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

by Rocco Mediate

  Standing on the 18th tee, now one under par for the championship, Rocco wanted badly to finish the day with a birdie. “The only way for me to have a chance to go at the green is to really blast a drive,” he said. “I had to hit my draw and get it out there in the fairway to have any chance. If I miss, it isn’t that big a disaster; it just means I have to lay up. I went after that drive a little bit.”

  He hit it perfectly — not well, perfectly.

  “One of the best drives of my life,” he said. “I really drilled it. Even so, I still had 248 to the front and 266 to the hole, and I had to stand there in the fairway and think for a moment if I wanted to take a shot at it. The last thing I wanted to do was miss the shot a little bit, end up in the water, make six, and shoot 40 on the back nine. That would not have been good. But I really thought I could get the three-wood there and I could aim it a little bit right to stay away from the water, so I decided to go for it.”

  The gamble paid off when he bounced the ball onto the green, leaving himself a 35-foot eagle putt. He hit a good first putt, leaving himself about two feet — his shortest birdie putt of the first two days. He knocked that one in to finish the day at even-par 71: two-under-par 33 on the front nine, two-over 38 on the back. There had been three birdies (2, 4, and 18) and three bogeys (10, 12, and 17).

  “If I had parred the 18th, it still would have been a pretty good round, and I certainly would still have been in contention,” Rocco said. “But finishing with a birdie always feels good, especially when you’ve bogey-trained it for a while before that. I was very happy with where I was walking off that green.”

  He was not the only one of the three players in his group who would play the weekend. As is often the case for the Senior Open champion, the golf course was just too long for Brad Bryant. He shot 77–79 to miss the cut by seven shots. Michael Thompson, though, had no trouble with the length of the golf course and managed his game surprisingly well for an inexperienced twenty-two-year-old. He followed his opening day 74 with a 73 that put him comfortably inside the cut line.

  Rocco was extremely impressed with the youngster, who had just finished his senior year at the University of Alabama.

  “As we were going up the 18th fairway, I called him over and I said, ‘Let me tell you what I want you to change before you turn pro: nothing.’ I liked his golf swing; I liked his demeanor. I think he’s got great potential.”

  Thompson proved Rocco right on the weekend, adding a 73 and a 72 to finish tied for 29th place, making him the low amateur among the three who made the cut.

  At the moment that he finished his round, Rocco was tied for the lead with Appleby, who still had two holes to play, at two under par. Even though the Woods-Mickelson-Scott group was only about forty minutes from finishing, it was a no-brainer to bring the Open coleader after 36 holes into the interview room. Along with Cindi, Rocco jumped into a cart to make the trip to the media tent. They were both fired up. He was halfway through the Open, and no one in the 156-man field was ahead of him.

  “On the one hand, I’d played enough golf tournaments to know halfway through is only halfway through,” he said. “On the other hand, it had only been a couple weeks since I shot a million on the front nine in the third round of the Memorial and thought I had no chance to make the Open, much less be in contention. So right then I was feeling pretty good.”

  His session in the media room was lengthy — eighteen questions in all, meaning he stayed about twenty-five minutes — and his answers were predictable Rocco stuff: He was excited to be in contention in his favorite tournament, he loved the setup, his back felt good, he was comfortable with the conventional putter.

  Naturally, he was asked the inevitable Tiger question. His answer surprised most of the people in the room. He said all the things you are supposed to say about Woods, but then he added a thought most players would not have added.

  “You want him in this event,” Rocco said. “You don’t want him seven over par or something. If you’re going to win this tournament, it would be great to go up against him and maybe somehow, you never know… But to go up against the best, whether you win or lose, it’s just — you get to go up against the best. That’s what I like.

  “I don’t have many more shots at this or playing golf with him. If I do this weekend, I don’t know how the pairings will go, but that’s what you want as a player, is to see what you’ve got against the man. And then you’ve got the golf course too, that you have to deal with, which is as hard as they get.

