his focus and get down to business."

That kind of focus takes a toll - even on Tiger. Bobby Jones himself was so wiped out by the pressures of his Grand Slam feat in 1930 that he retired from competitive play at age 28.

Woods came into Augusta at the crest of unprecedented expectation and buildup. He left Augusta tired and gradually descending toward an inevitable letdown.

"The stress of competing under those conditions in that environment definitely wears on your immune system," Woods said."You're pretty worn out and exhausted by the time your final putt goes in on Sunday.

"It's one of those things I didn't realize until it actually happened. The buildup to Augusta last year was something that was pretty tough. There was a lot of stuff going on and more demands on my time. And that week was very tough on my body and my mind. I was very excited that I won, but I didn't realize until after that week how much it had actually taken out of me."

The aftermath of the 2001 Masters victory over David Duval and Phil Mickelson - and the since-dubbed Tiger Slam - revealed not only the depth of his desire and the proof of his humanity, but the breadth of his career vision.

That Tiger Woods didn't figure prominently in the outcomes of the three remaining majors in 2001 underscored the toll that chasing his slam had taken.

But the energy Woods is bringing back to Augusta shows that the 26-year-old has a long way to go before resting on any laurels. Many golfers might consider his feat a lifetime achievement; Tiger simply views it as a foundation for greater triumphs.

"He hasn't accomplished it all," said Earl Woods. "He's accomplished some things. He's on the path. Like a mountain climber, when you reach an intermediate peak, is there cause for celebration? Yes. At least you got this far. But the major peak is still coming, and that will be a lot more difficult."

WHEN HIS FEVER finally broke, it was a soft fall. The short-term residuals from Woods' two-year quest weren't much different than before. He repeated as winner in places he always contends - in Germany, at the Memorial and in the NEC Invitational at Firestone Country Club. He earned his third consecutive PGA Tour Player of the Year distinction.

Tiger Woods tees off at the Bay Hill Invitational in Orlando, Fla. His 3-under-par round gave him a four-shot victory, his third consecutive win in the March event. Michael Holahan The Augusta Chronicle

But Woods' major pace was diminished. He flirted more with the cut lines than the top of the leaderboards at the year's three remaining majors. The best he could muster was a tie for 12th at the U.S. Open.

Though Woods denied any notions of a letdown last year, those closest to him don't deny it anymore.

"I believe that there is a natural letdown within an individual once they've achieved something that they've long sought after, and particularly something of this significance," his father said.

Butch Harmon, Woods' longtime swing instructor, concurs.

"The winning four majors in a row, the leading up to it, the preparing for it - in reality what you saw the rest of 2001 was kind of an emotional letdown," Harmon said. "Not on purpose. Not anything planned. It's just that it takes so much out of you to win one major. To win four in a row - something no one who's ever walked on this planet has done - is a difficult thing. The rest of the year, it's not that he wasn't trying or not trying to play his best. I think he was a little more emotionally drained than he would admit to."

After all the energy spent over a lifetime of dreaming and planning and executing - it was over.

When Woods stood on the 18th green at Augusta National, he'd done it, something he had dreamed about since picking up the game when he was 2. Something he had stalked for years. Something for which he prepared exhaustively. Something that might happen just once in a lifetime.

"I don't think I've ever accomplished anything this great," Woods said immediately after completing his slam. "Am I amazed? I'm amazed at the fact I was able to play as well as I was able to play when I needed to. I think that's where a lot of the hard work goes into it. The hours that you spend by yourself on the range, the putting green, chipping green, out on the golf course late in the evening. Just making yourself work that extra bit, because you're probably going to need it."

WOODS USED IT all in the two seasons building up to the 2001 Masters. In 34 consecutive PGA and European Tour starts from the middle of 1999 through the end of 2000, Woods' relentless success was legendary. Only four times in that 20-month span did he finish out of the top 10. He won 18 of 34 events, including four major championships.

Everyone believed Woods had to come down. Nobody rides that high that long. Not in golf. He couldn't keep up the pace.

