Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open

by Rocco Mediate

  He played extremely well at the inaugural Tiger Woods tournament, held at Congressional Country Club outside Washington, a past and future U.S. Open course. He shot 66 on the last day to tie for sixth, which put him over $1 million in earnings for the year, the first time he had hit that figure since 2003.

  “Interesting the three courses I played really well on the first half of that year,” he said. “Riviera, Bay Hill, and Congressional — all very tough courses, places where you have to strike the ball well to have a chance. Riviera and Congressional have had majors, and Bay Hill is probably good enough to have one if they wanted to go to the trouble.

  “That’s always been me when I’m healthy: I strike the ball as well as anybody. It had been a long while since I had felt as if I could do that. At Bay Hill, I led the field in one category: greens hit in regulation. When I’m playing well, that’s what I do — I hit greens. If I make a few putts, not even a lot of putts necessarily, just a few, then I score.”

  He was disappointed that he didn’t qualify for the U.S. Open, because it was at Oakmont and he very much wanted to play there. But his outlook was so positive at that point that he didn’t get down about it. “I just knew good things were coming,” he said. “I could feel it. Cindi was a big part of it, not just because she was keeping my back working, but because she had so much confidence in me. Every time she told me I could do something, I believed I could do it.”

  Cindi had played a good deal of golf (to a handicap of about 15) before her health had forced her to give it up, and her understanding of the game made it easier for Rocco to talk to her about ups and downs in his game — completely separate from their discussions about his health.

  “I had a comfort level talking to her I hadn’t had in a long time,” he said. “It was as if my whole career was starting over again.”

  ___

  ROCCO PLAYED WELL FOR A ROUND at the Buick Open at the end of June, leading after 18 holes before falling back to finish tied for 62nd. Still, he was feeling good about his game and decided to take a week off before the PGA Championship, which was being held at Southern Hills, the same golf course where he had finished fourth in the Open in 2001.

  “I was really excited about playing there,” he said. “My kind of golf course, plus I knew I could play well there under pressure, because I had done it before.”

  He flew to Los Angeles ten days before the PGA was scheduled to start and, on Sunday morning, drove to Los Angeles Country Club to play golf.

  “I got out of the car and was about to walk into the clubhouse, when I remembered that I had left my coffee in the car,” he said. “I turned to get it, tried to stand up after I had reached for it, and it happened again. I went down; I mean, I did a face-plant right next to the car. It was amazing I didn’t really hurt myself just on the fall.

  “I was lying there and realized I wasn’t going to be able to get myself up. I reached into my pocket for my phone, and all of a sudden, for some reason, it occurred to me that you weren’t supposed to use cell phones in the parking lot. So I somehow texted my buddies inside to come and get me.”

  They came and got him up and managed to bring him back to Riviera, where he was staying for the week. He didn’t want to bother Cindi at home on a Sunday morning, but she called him. When he told her what had happened, she told him to come over to the house right away. He said, no, he wasn’t coming on a Sunday morning. She insisted.

  “The first problem was getting to my car,” he said. “It was about seventy-five yards from the front door to where I was parked, and I swear it took me an hour to get there. It was really bad — by far the worst it had felt since she had started working on me.

  “I didn’t really feel right going over there, especially on a Sunday morning,” he said. “She worked on me for a couple of hours and said something was seriously wrong and she thought we needed to go see a doctor. I told her, ‘No, you’ll just work on it again tomorrow and I’ll be fine.’

  “Well, she did. I went to her clinic, and when I left it felt okay. Then it went again that afternoon. I called her and said, ‘Make an appointment with the doctor.’ ”

  The next day Rocco went to see Dr. Tom Knapp, who did an MRI on the back. “Cindi was convinced I had some kind of tear in there and that was why she couldn’t fix it,” he said. “Sure enough, the pictures come back and I’ve got something called a transforaminal disk herniation at L1 in the side of the back. As soon as she saw the picture, I could see her getting upset. It was exactly what she had thought it was when she worked on me on Monday.”

