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Odds-on favorite Woods expected to win every event he enters
Posted: Sunday February 13, 2000 08:31 PM
LA JOLLA, Calif (AP) -- This was a pause, not a full stop. Tiger Woods did not win the Buick Invitational on Sunday. But he won it last year. And he will be the odds-on favorite to win it next year, too. Woods will not be the defending champion next week, when the PGA Tour moves up the coast to Los Angeles for the Nissan Open. He will not have The Streak to defend, either. But he finished second there last year and he will be the favorite there this time around, too. The same is true for the Match Play Championship the week after that, the Masters in six weeks after that, and every tournament that Woods' entry fee arrives postmarked by midnight of the appropriate date. In fact, it was never more true than at that moment when Phil Mickelson picked up the winner's crystal and pocketed the $540,000 check, the very same moment that The Streak officially came to an end. "I think," Woods said very matter-of-factly, "it can be done again." This was not bragging. What Mickelson accomplished was huge, and perhaps nobody appreciated it more than Woods himself. The left-hander was playing in front of a home crowd and pulled himself out of a loss that had career-crushing written all over it. In doing so, Mickelson accomplished what 150 or so other seasoned, hardworking, weightlifting, thoroughly devoted professionals have been unable to do for weeks. He stood up to Tiger Woods. He broke his momentum. But make no mistake: He did not break Woods. In fact, he barely slowed him down. Instead of having his confidence shaken by the loss, Woods said it had merely been stirred. "I actually feel more confident than I did at the beginning of the week because of how I played. You saw how poorly I hit it at times," he said. "Just to scramble and get it around and hang in there, to get up and down as many times as I did and give myself a chance to win, you've got to be proud of yourself. "I didn't back off, I didn't dog it out there." For all its drama, the battle on the back nine at Torrey Pines resembled a NBA floor at least as much as a golf course. You've seen the same scenario unfold a hundred times. One team runs out to a big lead, much like Mickelson's six-stroke advantage at the start of the final round, then stumbles when it's time to answer the other team's comeback. Woods knocked one stroke off the deficit with a birdie at the opening hole. But he needed a fortuitous bounce off a lawn chair three yards into the rough on the left side of the fairway to kick his tee shot back into the fairway first. Everybody else assumed that was an omen, the prelude to another fantastic finish. It was an omen, all right, but only Woods interpreted it correctly. He knew it meant he would be fighting his swing all day, the same way he had over all four days. Yet, for all that, Woods ran off back-to-back birdies at Nos. 12 and 13 and the gleam in his eye returned, even if his swing did not. Those birdies also erased what had been a seven-shot deficit at its largest and enabled Woods to pull even with Mickelson, who was struggling to keep the wheels on and the car pointed down the center of the road. He hadn't won in 18 months. He was supposed to be one of the young lions who would challenge Woods' ascension to the top and instead he wound up as the first victim on Tiger's run of six straight PGA wins. While leading the Phoenix Open two weeks ago, Mickelson shot 40 on the final nine and got passed by a handful of players. His final day scoring average ranked him 134th on the Tour last year, and who knows how many more places another spectacular crash would have plunged him this season. The question became moot when Mickelson put the two double-bogeys earlier in the round behind him looked Woods, the best closer in golf, right in the eye. As Tiger stumbled toward his first bogey of the day one hole ahead, Mickelson threw a nine iron to within 2 feet of the flag at No. 13. The small shift in momentum whipsawed Woods big-time. It released the nervous tension he struggled with all day. It made him revisit the fatigue he staved off week after week while stringing together a half-dozen wins around the globe, sometimes in the most improbable ways. He hit a wall, the way every team does when forced to come from behind one too many times. Mickelson, meanwhile, was invigorated. He made another quick birdie, Woods another quick bogey and soon enough, both men were smiling as they headed down the stretch. But for vastly different reasons. "To go against the best player in the world and come out on top means a lot," Mickelson said. Someone asked Tiger if his smile signaled relief. "Uh-uh. I wish I could say that. But I can't be too excited about finishing second."
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