Cindi woke up Saturday morning prior to the third round of the PGA not feeling well. She was running a low-grade fever and looked and felt weak. “It’s something that happens to me fairly often,” she said. “It can be an infection, it can be fluid on the kidneys, it can be a lot of things.”
Rocco knew Cindi wasn’t feeling good when she told him she just didn’t have the energy to go to the golf course that day. “When she says she can’t make it to the golf course, I know it’s bad,” he said. “I wanted to withdraw and stay with her, but she wouldn’t hear it. She said, ‘It’s a major and you have to try to play well because of the Ryder Cup. I’ll be fine; just go and play well. That will make me feel better.’ ”
Reluctantly, he agreed. He called his friend and then-agent, Tom Elliott, and asked him to come over and keep an eye on Cindi while he went to play. “If anything happens, text me,” he said.
On the 14th hole, he got a text. Elliott and Cindi were on the way to the hospital. He was not to leave the golf course. He finished the round — shooting 72 to put himself in respectable position in a tie for 22nd place — and went straight to the hospital.
Cindi’s fever was spiking. This had happened before, but it was still frightening. Rocco spent the night in the hospital and never slept for a minute. Cindi was feeling a little bit better in the morning and told him he had to go and play. He did, but the combination of exhaustion and concern made it impossible to focus or to play well at all. He shot an embarrassing 85 — embarrassing if you didn’t know the circumstances — and finished in 72nd place. Then he went straight back to the hospital.
Cindi was there for a week. By the time Rocco got her home to Los Angeles, he had only forty-eight hours there before he flew on a red-eye to New Jersey to play in the Barclays championships — the first of the so-called playoff tournaments created by the tour a year earlier to add a post-majors climax to the season. There was a lot of money on the table — $10 million to the FedEx Cup winner — but in spite of endless promotional gambits by the tour, there just was not that much interest, with baseball closing in on the climax of its season and the college football and NFL seasons beginning.
Rocco missed the cut at Barclays, the first cut he had missed since the Byron Nelson in late April. He played respectably the first day, shooting a 70, but was completely gassed the next morning and shot 77 to miss the cut. The sensible thing to do at that point would have been to take it easy for a couple of days and then head to Boston, the next playoff spot and, more important, the last tournament before Azinger would name his Ryder Cup team.
“I called Paul to tell him what was going on with Cindi,” he said. “I didn’t want him to think by flying back to L.A. I wasn’t aware of the fact that it was important that I play well in Boston. He had said all along that he was going to take into account your entire body of work, but he also wanted guys who were playing well down the stretch. Other than New Jersey, I’d been playing pretty well all summer. Paul knew what had happened on the last day of the PGA, so I wasn’t worried about that. I said to him, ‘Hey, I hope you understand why I need to go…’
“Before I finished the sentence he said, ‘Are you kidding? Get your butt on a plane and get out there.’ ”
So he did. Cindi had rallied. She was ready to go with him to Boston the next week, which was important to Rocco. He wanted her with him on the golf course and with him when Azinger named his team on Tuesday, September 2, the day after the Boston tournament ended. (It finished on Monday because it was Labor Day weekend.)
In a way, Boston was a repeat of Detroit. Rocco played well the first two days, shooting 69–70, which put him in a tie for 18th place. But Cindi was sick again on Sunday and had to go back to the hospital, this time Massachusetts General in downtown Boston. Again, she told Rocco he had to play and that he had to get his rest so there wouldn’t be a repeat of the 85. He tried. He shot a respectable 71 on Sunday in the third round but simply had nothing left on Monday, shooting 74. That dropped him into a tie for 69th place. Again, under the circumstances, it was pretty good golf.
He went back to the hospital as soon as he was finished playing on Monday. Cindi was still too weak to even think about traveling. The next morning he was sitting next to her bed shortly after nine o’clock when his cell phone rang. As soon as Rocco saw the number come up, he knew it was bad news.
“It was Zinger,” he said later. “The press conference to announce the captain’s picks was at ten. If I was on the team, he wouldn’t need to call me to keep me from hearing bad news at the same time everyone else heard it. Before I even answered the phone, I knew I wasn’t on the team.”
He was right. Azinger was almost apologetic. “I just have to go with what my gut tells me is the best thing,” he said. “I can’t even really explain to you why you’re out and these other guys are in.”
The other guys were Hunter Mahan, J. B. Holmes, Chad Campbell, and Steve Stricker. Only Campbell had any previous Ryder Cup experience. He had played well in Boston, tying for sixth, and that seemed to have swayed Azinger in his direction.
As soon as Rocco hung up the phone and told Cindi the news, she began to cry. “I just thought it was unfair,” she said. “Zinger knew what was going on in his life, the distractions he’d had, and he still hadn’t played badly. He missed one cut [New Jersey] all summer.”
