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Back from the Dead Fifteen years after being struck by lightning, Retief Goosen survived a near-fatal putting episode to win
By Alan Shipnuck
Woods forgot to win one of golf's major championships for only the second time since August 1999, and the result was that America's 101st national championship turned into the Castor Oil Open. In a tournament no one wanted to win, three players lost the U.S. Open on the 72nd hole in a burlesque of yippy putting and frayed nerves. The trophy eventually ended up in the hands of Retief Goosen, following a two-stroke playoff victory over Mark Brooks on Monday, but his triumph will forever be overshadowed by the Van de Veldian weirdness in the fourth round. On Sunday evening it took Brooks, Goosen and Stewart Cink a total of nine putts to navigate the 18th green at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa. Brooks blew a seven-footer that, it turned out, would have won the tournament. Cink missed a 15-foot par putt that, in hindsight, would have brought him the trophy. He then shanked a two-footer that would have landed him in the playoff. Goosen, playing in the final twosome with Cink, was the last to putt, and, on cue, he three-jacked from 12 feet, including an agonizing two-foot miss of his own. As Woods had stormed to victory in five of the previous six majors, including an unprecedented four straight going into this Open, there had been much hand-wringing that his dominance might not be good for the sport. Well, we can now say with some certainty that it sure beats the alternatives. "It's the saddest thing I've ever seen in sports," Paul Azinger said on Sunday evening of the gagathon on 18. "I was sick to my stomach," said Rocco Mediate, who finished fourth. Imagine how Brooks feels. He lost the Open twice. "Golf can be a mean game," Brooks said on Monday. Hey, don't feel so bad, Mark, you've got plenty of company on the goat ranch. The USGA deserves some of the blame for the sorry spectacle, as the blue coats butchered Southern Hills's 18th green, letting the grass grow longer after complaints about its speed early in the week. Their tweaking turned every putt into an adventure. While we're at it, let's place some of the blame on Phil Mickelson, Sergio García and David Duval, the young and the majorless who are so good at making paychecks but not history. Woods was gracious enough to grant one of these pretenders a free pass to the winner's circle, but all three recoiled at the enormity of the opportunity. Heck, blame Woods. He opened with a 74 and thereafter would never get closer than within seven strokes of the lead, setting the stage for the theater of the absurd that would follow. The only good to come out of all this is that the 32-year-old Goosen got a second chance. After all, he should have been dead years ago. When he was 17, Goosen was playing with his cousin Henri Potgieter on their home course in Pietersburg, South Africa. On the 7th hole, Goosen pushed his drive into the trees off the fairway, and, as he reached his ball, a bolt of lightning split the sky and zapped both the tree and Goosen. His eyeglasses were blown off his head and landed 30 yards away. The shafts of his clubs were welded together, and the soles of his golf shoes melted. "I ran across the fairway to where Retief was lying, and it was a sight I'll never forget as long as I live," Potgieter said last week from his home in Pretoria, where he stayed up late into the night monitoring the telecasts. "Retief's clothes had been burned off of him. Even his underpants. His eyes had rolled up into his head. He wasn't breathing because he'd swallowed his tongue. The smell of burning hair was overpowering. I was sure that he was dead. I began screaming, calling for help, and by God's will, in the group behind us was a doctor. He pried Retief's tongue out of his throat and began administering CPR." Goosen spent six days in the hospital but was back on the golf course within three weeks. The lightning strike left him with a partial hearing loss in his left ear and an irregular heartbeat, which is controlled through exercise, although Goosen plays as if he doesn't have a pulse. A four-time winner on the European PGA tour, Goosen took control of the Open over his first nine holes in Round 1, with brilliant ball striking that led to a nifty 30. He completed his first round -- a four-under 66 -- on Friday, the suspension of play necessitated by heavy rain and, yes, lightning. ("Retief is the only one of us who doesn't get nervous about the lightning, because he is lucky enough not to remember a thing about that day," says Potgieter.) On Saturday, Goosen didn't have his best fastball but he put on a short-game clinic, getting up and down eight times during a wild 69 that gave him a share of the 54-hole lead at minus-five, along with Cink, one stroke in front of Brooks, García and Mediate. Woods was nine strokes back, and no one knew quite what to make of the situation. "You are always going to be intimidated by Tiger," Goosen said on Saturday night. "A lot of players have gotten used to looking for his name on the leader board, and it has probably affected their play. Tomorrow we'll