Posted: Wed October 1, 1997
Tiger Woods never fails to make an impression. Unfortunately what we
will remember about his first Ryder Cup is not the
passionate uppercuts that often follow his heroics. The
searing memory is of Woods standing on the back of
Valderrama's 17th green, hand on hip,
shaking his head ever so slightly and looking, perhaps for
the first time in his golfing life, sheepish. It happened
last Saturday during the
four-balls. Nick Faldo and Lee Westwood had Woods and his partner,
Mark O'Meara, dormie. Woods had a 35-foot eagle putt down a
severely pitched green to a hole cut just two paces from a
slick bank that plunges toward a pond. With Westwood and
Faldo both staring at
short eagle putts, Woods had to make his or the match would
be over. As Woods's putt plunged toward the hole, a buzz
began to build in the crowd, for his ball obviously had too
much steam. It skidded past the cup and down the bank and
then, like Woods
and O'Meara's salvation, disappeared into the
water.
It was an impossible putt. That it rolled into the drink
meant nothing, and everything.
It's no longer news when Woods fails to win. Seve
Ballesteros may have called it in advance, saying,
"Tiger Woods is a good player, but we have 12 guys who
can beat him." He struggled throughout the summer on
the Tour, winning only one tournament after
May, and was a nonfactor in the final three majors. Still,
it was a shock to see Woods crash so spectacularly. After
his first match, a four-ball victory in which O'Meara
carried him against Colin Montgomerie and Bernhard Langer,
Woods, the only American
to play five matches, lost three and tied one. Of his 82
holes Woods won 11, lost 19 and halved 52. (Among the
Americans only Brad Faxon took fewer holes, though his
winning percentage was considerably higher than Woods's.)
Even more out of character
than rinsing a putt was how little fight Woods showed in
losing his singles match to Costantino Rocca. Rocca is the
anti-Tiger, a
shlump who worked in a factory until he was 23 and whose success
will always be measured by the putt he missed to lose the
'93 Ryder
Cup.
On Sunday, Rocca came out fighting, taking the 1st hole
with a birdie, then the 3rd with a par. Rocca was 3 up
after five, and then on the par-4 9th he stepped on Tiger's
neck. Forced to punch out after an errant drive, Rocca left
himself a 20-footer
for par while Woods had a three-foot par putt of his own.
Rocca made his, Woods missed, and the match was all but
over. "He hooped it," Woods said. "That was
a big momentum
breaker."
By the end of the week Woods's invincibility was just a
memory. "The Ryder Cup is much more difficult and
demanding than I thought it would be," he said on
Sunday, "and so is playing team golf."
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