Moment of Glory

by John Feinstein

  “When you looked at him, you could always see he had a ton of talent,” Furyk said. “The question was, could he find it again after all the distractions that came with winning the British. The answer turned out to be yes.”

  Micheel continued to play well in 2004, winning just under $1 million, although he didn’t win again. But he wasn’t happy with his play, wondered why he couldn’t contend again, and began to beat himself up for not being a better player.

  “I started hearing every single comment people made and taking them to heart,” Micheel said. “I became really short tempered, which just wasn’t a good way to be. It bothered me when I acted that way, but I did it anyway. It kept getting worse and my play kept getting worse.”

  Micheel’s frustration crested during the opening round of the Honda Classic in March 2005. He felt tired and cranky even though it was a beautiful day in South Florida. “I still remember being on the eighth hole and thinking to myself, ‘What am I doing here? I don’t want to be here, playing golf right now.’

  “I was less than two years removed from winning the PGA and all that came with it, and I didn’t want to play golf? Something was wrong.”

  He ended up shooting 79 that day and withdrew from the tournament—a first for him. He had never withdrawn for any reason other than an injury. He played the next week at Bay Hill but shot another opening-day 79. This time he stuck around to shoot 74 Friday and missed the cut, but he felt as if his body was telling him that something was amiss.

  It was. Testing showed that he had a testosterone deficiency, the good news being that it could be corrected by taking a pill a day to increase his testosterone level. His energy got better but his golf didn’t, although he did finish the year on a positive note, with a tie for fifth place in Jackson, Mississippi. Still, he felt as if he needed some help with his swing and his confidence.

  Often in the past he had gone to see Carmichael. Just prior to the PGA in 2003, Micheel had gone to see Carmichael, and he had made a suggestion about the way Micheel was chipping the ball. “I wasn’t taking a divot,” he said, laughing. “Simple thing, but I wasn’t doing it. Once Sam made that correction, I began to get the ball up and down all over the place.”

  Now, though, he thought he needed someone who was a full-time teacher. As a past PGA champion, Micheel could have gone to almost anyone. Kenny Perry, one of his friends on tour, suggested he talk to Matt Cullen, whom he had been working with for several years. Cullen was young—only twenty-one at the time—but he was a good friend of Perry’s son and had become fascinated with teaching the golf swing while in high school. Perry’s game had clearly flourished since he had starting working with Cullen, so Micheel decided to give it a try.

  “Matt saw things that needed correcting right away,” Micheel said. “It wasn’t like working with a twenty-one-year-old, because he was smart and mature and he had really studied the swing. Almost as soon as we started working together, I began to feel better about what I was doing.”

  Micheel’s game steadily improved throughout the year, peaking, once again, at the PGA, which was held that August at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago. The course reminded Micheel of Oak Hill, and he played well all week. On a par-72 golf course, he finished the week at 275, 13 under par.

  The only problem was that the nonmortal Tiger Woods had reappeared by then. Woods shot an otherworldly 18-under-par 270, beating Micheel by five shots and everyone else by six or more. “I looked at the tape when it was over,” Micheel said. “He made a lot of long putts that last day, otherwise it might have at least been close. But that’s why he’s Tiger Woods. When he’s on, he makes more long putts than anybody.”

  A few weeks after the PGA, Micheel finished seventh at the Deutsche Bank Championship and, thanks to the PGA finish, found himself back in the top 50 in the world. One of his rewards for that was an invitation to play in the World Match Play, the lucrative sixteen-player event held in London every September. As luck would have it, Woods had decided to play that year since there was a World Golf Championships event in Great Britain the next week, followed by the Ryder Cup the week after that at the Belfry, in the English Midlands. And who did Woods draw as his first-round opponent? Shaun Micheel.

  “I was the 15th seed, which means you play the second seed in the first round,” Micheel said. “I had just assumed since Tiger was ranked number one in the world, he would be the first seed. But the way they do it, the defending champion is always seeded number one, regardless of the rankings.”

