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On A Roll With a win at the Western, his third in four starts, Tiger Woods established himself as the man to beat at CarnoustieBy Gary Van Sickle
The last time Eldrick Woods played at Carnoustie, in the 1996 Scottish Open, the storied links proved to be the real tiger. Winds howled at more than 40 mph and Woods, a 20-year-old amateur, shot 81 in the opening round. As he left the scoring trailer with the bottle of whisky given to each competitor, he shook his head, smiled thinly and held up the bottle. "This may be empty by tomorrow," he said jokingly. A different Tiger will return to Carnoustie next week for the British Open, and the sobering facts are that this Tiger is coming -- after a stopover in Ireland for a week of golf and fishing with David Duval, Lee Janzen, Mark O'Meara and Payne Stewart -- with more stripes, sharper claws and a growling stomach. After winning the Motorola Western Open for his third victory in his last four starts, Woods, at 23, will be the man to beat at Carnoustie, which last hosted the Open the year he was born. Woods seems relaxed, as if he finally has everything -- his swing, his putting, his life -- under control. He isn't one to let on when things are going his way, but when asked about the state of his game after winning the Western for the second time in three years, he couldn't help breaking into a 100-watt grin. "Overall, my game is coming around real well," he said. "I like it." What's not to like? In Woods's last five tournaments he has finished tied for seventh (the Byron Nelson Classic); first (the Deutsche Bank in Heidelberg, Germany); first (the Memorial); tied for third (the U.S. Open); and first (the Western). Woods has arrived at that place where Duval just was, the point of harmonic convergence during which golf seems simple and winning comes easily. More tangibly, Woods's three-shot victory over Canadian lefty Mike Weir at Cog Hill, in the Chicago suburb of Lemont, jumped him over Duval and back into the No. 1 spot on the World Ranking, a position Woods had held for 41 straight weeks until dropping to second at the end of March. Winning, though, is more important. "Being Number 1 in '98 and not winning wasn't that great," he says. "I prefer winning." Earlier this year, while Duval was winning four tournaments before the Masters but struggling to supplant Woods atop the ranking, the critics failed to notice that Woods was also playing well, winning the Buick Invitational and also collecting a tie for second (at the Nissan in L.A.), a third (Phoenix) and a pair of ties for fifth (the Mercedes and the World Match Play). Woods wasn't in a slump, as he had been in '98, a transitional year during which he won only once but worked on his technique to become a more consistent player. Woods's path is reminiscent of Duval's once he finally broke through with three wins toward the end of the '97 season. Duval had seven runner-up finishes before those victories, and while some said that he was choking, he maintained that he was building a winning game for the long run. Woods ran the same hurdles last year and earlier this season, and the long-term refinements he has made to his game are starting to pay off. Woods has always looked to improve. "When I first changed my game drastically, I won three U.S. Juniors in a row, something no one else had ever done," Woods says. "Then I went to work with Butch [Harmon in 1994] and said, 'I want a new game.' I knew I needed to improve. We tore down my swing, rebuilt it, and I won three U.S. Amateurs. Then I said, 'You know what? I know I can take it to a new level. Tear it down and build it back up.' That's what we did." The last construction project began, amazingly, not long after Woods's record-setting victory in the 1997 Masters. "I saw some of my swings on videotape and thought, God almighty," Woods says. "I won, but only because I had a great timing week. Anyone can do that. To play consistently from the positions my swing was in was going to be very difficult to do." To the casual observer, the changes Woods has made in his swing are probably unnoticeable. To him, they are dramatic. His backswing is a bit shorter, just short of parallel. His hands are higher at the top of his backswing, or as Woods says, his hands are farther from his head. There are a few other technical differences, but Woods, essentially, has tightened his swing. This has made him more consistent yet still powerful. (He played the 16 par-5 holes at Cog Hill in 12 under and was 15 under overall.) Woods has also elevated his short game. Always pretty good around the greens with a sand wedge, he has moved into the great category. He ranks 20th on Tour in scrambling and 29th in sand saves. At Cog Hill his sand play was exquisite. He made birdie or saved par from bunkers 10 out of 14 times, a ratio that would have been even higher had he not missed some short putts. Woods has always been a streaky putter, and right now he seems to be on a hot streak, moving from 102nd best putter on Tour two months ago to 23rd after the Western. Woods's putter buried his closest pursuer in the third round at Cog Hill. After rolling in a 20-foot bender for birdie at the 16th hole, Woods faced a 20-footer for par at the 18th while Stuart Appleby, in second at the time, had an eight-footer for birdie. In a miss-make scenario, Woods's four-shot lead would have been sliced to two. Instead Woods poured his putt into the middle of the cup and Appleby missed, which prompted the following headline in Sunday morning's Chicago Tribune: CALL THE ENGRAVER.... Unlike with DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN, the Tribune got it right this time, although predicting Woods's 10th Tour victory was hardly going out on a limb considering that he had won on six of the seven previous occasions in which he had led after three rounds. Weir, a 29-year-old second-year player from Sarnia, Ont., who lives in the Salt Lake City area, made a token run at Woods. When Weir sank a 20-footer for birdie at the 7th hole and Woods missed his 18-foot try, Weir was within a shot of the lead. Woods made birdie at the next hole, setting the stage for what turned out to be the decisive blow, at the par-4 10th. Woods drove into the rough and sailed his wedge approach over the green. Weir, playing from the fairway, had a chance to create a two-shot swing but instead dumped his wedge into a bunker. Woods then delivered the fatal shot, hitting a terrific flop shot for a tap-in par. Weir blasted long and missed the comebacker, ending any suspense. Weir made a pair of birdies on the way in to solidify his position behind Woods and establish himself as a player with promise, although he was quick to admit that he's not in the same class as Woods. "How good is Tiger? He's great," Weir said. "He has shots in his bag that I don't have. When you can step up at the 15th [a 519-yard par-5] and knife a three-iron in there, and I have to hit a good drive and a three-wood just to get to the front of the green, that's impressive." The $270,000 Weir earned capped the best week of his career and guaranteed that he won't have to return to Q school for a sixth straight year. Two days before the Western, Weir won $143,000 in the Canadian Skins game in Mont Tremblant, Que., against Duval, Fred Couples and John Daly. He birdied six holes in a row and had a score of 61. "That event helped me because in skins you learn to put the last hole behind you," says Weir. "You focus on the next hole because there could be a big carryover." Weir played well in the sweltering heat and humidity at Cog Hill -- his closing 70 was the fourth-best round of the day and a shot better than Woods's score -- but over the four days Tiger was simply too much for anyone to handle. Even as he completed his week with an uncharacteristic bogey, Woods was spectacular. He drove into a fairway bunker at the 72nd hole, blasted back to the fairway, then flew a wedge shot past the flag, spinning it back like a yo-yo toward the pin. The crowd roared when Woods's ball caught a piece of the cup on the way past the hole. Woods has long been a favorite in Chicago, ever since he won the Western Amateur in nearby Benton Harbor, Mich., in 1994. When he won the Western Open two years ago, thousands of excited fans poured onto the 18th fairway on Sunday and marched with him up to the green. Vigilant marshals and energy-sapping heat prevented a repeat of that scene last week, and at the awards ceremony Woods kiddingly said he was disappointed. Then he thanked his many Chicagoland fans. "Every single time I come here I get good vibes," he said. You can bet he's beginning to feel good about Carnoustie, too. Issue date: July 12, 1999
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