  “I thought he was going to need surgery,” she said. “It had nothing to do with his disk; it was in a different spot than his previous surgical level [which had been at L2/L3]. But Tom [Knapp] seemed to think it might be treatable with a shot. Other than the pain of getting the shot, there was nothing to lose by trying.”

  The next morning Rocco was given the injection, which was painful enough that he was given a local anesthetic beforehand. “I remember I practically jumped off the table when he put the needle in,” Rocco said. “He told me he had to shoot the steroid into me right on the spot where the tear was, and that meant the needle had to go in right on that spot. He actually felt around with the needle until he found the spot that made me jump and he said, ‘That’s where we need to go.’

  “He gave me the shot in the morning, and that afternoon I wanted to go hit balls. [Cindi wouldn’t let him.] I knew, long-term, the thing I needed to do was rest and let the tear heal. But I really wanted to play Southern Hills, so we flew out there so I could give it a try.”

  He lasted 27 holes. On Thursday, he played well, shooting 71. But playing the back nine to start his round on Friday, he began to feel some pain. “I was still around the cut line, but Cindi saw something she didn’t like,” he said. “On the 17th hole she walked over to me and said, ‘You’re done. We need to get you out of here before you hurt yourself.’ I told her I wanted to at least play the 18th hole. So I did and I chipped in for birdie. At least no one could claim I walked off because I was mad or not playing well. At that moment I was inside the cut line.

  “Still, I hate walking off in midround, especially at a major. Cindi said to me: ‘We now have a new goal: to keep you from ever having to walk off a golf course again.’ ”

  The reason Cindi wanted him off the golf course that day had more to do with his knee than his back. “I knew his back was okay,” she said. “But there was a muscle memory problem. He was still compensating in his stance, thinking he needed to even though he didn’t. He’d been having a meniscus problem with his knee, and I was afraid he might really hurt it if he kept compensating on a hard golf course like that.”

  They flew back to L.A., where Rocco rested and Cindi continued to work on his back every day. A few weeks later, he was able to play in the first three events in the new FedEx Cup playoffs, which he had qualified for with his play during the year. He was hardly brilliant — finishing 75th, tied for 52nd, and tied for 30th — but the back held up through twelve rounds of golf in eighteen days, which was a good sign.

  He finished the year with $1,166,294 in earnings, good for 78th place on the money list. That meant he would begin 2008 as a fully exempt player and, he hoped, with a fully healthy back.

  “I figured if I could stay healthy for an entire year, I could still play very well,” he said. “I’d only been healthy in spurts in ’07, and even with that I had played better than any year since ’03, which was the last time I’d been able to really play a full schedule.

  “I was excited to start ’08. I thought it might be a special year.”

  9

  Not So Special

  FOR ALL THE HIGH HOPES ROCCO BROUGHT to the start of 2008, there was also a good deal of pressure.

  His contract with Callaway, which had provided him a nice chunk of off-course income ($250,000 annually) for many years, was up at the end of the year. He knew with the golf economy tightening that all the manufacturers were lookin
g to cut costs.

  “When that happens, they don’t cut back on Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson,” he said. “They cut back on the middle-class guys — like me.”

  Rocco had the advantage of being well-liked by the Callaway people, and he also knew that they didn’t look at him as just another middle-of-the-road player because of his personality. Still, he knew he couldn’t afford an injured year or an off-year if he expected Callaway to re-up, especially for numbers comparable to what he had been paid in the past.

  A good start to the year would have been nice. It would have made him breathe easier about Callaway and, obviously, cashing big checks made things a lot simpler.

  “So of course I start out the year not being able to play at all,” he said. “I never do things the easy way. It just wouldn’t be me if I did.”