But Woods defied every convention. He even had his fellow golfers believing he might be invincible.

"The ultimate goal is to win every week," said John Cook, a tour player who also lives in the same neighborhood as Woods in Orlando, Fla. "Some of us know that's not going to happen. But it can happen for him. He can win every week."

Maybe so, but not the week of April 6-9, 2000 - when the slam talk first ground to a halt. Favored as usual at Augusta National, Woods realized once again that winning major championships isn't as easy as setting the odds.

His Grand Slam quest seemed over before it started. In the first round of the Masters, Woods double-bogeyed the 10th hole and tripled the 12th, leaving him nine back of the lead at the end of the day. Even a sterling 69, shot on a gruesome Saturday when the weather sent most scores soaring, couldn't get Woods fully on track. His magic didn't materialize on Sunday, when Vijay Singh and Duval dueled without him on the back nine. Woods finished fifth, six shots behind Singh.

Jack Nicklaus admits that losing at Augusta used to take the starch out of his season. He always believed he should win there, and anything less ruined his own Grand Slam aspirations.

But Woods didn't let it affect him.

"He messed up and didn't win the Masters that year, so he had to shift," Earl Woods said of his son's focus. "He considers every major important. He took his time off, got himself together, recovered and got ready for the U.S. Open."

WOODS REKINDLED a different kind of slam talk over the remainder of 2000. First, he became the fifth player in history to complete the career slam, adding victories at the U.S. Open and British Open to his former Masters and PGA titles.

But it was the way he did it that fueled the growing hype. Woods set the U.S. Open scoring record and the all-time margin of victory standard at Pebble Beach with a 15-stroke triumph over Ernie Els without a single three-putt on the treacherous greens.

"At Pebble I thought he putted better than I've ever seen him putt for 72 holes," Harmon said. "He played well but putted miraculously."

At St. Andrews, Woods capped his career slam with another dominating performance, missing every one of the Old Course's 112 bunkers and pulling away from Duval's modest Sunday challenge.

"At St. Andrews I thought it was the best he's ever played as far as ball striking and the best control for 72 holes that I've ever seen him have," Harmon said.

Then came Valhalla. Woods went head-to-head in the PGA Championship with unheralded Bob May in a riveting Sunday showdown. Each player thrust and parried with putt after putt and birdie after birdie, capped by each draining pressure putts at the 72nd hole to send it to a three-hole playoff. Woods prevailed in an untidy overtime that illustrated how exhausting the back nine had been on both players.

"At Valhalla, it may have been the best nine holes in professional golf," raved Harmon. "And that's not just on Tiger's part, that's on Bob May's part. You saw in the playoff how emotionally and physically drained both of those players were. The golf, as far as quality, wasn't nearly as spectacular in the playoff as it was in the final nine holes."

The 2000 season left Tiger towering over his peers, and left his peers cowering at his dominance. The only thing missing was the one piece everybody thought would be so easy for him - the Masters.

Tiger Woods tees off at the third hole at Spyglass Hill during a practice round for the 2002 Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. He finished the tournament at 282, eight strokes behind. Jonathan Ernst The Augusta Chronicle

"To win the U.S. Open at Pebble and to win the British Open at St. Andrews, that was huge," said Mark O'Meara, Woods' best friend. "Then to go win in the style that he did at the PGA Championship at Valhalla, just awesome.

"Now, to go to the Masters with all the expectations that the media and the world and the golfing people placed on him to try to complete holding all four major titles at one time, that was a lot of pressure on him. But if anybody could handle it, he could."

WOODS CERTAINLY fueled expectations with his comments early in the 2001 season. Every week from the opening tournament he talked about getting his game ready for Augusta. When outlandish expectation led to a slump theory about Woods' game, he simply said that the goal was still April.

He hit stride in late March. Consecutive victories in Masters tune-ups at the Bay Hill Invitational and The Players Championship sent television ratings up the charts and slam speculation into turbo drive.