  That meant Michael Campbell, who had won the event in 2005, was the top seed, and Woods was number two. The match-play event is one of the most grueling in golf: each match is 36 holes, meaning that the two finalists have played 108 holes over three days by the time they tee it up in the final. Of course, playing 108 holes was the least of Micheel’s worries before he played Woods.

  “Not long after we got to London, someone asked Stephanie if she was going to get a chance to shop or go sightseeing,” Micheel said. “She laughed and said, ‘Well, Shaun plays Tiger on Thursday, so we should have plenty of time on Friday.’ I thought to myself, ‘Even my own wife doesn’t think I have a chance!’ ”

  As it turned out Stephanie and everyone else underestimated Micheel. He beat Woods, four and three, closing him out on the 15th hole of the afternoon round. When the match was over, a local radio host conducted a live interview with both players.

  “Tiger,” he said. “There are those who will say we didn’t see the best of you today.”

  To Micheel, the implication was clear: Woods had lost because he hadn’t given 100 percent. Woods looked at the interviewer, eyes narrowed, and said, “Well, then I guess you don’t know me very well.”

  “I liked that answer,” Micheel said. “I thought [the interviewer] insulted us both, and I told him so later. If you know Tiger at all, he always tries. Was he at his very best that day—no. But I was pretty good. I made a lot of putts. I think I was nine under par for the two rounds when the match ended.”

  Micheel continued to make putts the next two days and reached the final. By then he was gassed and lost to Englishman Paul Casey, a rising young player. Still, the whole experience gave him another shot of confidence.

  “At the end of that year, I felt as if I was back to where I was in 2003, or at least close to it,” he said. “I liked working with Matt, I felt good, my putting had come back. I thought I was ready to do some good things, really good things, the next couple of years.”

  That was when he started to feel pain in his left shoulder. At first he didn’t think too much about it, especially because he was still playing well. Every once in a while when he swung, he’d hear a little pop inside the shoulder, but it didn’t hurt that much so he kept on playing, up through the first round at New Orleans in May, when he was paired with Boo Weekley.

  “I can’t remember what hole it was on, but I hit a shot and Boo gave me this funny look and said, ‘Was that you?’ I asked him what he meant. I really thought the popping was something only I could hear or feel. He said, ‘It sounded like your shoulder made a popping sound when you swung.’ ”

  Micheel continued to shrug it off, but when Cullen asked him during a session soon after New Orleans if he had been working with a different teacher, he knew something was seriously wrong. “Without knowing it, I had changed my swing to deal with the pain,” Micheel said. “I was coming up and out from the swing early in order to protect the shoulder. I had no idea until Matt asked me what was going on. At that point, I knew I had a problem.”

  He made the mistake of only getting an x-ray done rather than a more thorough MRI. The x-ray showed nothing. He still made almost $1 million for the year (down from a career high of $1.6 million in 2006) but started 2008 worried that he had a serious problem with his shoulder. He was playing in Charlotte with Zach Johnson, when Johnson turned to him and said, “Shaun, you’ve got to do something about that shoulder. It’s so loud every time you swing, it’s hurting me just to hear
it.”

  Finally, Micheel went in to get an MRI, dreading the results. Sure enough, he had a torn labrum. The only way to get better, the doctor told him, was surgery.

  “I kept putting it off, put it off for way too long,” Micheel said. “When it first began to hurt in 2007, I didn’t want to stop playing because I had just signed new contracts at the end of 2006. I’d gotten lucky that I’d played really well in what was basically a contract year. I didn’t want to let my new sponsors down at that point. Then, in ’08, it was my last year being exempt into all the majors, and I didn’t want to miss that. It was pretty obvious by the Masters [where he missed the cut] that there wasn’t much point in playing when I could barely swing the club.”

  The MRI confirmed that once and for all. Micheel played through Memphis, his hometown tournament—where he missed his 10th cut in 16 starts—and finally had the surgery on June 10.