  His first three tournaments produced missed cuts. In Hawaii and in San Diego he played well on Thursday — shooting 69 each time — and then poorly on Friday — 75 in Hawaii and 77 in San Diego. In between, at the Bob Hope, he was consistently mediocre, shooting six under par for four rounds at an event where the cut, which comes after 72 holes in a 90-hole tournament, is usually no less than 10 under par.

  He was most frustrated by the way he played in San Diego, since the tournament site was Torrey Pines, which was where the U.S. Open was to be played in June. “I knew the golf course would be different in June because the weather would be different and because the USGA’s setup would be a lot different than what we saw in January,” he said. “But it would have been good for my confidence to play well there.”

  He laughed. “I don’t think it hurt Tiger to win there for a sixth time. Even if a golf course is playing differently, it helps to have had some success there. I had never had success there. Of course at that point, I wasn’t even in the Open, and the way I was going, it wasn’t likely that I was going to have to worry about how I played Torrey Pines in June.”

  He finally made a cut in Phoenix, on a golf course where he had enjoyed great success, including his win there in 1999. The good news was that he played well on a Friday — shooting 69 — but he couldn’t get anything going on the weekend. He shot a one-over-par 72 the last day to finish in a tie for 50th.

  “I made fourteen thousand,” he said. “It felt like a million just because I had a check to cash. I was hoping that making a cut was a start.”

  Phoenix was also the first event in which Matt Achatz caddied for him. The idea of asking Achatz, who had never caddied on the PGA Tour before, to come out to Phoenix and work was Cindi’s.

  “I’d met Matt in Naples when he was working at Calusa Pines Golf Club [the golf course where Rocco often played in Naples], and he caddied for me a fair bit there,” Rocco said. “I liked him and thought he was good, but it wasn’t until after he worked for me at Tiger’s event at the end of ’07 that the idea of him coming out even came up.”

  Achatz was thirty-three. He had been a mini-tour player, one of those very good golfers who just wasn’t good enough to make a living playing the game. He had been caddying for several years at high-end clubs — East Hampton Country Club on Long Island in the summer and Calusa in the winter.

  He had decided at the end of the summer of 2007 to try something different that winter and had landed a job at Sherwood Country Club, outside Los Angeles. When he saw something in the paper mentioning that Rocco was going to play in the pro-am of Woods’s event, which was being held at Sherwood, he called him.

  “I asked him if he was bringing his regular caddy out,” Matt said. “He said he wasn’t, so I asked him if he’d like me to work for him. He said yes. But I never thought it would lead to anything.”

  Cindi liked Matt right away, and when she suggested Rocco ask him to come on tour, Rocco decided to give it a shot. “It was a tryout at first,” he said. “But I could see right away that he knew what he was doing, he was going to work hard, and we liked each other. So we decided to make it permanent.”

  Matt helped him make his first cut, but he wasn’t a cure-all. A week later Rocco missed the cut at Pebble Beach. A tie for 62nd in Los Angeles meant that he had played six West Coast tournaments and made a little more than $27,000, which left him 166th on the money list.

  “I actually hit the ball better in Los Angeles,” he said. “I hit a lot of greens, which is why I made the cut. But I couldn’t make any putts at all.”

  IT WAS AFTER LOS ANGELES that he decided to try the long putter again after almost a year with a conventional putter. “Cindi thought I could afford to try the conventional putter again because my back was doing well,” he said. “When I got off to the bad start, I was convinced it was my putting, so I wanted to try something that had worked for me in the past.”

  He stuck with the long putter through Florida because he wasn’t completely convinced it was time to change. Things didn’t go much better, though, over the next few weeks: two more missed cuts and then, most disappointingly, a missed cut at Bay Hill, where he had staged his comeback a year earlier with his second-place finish.

  “To be honest, I was getting very frustrated and very nervous,” he said. “I had never really had a slump like that in my entire career when I was healthy. Most of the time when I missed a bunch of cuts it was because I wasn’t healthy. Now the back felt absolutely fine, and I wasn’t hitting the ball well. Even when I did hit it a little bit better, I couldn’t make anything, and if you don’t make putts you can’t score.