Woods never shied away. He let others argue over whether sweeping the majors across off-season parameters was authentic Grand Slam material. He kept honing his game for Augusta.

"I felt very comfortable with my game," Woods said.

He should have. He'd been preparing for months, and not just on the range. He used live rounds to test his Masters shots. The layman might not have noticed, but Tiger drew the ball off tees at Bay Hill, where he'd prefer to hit a fade, to simulate a drive he'd need off the 13th tee at Augusta. Or he'd attack a pin with a more pronounced draw because it was a shot he'd have to execute into the 14th green on Sunday at the Masters.

"He won Bay Hill and the Players Championship literally hitting shots that were probably the wrong shots for the situation, but he was practicing for Augusta," Harmon said. "They weren't the shots at TPC or Bay Hill that were the right shots for that particular pin or hole, but he wasn't even thinking about that. He was thinking of a shot he would have to play at Augusta a few weeks down the road. That's how far ahead of everyone else I think he is."

PREPARATIONS FOR the mental stress Woods would face at the end of Magnolia Lane go back much further. They go back to his early years when his father would employ conditional training techniques he learned in Vietnam to get his son ready for anything.

Earl Woods would drop sets of clubs on his son's downswing. Tiger would stop inches from impact. Earl gave Tiger a code word to use if he'd ever had enough. Tiger never used it.

"I would bring him right up to the edge of total frustration and then back off," his father said. "He can hit his best shots under pressure. And, contrary to most golfers, he's a better golfer when he's angry than not."

Once Earl's tricks couldn't raise Tiger's ire any more, the father declared the training over.

"I told him, 'You'll never, ever in your life run into another person that is as mentally tough as you,"' Earl said. "He hasn't, and he never will."

Harmon agrees with that assessment.

"Tiger Woods is the only player in the game that could win four majors in a row," Harmon insists. "That doesn't mean he's the only one who's physically capable. There are a lot of great players who, if they got it going, could play well enough to do it. Tiger Woods is the only player that's mentally strong enough to handle the pressure of it."

So, when the week of reckoning arrived at the 2001 Masters, Woods reached back to his training. That's how he handled the hype before the previous British Open, when expectations for him to complete his career slam were similarly high.

"Going into the week I just tried to focus it like I did at the British," Woods said. "Everyone was saying I had a chance to complete the slam at St. Andrews, but I figured that would all be taken care of if I just go ahead and take care of my game and win the tournament."

But Woods admits Augusta was much harder because the buildup had been growing for nearly eight months.

"I know what I need to do to win a championship, and that's the mind-set I had going into the week," he said. "It took a lot out of me to block everything out. There were a lot of different questions from all different directions.

"Yeah, it was tough on me mentally. But when you get inside the ropes and it's time to play, you forget everything. Getting inside the ropes was the easiest part. Getting to that point was the tough part."

HE MADE WINNING the Masters look easy. Harmon, O'Meara and Earl Woods all said they've never seen Tiger calmer before a major championship.

There were no early hiccups to recover from. After the second round he was second. After three rounds he had a one-shot lead over Phil Mickelson and three over David Duval. The stage was set for a dramatic final round between the top three players in the world.

Perfect conditions for Woods.

"He lives for competition," said his father, "and the only thing better than competition is quality competition down the stretch. Because he owns the stretch. He feels nobody can beat him coming down the stretch. He's always felt that way."

And in the stretch, it was his competitors who showed more signs of pressure. Neither Duval nor Mickelson had ever won a major, much less the Masters. When the holes tightened up, Woods had that on his side.

The cover of Woods' driver, a gift from his mother, Kultida, is well-known. At 26 years old, Woods is the youngest PGA player to make 30 victories, winning with a 13-under-par 275 at the invitational n March. Michael Holahan The Augusta Chronicle

"That golf course fits Tiger to a tee," O'Meara explained. "He won there before and knew playing the final round that he already had a green jacket. You keep reminding yourself, 'I've done this before, and that guy hasn't.' That takes pressure off you and puts it on the other guy. I know that's what Tiger was saying to himself Sunday when he was playing."