  “That’s what I always relish — the opportunity to play with the best player in the world. And I don’t know why you wouldn’t. You just never know sometimes.”

  Most players, though they might not admit it, hardly relished the notion of going head-to-head with Woods ever, much less at a major championship on the weekend. The tone for Playing with Tiger in a Major had been set in 1997, when Colin Montgomerie trailed Woods by three shots going into the third round at the Masters. On Friday afternoon, Montgomerie had expressed confidence that his experience would pay dividends when paired with the kid playing in his first major.

  Twenty-four hours later, Montgomerie was singing a different tune after Woods beat him by nine shots — 65 to 74. At that point, Woods led the field by eight shots. A year earlier, Greg Norman had led the Masters by six shots after three rounds only to collapse in the final round while Nick Faldo went past him to win by five shots. Someone asked Montgomerie if a similar rally by Constantino Rocca, who was second to Woods, was possible.

  Montgomerie might still have been shell-shocked from his afternoon with Woods, but he hadn’t lost his biting sense of humor. “There is no way that’s going to happen,” he said. “With all due respect, Rocca is not Nick Faldo, and this young man [Woods] is by no means Greg Norman.”

  Those words echoed through the years as one player after another faded when paired with Woods late in a major. Mike Weir, who would win the Masters in 2003, was paired with Woods in the final group of the final round during the 1999 PGA. He shot 80 that day.

  “It’s just not something you can prepare yourself for,” Weir said. “It’s a little bit of everything: the pressure of contending in a major, the crowds, just the presence Tiger has. It’s not like anything else you experience in golf.”

  Two players had managed to hold their own paired with Woods on the last day of a major, and neither was a star: Bob May had shot 66 at the 2000 PGA before losing in a three-hole playoff, and Chris DiMarco, who had actually caught Woods from behind on the last two holes at the Masters in 2005, only to lose when Woods birdied the first sudden-death playoff hole.

  “Most guys, if they’re being honest, will tell you they’d rather play a group or two in front of him or, maybe even better, behind him,” said Davis Love III, who had also experienced the Tiger Effect. “He’s not an easy guy to stare down.”

  And yet here was Rocco, saying he would relish the chance. Most people listening thought it was a nice little speech. Few believed he would do much better than anyone else had if he actually did get the chance to go head-to-head with Tiger.

  As it turned out, he would not have that chance on Saturday. Appleby made a 70-foot putt for birdie on the 18th hole to add a one-under-par 70 to his opening-round 69. That put him at three under for the championship and in the lead by himself. Rocco was one shot back and, since he had been the first person to post a two-under-par score, he would play in the final group with Appleby. When players are tied after two or three rounds, the first player to finish is the last player out when pairings are done for the third or fourth round.

  After his birdie binge, Woods parred six, seven, and eight. He actually had reasonably good chances to make birdie at the seventh and the eighth but, proving he is occasionally human, missed. Then he hit a huge second shot at the ninth hole, which led to his fifth birdie of the back nine. That meant he had shot 30 on the front nine for a round of 68, matching the low round of the championship over the first two days. It put him in a tie
for second place, one shot back of Appleby, along with Rocco and Robert Karlsson of Sweden. One shot further back were four players: Spanish Ryder Cupper Miguel A. Jiminez; Great Britain’s Lee Westwood, also a past Ryder Cup star; D. J. Trahan, an up-and-coming American player; and Davis Love, the 1997 PGA champion who had been battling injuries and, like Rocco, had been forced to go through qualifying to get into the tournament. Among the five players one shot behind them at even par were past Open champions Ernie Els and Geoff Ogilvy.

  The pairings for Saturday would be Rocco and Appleby in the final group and Woods and Karlsson right in front of them.

  The front nine on Friday afternoon had not gone nearly as well for the other two players in Woods’s threesome. (Many people refer to players paired together as “playing partners,” which is a misnomer. They are competing against one another and, thus, can’t be partners. “Fellow competitor” is more accurate).