  “What kept me going was that Cindi kept telling me I was going to be fine. She knew I was going to play well sooner or later as long as my back didn’t hurt, and she was completely convinced she could keep my back from hurting. Her confidence gave me confidence.”

  That confidence was being imparted by phone during March. Cindi was in the hospital and Rocco was taking care of his back by himself for the first time in a year. But though the back held up, his game did not.

  “I think he’d gotten used to me being there by then — not just to work on his back but being on the golf course, being the one who started every day saying, ‘Hey, it’s going to be a great day,’ ” Cindi said. “I might be a little bit Pollyanna at times, but I think he needed that, since he was so pessimistic so much of the time.”

  Cindi was healthy enough to travel to Hilton Head in April. She had been counseling Rocco all through Florida to think about going back to the conventional putter. “I didn’t think his problem had been putting,” she said. “He wasn’t hitting the ball as crisply as he did when he was playing his best when we were on the West Coast. Plus, he had a lot on his mind. I think that was it as much as anything.”

  It was after the first round at Hilton Head that the long putter got shelved again. “I hit the ball great all day and I didn’t make a thing,” Rocco said. “I shot three over [74] and I really should have been more like three under,” he said. “I think I had 12 three-putts that day.”

  That was a Rocco exaggeration but not by much. After the frustrating round was over, Rocco, Cindi, and Matt went to the putting green. “I’m begging you,” Cindi said. “You’ve got that Sabertooth putter in Matt’s car. Try it. You can’t possibly get any worse.”

  Rocco agreed. He sent Matt out to the car for the putter. “I put five balls down from 10 feet and made all five of them,” he said. “After that, it was a pretty easy decision. Of course the putting green and the golf course are two different things.

  “First nine holes the next day I shot 31. Made everything I looked at. The back felt fine; it was no problem — which was especially nice, since it was exactly a year ago I’d had to withdraw because of it. I knew I wasn’t going to putt like that every day, but I just decided to stick with it for a while and see what would happen.”

  He ended up shooting 65 on Friday, reversing what had been the norm for the year — good Thursday, bad Friday — and made the cut with room to spare. He ended up in a tie for 36th place, nothing to throw a party over, but his best finish of the year. “I was still inconsistent from tee
to green at that point,” he said. “That’s always the key to my game. Even though I was putting better, I wasn’t getting myself in position to shoot a low number as often as I would have liked. Still, I was starting to feel as if I was pointed in the right direction. I knew, as long as I was healthy, that sooner or later I was going to start to hit the ball better.”

  He made three of the next four cuts but was spending the weekends eating what the pros call “rabbit food.” It’s a term players use to describe those who tee off early on Saturday and Sunday — they’re good enough to make the cut, but not in serious contention, meaning they aren’t going to be making the big money that leads to big steak dinners. Rocco was dining on a lot of carrots and celery in the month of May but was glad that he at least had a seat at the weekend table. Still, when he arrived at Jack Nicklaus’s tournament, the Memorial, in early June, the 36th place at Hilton Head was still his highest finish of the year.

  “I think I had made about a hundred dollars all year,” he said.

  In truth, he had made just under $120,000 in fifteen tournaments for the year, putting him in 178th place on the money list.

  The week of the Memorial was an important one for Rocco. Muirfield Village, the Nicklaus-designed golf course that the Memorial is played on, is one of the tougher layouts on the PGA Tour, which was usually good for Rocco. What’s more, on the Monday after the tournament, he would be joining many of his fellow pros in the 36-hole U.S. Open qualifier that would be held on two golf courses not far from Muirfield Village.

  “I really wanted to make the Open,” he said. “I’d missed it the year before and I’d missed the cut the year before that at Winged Foot. I had no excuses. I was healthy and there just wasn’t any reason for me not to play well enough to make it through the qualifier. I knew it was a tough day, 36 holes is always tough, but I’d done it before and I knew I could do it again.