His quest to complete the slam wasn't on his mind when Woods' monstrous tee shot rolled within 75 yards of the 18th green. Nor was it two shots later when his birdie putt rolled in to seal the two-shot victory.

"When you are in the battle, you don't realize what's at stake," Woods said. "I was trying to beat David. I was trying to beat Phil. That's what I was focused on."

WHATEVER LETDOWN ensued, Woods doesn't have time for it. His career plan doesn't allow for letting up. In 2002, he's already gearing up to scale future rungs on golf's ladder.

Woods' philosophy is: "That's over with, let's go on to the next thing," Harmon said. "He moves on very quickly. His goals are far-reaching, career-reaching, lifelong goals."

What are those goals, specifically? Nobody but Tiger knows. Nicklaus' records - 18 professional majors, six Masters titles - are obvious targets. Sam Snead's record of 83 tournament wins is, presumably, in his sights.

How high and how far he wants to push those marks in his quest to be the greatest golfer of all time is Woods' secret.

"They're personal," Earl Woods said. "Your goals are your own. The minute you run 'em around like Phil Mickelson does to the whole damned world, people then have a chance to laugh at you. If you keep them to yourself then you know what you've got and whether you've achieved them or not."

"But you won't even understand his goals. He has to set them so high to make them almost unachievable, even for him. When he was 6 he had the idea of a perfect round of golf with 18 birdies. He said, 'Someday daddy, I'm going to shoot 18 birdies.'

"People always undershoot his goals."

Chip Shots  Tiger Woods has been romantically linked to Elin Nordegren, a former nanny of Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik.  Tiger Woods Scorecard Tiger Woods Player Page

WHEN DOES WOODS drink in what he's already accomplished?

"On a historical level he always knows the significance," Earl said. "I don't know when it sinks in once he achieves it, because he's focusing so hard on the accomplishment of the task at hand - winning the tournament. That's the only thing that's important - winning that tournament. Damn what the reason is. Just win it.

"He'll realize the significance when he breaks Nicklaus' record of majors won, but the ones that come after that he won't realize until he leaves golf."

Not that Woods doesn't appreciate what he's already accomplished in his young career.

"As I've gone throughout the year, I have gained a greater appreciation for four in a row," he said. "It is a pretty neat accomplishment. And to be able to say I've done it, I'm very proud of that."

Friends say Woods' Orlando, Fla., home in Isleworth includes an elaborate trophy case in the upstairs game room with his pool table and home theater. Filling it are trinkets from U.S. Junior Amateurs to various Disneys, Buicks, Deutsche Banks, Tour and Players championships he's gathered along the way to his 30 PGA Tour wins and six international victories.

And in a downstairs room off the kitchen where he watches television, on the mantle over the fireplace, are four trophies that would take any golfer's breath away - the U.S. Open Trophy, the British Open claret jug, the PGA Championship's Wanamaker Trophy and the silver replica of the Augusta National clubhouse given to the Masters champ. For a moment they were all his, alone.

"The coolest looking sight I've ever seen in my life," Harmon said.

Woods allowed only one picture of himself with his major trophy collection to ever be taken. It is reserved for more private eyes.

"It's fun to go over there and kind of enjoy the moment for Tiger," O'Meara said.

Woods never celebrated his achievement in the conventional sense. He didn't take the Stanley Cup route and throw a huge party for everyone to drink out of the Claret jug. That's not his deal.

"Tiger celebrates in his own way - personally with his own friends," Harmon said. "He's very private about that."

But the trophies are up there to catch his eye any time he walks into his kitchen or turns on his TV. They remind him about what he's done and what he still hopes to do.

"We were sitting there watching TV, and I looked up and said, 'It's a beautiful sight, isn't it?"' Harmon said.

"You bet it is," Tiger replied.

Nothing wasted, not even his breath.

 

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