  Scott, although insisting that his hand really wasn’t an issue, was clearly struggling. He managed to shoot 73 again, which left him at four-over-par 146, seven shots behind Appleby. Mickelson was also at 146 after shooting 75 on Friday. Given his relationship with Woods, watching him post the 30 while he was adding a 37 to his back nine 38 had to be painful. The two men had been tied after 27 holes, then Woods had blown Mickelson away — by seven shots — during their final nine together.

  Like any great player, Mickelson almost never sees himself as being out of contention. During a brief appearance in the flash area after the round, he admitted he was disappointed but said he still believed if he could get back to even par on Saturday — which would mean shooting 67, a round no one had posted yet — he would have a chance to win on Sunday. Doggedly, he insisted that the pairing had been “really fun.”

  That wasn’t exactly the way it appeared to others after the group finished on the ninth green. Lee Janzen was playing in a threesome directly behind the Big Three and was waiting in the fairway while they putted out.

  “To be honest, I was so wrapped up in trying to get something going with my own game [he missed the cut by four shots] that I spent most of two days almost unaware of what those guys were doing. But on Friday afternoon, when Tiger got on that roll, you couldn’t help but hear the roars. I mean, they practically engulfed the entire golf course.

  “Watching them on nine, I noticed when they finished that Tiger and Adam had a nice handshake [even though Scott had to use his left hand] and kind of chatted for a minute. Tiger and Phil were practically running when they shook hands. I have to think, especially in his hometown, that was tough for Phil.”

  Because they had been in the same group and shot the same score, Mickelson and Scott would be paired together again on Saturday. They would be the 21st of 40 twosomes to tee off that day. Eighty players had made the cut thanks to the fact that the USGA still uses the “10-shot rule,” meaning anyone within 10 shots of the leader after two rounds plays the weekend. Most golf tournaments cut to 70 players and ties. The USGA takes either 60 and ties or all those within 10 of the lead, which often makes for an unwieldy weekend. The only other tournament in the world that still employs the 10-shot rule is the Masters, but the field there is rarely more than 90 players at the start of the week. The British Open abandoned the 10-shot rule after the 1995 championship, when 103 players made the cut. The Royal and Ancient, which administers the Open, decided that risking that many players on the golf course for the weekend — not to mention paying them all post-cut money — wasn’t worth the trouble.

  Among the 76 players who missed the Torrey Pines cut was 2007 champion Angel Cabrera, who shot 79 the first day to knock himself out of any chance to defend his title. Cabrera might have been done in by the laws of San Diego County. All municipally owned venues in San Diego County are smoke-free — no smoking allowed at all. That includes Torrey Pines.

  Cabrera had been a smoker for years. After winning at Oakmont, he had been asked about his smoking. “Some guys have swing coaches and psychologists,” he answered. “I smoke.” Knowing he would not be able to smoke on the golf course at Torrey Pines, Cabrera had quit smoking earlier in the year. He had not been the same player since. Coincidence? Perhaps.

  Because there were so many players inside the cut line, the first tee time would be at 8:30 A.M. Pacific time on Saturday — even with the round scheduled to end at 7 P.M., 10 P.M. on the East Coast. Mickelson and Scott had an 11:50 tee time. That was three hours before Woods and Karlsson, who would tee off at 2:50. Ten minutes later, the final group, Appleby and Rocco, would tee it up.

  That meant NBC would get its wish: Woods playing more than half his round in prime time on a Saturday night in the east. You could bet that America would have the chance to watch Woods from the moment he got out of his car until his last putt went in the hole. Rocco would also get some TV time. But the focus, 36 holes into the Open, was clearly on the man with the sore knee.

  “If I was at home watching, that’s who I’d want to see too,” Rocco said.

  He would not be home watching. His view of Woods would be similar to Janzen’s on Friday. He would be right behind him — on the golf course, trying to win the U.S. Open.