  As anyone who has ever had shoulder surgery can tell you, the first few weeks were miserable. He had to sleep on the couch, and almost any movement was painful. While he was going through rehab, he got more bad news: his mom had been diagnosed with cancer, and it was far enough along that the doctors were recommending against surgery. She began chemo treatments instead, which weren’t pleasant.

  “She’s dealt with it remarkably well,” Micheel said, not long after playing his first round on the comeback trail in March 2009. “She’s really hung in there and not gotten down about it. All I can do is try to support her, along with my dad, the best I can right now.”

  He wasn’t stunned when he didn’t make enough money to keep his card when his thirteen medical exemption tournaments were over, though he did have one good chance in Reno for a high finish. What was a little disappointing was the negative response he got when he started to write tournament directors for sponsor exemptions. Early in the year, he’d gotten a no from Arnold Palmer’s tournament (an invitational) at Bay Hill, but that was no surprise. “IMG runs the event,” Micheel said. “If you aren’t an IMG client, you probably aren’t getting an exemption.”

  Jack Nicklaus did give him an exemption, in part because he remembered that Micheel had played hurt the previous year. “I remember seeing him, and he said, ‘Shaun, why don’t you withdraw? You’re hurt.’ I said, ‘Mr. Nicklaus, I wouldn’t ever pull out of your event.’ ”

  But when summer rolled around, and Micheel had to start making plans to be a player whose only exemption was as a past tour champion (in that category, there’s no difference between a major and a regular tour event in terms of priority), he began writing letters to tournament directors. After writing in June, he didn’t hear back from the people in Greensboro until the week before the event (mid-August). Sorry, no room at the inn (or on the golf course), he was told. He ended up as the third alternate on his past champion’s status but didn’t get in. Turning Stone—no. Las Vegas—no.

  “Look, I get it,” Micheel said. “In this sport, it’s what have you done for me lately. I’ve always thought I did a pretty good job with people when I was out here, but maybe people remember my temper. I’ve had some moments I’m not proud of, although I’d like to think they’re the exception, not the rule. Still, it’s kind of disappointing.”

  He went to play in Europe in the fall since he was still fully exempt on the European Tour. A major champion is exempt in Europe for ten years. He filled out an entry for Q-School and went back to second stage. He played well there and made the finals, but finished tied for 64th—six shots away from getting fully exempt status back, meaning he would begin 2010 as only a partially exempt player. “There are some days when I think I should just walk away and find something else to do with my life,” he said. “I know I enjoyed the extra time at home with my kids after the surgery. I could get used to that very quickly.

  “But golf is what I’ve done and what I’ve loved and what I’ve done well for as long as I can remember. I still think I’m capable of playing well again. I don’t think I’m rationalizing when I say that the shoulder is what’s put me in this situation. Before I got hurt, I had a great year in ’06 and a pretty good year while I was already feeling the pain in ’07.

  “I should have stopped playing sooner than I did in ’08. I cost myself a lot of chances to play fully exempt and healthy in ’09. But there’s really no point in second-guessing myself now. The question is, what do I want to do in 2010? I can go play in Europe, which is something I’ve enjoyed doing in the past, but that’s going to mean extra travel and more time away from my family.

  “Or I can get into as many tournaments as possible off my past champion’s status, hope I have some luck getting sponsor exemptions, and play a few Nationwide events and a few European events so I’ll stay sharp the weeks I’m not on the tour. That isn’t exactly ideal, but I think I need to make a plan and then stick to it—whatever that plan might turn out to be.

  “I’ve done a lot of thinking about my future these past few months, really since I knew I had to have the surgery. My problem is I tend to overthink everything. Usually you’d think it would be good to think things through completely before you make a decision, but I think them through to the point of paralysis. I need to start to make decisions and take action.”

  He smiled. “I’m forty. If you look at a lot of other guys, there’s no reason why I can’t play well in my forties if I stay healthy. I still love the game, even though it frustrates me sometimes. I think it frustrates us all sometimes—even Tiger.”