have to find our own way." Or not. Sunday was a day of bloodletting up and down the leader board. Having smoothed out the rough edges in his buggy-whip swing, the 21-year-old García came into the Open leading the PGA Tour in total driving. On Saturday he hit 12 fairways and shot 68 to move to within one stroke of the lead. Then he collapsed on Sunday. Gripping and regripping the club as if it were coated in Vaseline, he fidgeted his way to a 77, which included a ghastly 33 putts. "I lost a big opportunity," he said, on the verge of tears. "It was my moment. But I guess you have to lose many majors before you can win one." Mickelson can only hope so. He began the final round only two shots off the lead but performed his usual Phil Flop on Sunday, shooting a 75 to fall to seventh, six strokes back. Mickelson, No. 2 in the World Ranking, pays a lot of lip service to challenging Woods, but he doesn't seem to make time to work on the holes in his game. In March he opened the first golf course that he has designed, Whisper Rock in Scottsdale, Ariz., and later this year he and his wife, Amy, will move into a $6 million Xanadu they have been building in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. The evening before the Open began, the Mickelsons even threw a birthday party for their two-year-old daughter, Amanda, complete with a life-sized Barney, a bubble machine and a herd of ponies. Duval lost his cool, and probably the tournament, on the 9th hole on Saturday, when he pitched a hissy fit after not having gotten his way in a rules dispute. One under par at the time, he made bogey on the hole. Duval then came further unhinged on Sunday, shooting a 74 to fall to 16th place. All these wannabes had exited stage right by the time the leaders made the turn for Sunday's back nine, and, until the end, Brooks, Cink and Goosen produced clutch and thrilling golf. One of the game's most creative shotmakers, Brooks held the lead at five under par after saving par by ripping a 234-yard shot pin high on the 16th hole. Goosen caught him on the 15th, trickling in a frighteningly fast downhill 15-footer, the kind of putt he made look routine over the first 71 holes. By that time Brooks had reached the 18th green, where he was about to find out how small the cup gets when the U.S. Open is on the line. Wary of being short from 40 feet, he charged his putt seven feet past the target. Shaken, Brooks left the next one an inch short to bogey and tumble to four under. It was only his second three-putt of the tournament. Shortly thereafter, back at 17, Cink pulled off the shot of the day, sticking a sand wedge within a foot and a half of the hole to catch Goosen at five under. Both hit stout drives onto the 18th fairway, and playing first, Cink launched his approach long and left into the bermuda rough, which was the consistency of steel wool. Goosen followed with a six-iron to 12 feet that, were it not for the ensuing ill-fated two-footer, would surely have passed into Open lore. In the locker room Brooks was stuffing the detritus of his locker into his bag while lazily monitoring the telecast. "I'm trying to get out of here quick," he said. At the sight of Goosen's six-iron shot, he rose without comment and ambled to the rest room. He came back and resumed packing as Cink was playing croquet on the green. "You hate to say it," Brooks would say later, "but once a guy does that, all of a sudden it's like the power of suggestion." Brooks was still packing when Goosen stepped up to his downhill two-footer. (Like those before him, he had misjudged the speed of his first putt.) When the putt slid by on the low side, Brooks jumped to his feet and bellowed, "He didn't just do that, did he?" Yes he did, earning Goosen a place alongside those who have blown majors by choking on short putts, an ignominious group that includes Scott Hoch (1989 Masters), Hubert Green ('78 Masters) and Doug Sanders ('70 British Open). Goosen refused to let one putt break him. Ernie Els, the two-time U.S. Open champion who has been a friend and rival of Goosen's since both were in their early teens in South Africa, says, "The strength of his game is his mind, his ability to hang in there. He's not afraid of anything." On Sunday, Els left a pink Post-It in Goosen's locker with a note scribbled in Afrikaans on it. Rough translation: "Kick ass, boy." Goosen did precisely that on Monday, making three sand saves in the first eight holes and birdieing 9 and 10 while Brooks was making bogey at both, a four-shot swing that all but decided the championship. Over those first 10 holes Goosen took only 12 putts, but he still had a little something to prove as he reached the diabolical 18th green. Nursing a three-stroke lead, Goosen proceeded to leave a 20-foot par putt a knee-knocking six feet short. ("I wasn't going to blast it by the hole again, believe me," he said.) Suddenly all of Southern Hills was holding its breath. Lightning couldn't strike twice, could it? Goosen drilled the putt center cut, closing the books on a rock-solid round of 70. "I was a bit shocked when it went in the hole," he said, speaking for the rest of us, too. Issue date: June 25, 2001
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