  13

  Serious Stuff

  ROCCO, CINDI, AND ROCCO’S COLLEGE ROOMMATE Steve Puertas, who had driven down from his home in Los Angeles to spend the weekend, had a quiet dinner in the hotel on Friday night. Puertas — known to one and all as Sticky — volunteered to drive to Fleming’s, a nearby steak house, and bring food back so that Rocco and Cindi wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds in the restaurant. Rocco happily took him up on the offer. After dinner, the three of them stayed up later than usual for the simple reason that Rocco didn’t want to wake up too early.

  “The less time you sit around thinking about things,” he said, “the better off you are.”

  Players understand that part of the job on the weekends if you are in contention is killing time before you go to the golf course. This is especially true at the majors, in part because the pressure is so much greater, but also because tee times are usually an hour or so later than at regular PGA Tour stops. On tour, the finishing time most weeks is six o’clock eastern time — occasionally it slides to seven when the tour is on the West Coast — but the last tee time often as not is between 1:30 and 2 P.M. eastern time.

  Normally, on the West Coast, tee times are squeezed to get everyone on the golf course by ten o’clock local time. Instead of playing in twosomes and having everyone tee off on number one, as is the norm on weekends, the players go out in three-somes and half the field tees off on number 10. It is the only way to finish when TV wants tournaments to finish.

  Two-tee starts on the weekend in majors are strictly verboten, unless weather creates havoc with the event, and TV usually pushes the finish times on majors as late as possible. In fact, CBS intentionally schedules the final round of the Masters to run past seven o’clock on the East Coast so that the final minutes will pick up extra viewers tuning in to watch 60 Minutes. The golf telecast benefits from that, and 60 Minutes benefits from golf fans who stick around to watch the newsmagazine show. Frequently that night’s 60 Minutes will include a sports story to entice the golf fans to watch.

  Because the last putt almost never goes into the hole until after seven o’clock, there isn’t all that much daylight left on an April evening when a Masters playoff occurs. Remarkably, no Masters playoff — since the 18-hole Monday playoff was abandoned for sudden death in 1979 — has gone past the second hole.

  “I’m waiting for the year when they finally get nailed,” David Fay said. “Tiger and Phil will be going to the third playoff hole and they’ll both say, ‘It’s too dark; let’s come back in the morning.’ ”

  Fay acts as if the Masters is the only tournament that times its finish to accommodate TV. If anything, the USGA is more accommodating. In 2002, NBC asked for a 3:40 tee time for the final group of Woods and Sergio Garcia, which meant a finish at about 7:45 local time. That would leave about forty
-five minutes of daylight if all went well. In spite of the fact that there were thunderstorms in the forecast, the USGA didn’t move the starting times up. It rained, there was a forty-seven-minute delay, and Woods and Garcia finished in virtual darkness while Fay and other USGA officials cowered behind the 18th green, terrified that the two players would say it was too dark to finish.

  “We blew that one,” Fay said. “We were lucky Tiger had a three-shot lead or he might have insisted on coming back Monday morning. I told the NBC people after that one that we weren’t going to schedule any finishes after seven o’clock local time. We need that extra time in case of weather.”

  The weather forecast for San Diego on the weekend was identical to what it had been all week: a little bit of June gloom early, but perfect sunshine and cool, comfortable temperatures by the time the leaders teed off.

  Rocco had contended in majors in the past, but he had never been in the last group on a Saturday or a Sunday. That certainly upped the ante a little bit. Even though he would have loved to be paired with Woods, Appleby was, he thought, a good pairing for him.

  “Stuey is one of the good guys on tour,” Rocco said. “Plus, he’s been in situations like this before, so he’s going to be relatively calm about it. I just hope I don’t jump out of my skin before we tee off.”

  He was fine, going through his morning ritual much later than usual: Bruegger’s, Starbucks, and then the short drive to the golf course. He walked to the range with Cindi and Matt and went through his usual warm-up, although he couldn’t help but notice there were only a few players on the practice tee, since most of the field was on the golf course by the time he arrived. He walked onto the tee seconds after Woods and Karlsson had departed. “Funny thing about the week was I never laid eyes on Tiger except on a television set, until Saturday after we finished playing. Our paths just never crossed.”