  IT WAS TIGER WOODS’S frustration with his swing, even at a time when he was dominating the sport back in 2002, that helped something happen for Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis, and Shaun Micheel in 2003.

  That’s not to say that Woods would have won all four majors that year if he hadn’t decided to change his swing, but in all likelihood he would have been a bigger factor. He never played in the last group on any major weekend that year. He seriously contended once—at the British Open. None of the four winners had to play with him on Sunday, and three of them didn’t even have to think about him.

  As Furyk put it in describing how he felt on Father’s Day morning: “The pressure came from having no excuses if I didn’t win. I had the lead, I felt in control of my game, and Tiger was nowhere in sight. Realistically, I knew he wasn’t going to go out and shoot 61 that day and catch me. It was all on me.”

  Furyk came through. So did the other three winners: Weir ramming home one clutch putt after another including the one on 18 to get into the playoff with Len Mattiace; Curtis making the 10-footer on 18 for par, which he thought he had to make to have a chance at a playoff; Micheel hitting one of the great shots in major championship history on the 18th hole at Oak Hill.

  For each man, the change of life occurred in different ways. Furyk, the established star whom everyone was waiting to see win a major, had to take the smallest step up. He was, as he says, ready for it. Even so, Tabitha Furyk noticed a change in the way she and her husband were viewed on tour.

  “There’s a different level of respect,” she said. “People look at you and know you’re going to be around for a while because your husband has won a major. You’re part of a much smaller club than the club of guys who have won tournaments. You notice it. People do look at you differently and, in some ways, treat you differently.”

  Mike Weir was also an established winner when he won the Masters, though he was not at Furyk’s level. He was already a major celebrity in Canada but not in the United States. He still remembers returning to the tour in Charlotte a few weeks after his victory at Augusta and pulling open his locker upon arriving.

  “There must have been fifty Masters flags put in there by other guys [players] that they wanted signed for charity events,” Weir said. “I did a double take. At that moment I knew that my week-to-week life, even among my peers, was never going to be the same.”

  Even so, what Weir and Furyk went through in terms of change of life pales in comparison to Curtis and Micheel. Half the players on tour had no idea who
Curtis was when he won. Players knew Micheel because he’d been on and off the tour for nine years, but he was considered a guy who’d had a good year if he didn’t have to go back to Q-School. Prior to 2003, he had accomplished that feat twice in his career.

  Since their victories, both Curtis and Micheel have heard many whispering that they were flukes. That’s completely unfair. Pitching a no-hitter, one brilliant day in what is often an ordinary career, is a fluke. Upsetting Roger Federer can be a fluke—a bad day by the greatest tennis player ever or an especially brilliant one by the man pulling the upset. Leading a major championship for 18 holes or even 36 holes is often a fluke, a flash of brilliance by a player never heard from again. That may explain why Billy Andrade didn’t take Micheel that seriously after 36 holes at Oak Hill.

  But winning a major championship—72 holes of golf, the last 18 played under extraordinary pressure because of what is at stake—isn’t a fluke. It may never happen again, but it isn’t a fluke. Consider some other one-time major champions of the past thirty years: Lanny Wadkins, Fred Couples, Davis Love III, Tom Kite, Craig Stadler, Paul Azinger, and David Duval. Wadkins and Kite are in the Hall of Fame; Couples and Love will almost certainly get there. Consider also some players who have never won a major: Kenny Perry, Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott, Chip Beck, and John Cook—all outstanding players who have come close (except for Scott) and never crossed the finish line.

  Not to mention Len Mattiace, Stephen Leaney, Thomas Bjorn, and Chad Campbell, all of whom are still waiting—seven years later—to take that final step and make themselves part of the golfing pantheon.

  As Kite said when he finally won his major, the 1992 U.S. Open at age forty-two, “Now I know what the opening line of my obituary will say: ‘U.S. Open champion.’ ”