Even though he was crushed when he wasn’t chosen, Rocco tried to be philosophical about it. The U.S. won the matches with a dominant performance at Valhalla Country Club outside Louisville in late September, and Azinger was lauded for his selections and his leadership. The next time Rocco saw Azinger was in the parking lot at the TPC of Summerlin prior to the start of the tournament in Las Vegas in October. He walked over to him, congratulated him on the win, and gave him a hug.
“I was thrilled that they won,” he said. “I really was. Hey, Zinger’s been a friend for years and the guys on the team were my friends. He did a great job; he made the right choices. Was I disappointed? Sure, of course. But he had to do what he thought was best for the team and he was proven correct by the results.”
Did he watch that weekend?
“Not much. I had other things to do.”
Enough said.
CINDI’S HEALTH CONTINUED TO BE AN ISSUE throughout the fall and into the winter. A kidney transplant was not a viable option.
Rocco played in two more official tournaments before the end of the year. He shot an opening-round 71 in Las Vegas before withdrawing because his knee was sore. “Being honest, I could have played if I’d had to,” he said. “But I just didn’t feel quite right, and there was no need to take any risk.”
A week later he finished tied for 29th in Scottsdale, then flew to Florida to tape the ADT Skills Challenge, a postseason unofficial event that is part of what is known in golf as “the Silly Season.” (The PGA Tour prefers “Challenge Season,” which is a lovely euphemism.) The tournaments have no meaning and are basically hit-and-giggle events in which players load up on extra cash.
Because he had received so much attention at the Open and after the Open, Rocco had been invited to almost every Silly Season event that existed: the Skills Challenge, the Wendy’s 3-Tour Challenge in Las Vegas, the Skins Game, and the Shark Shootout. Even though a rest might have been a good thing, these were events with guaranteed money and the chance to make more if you played well. So he accepted all the invitations.
Cindi was scheduled to go to Florida with Rocco for the taping of the Skills Challenge and for the final official tournament of the year at Disney World. But she was in the hospital again. As a result, Rocco withdrew from the Disney event after the Skills Challenge.
A week before Thanksgiving — and the Skins Game, which was Thanksgiving weekend — Cindi went back into the hospital for tests and more treatment. The doctors were hoping to find that her left kidney was not functioning at all and that the right kidney was working well enough to keep her going on its own. The plan, in that case, would have been to remove the left kidney, reduci
ng the chances of infection.
“Unfortunately, they found it was still working at about eleven percent,” she said. “I need every little bit I can get, so they decided to leave it in.”
Cindi was as sick the week before Thanksgiving as she had been all year. Her fever, which had often gotten to 102 in the past, spiked at 105 and stayed there for more than a week. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong. Finally, they discovered a severe blood infection that they were able to treat, and the fever came down. By Thanksgiving Day she was sitting up in bed, still weak but feeling much better.
It was just prior to that hospital visit that Cindi was introduced to Rocco’s three boys, who came to Los Angeles to visit their dad and meet her. When they came back for the Skins Game, Rocco took the three of them to see Cindi in the hospital, where the beginnings of a friendship were formed.
Rocco was the star of the Skins Game even though he finished fourth, winning one Skin and $140,000. With K. J. Choi (who won), Phil Mickelson, and Stephen Ames the other three players, Rocco’s humor was desperately needed to lighten the mood. He kept up a constant chatter (the players are miked) throughout the event even though his mind was 150 miles to the west of Palm Springs, in Cindi’s hospital room.
“That was a tough two days,” he said later. “I had to put on this happy Rocco face the whole time and I was very, very worried. Thank God she was doing better by then. If she’d still been running 105, I don’t know if I could have even played at all.”
Cindi got out of the hospital the following week and felt better and stronger than she had in months. She calculated that from August 11, the Saturday of the PGA, until November 30, she had spent almost half her time in hospitals. “I’ve seen some of the best,” she joked. “I’d really like not to see any more.”
She and Rocco flew to New York the week before Christmas, in part so that Rocco could participate in Bob Costas’s year-end special on HBO, in part to do some sightseeing and relax.
On the show, Rocco was in the studio with Costas while Woods was on satellite hookup from California, where he had flown to host — but not play in — the Chevron World Challenge, the final Silly Season event of the year.
It was the only Silly Season event Rocco wasn’t invited to play in. Which bothered him — not as much as the Ryder Cup bothered him, but it bothered him nonetheless. There were sixteen players in the field, chosen largely based on world ranking, but not entirely. Since the event was unofficial, Woods and his staff could select anyone they wanted to play.
“Hey, it’s his event and he can choose who he wants,” Rocco said diplomatically. “I’ll admit I was surprised when I heard the field. I thought I’d be asked.”
The Costas show was the first time Rocco and Woods had “spoken” since the Open. The segment was lengthy and a bit awkward. Woods wasn’t used to sharing a spotlight with anyone, much less someone who was funnier than he was. He clearly wasn’t happy when Costas brought up the fact that the crowd had been for Rocco on the back nine on Monday.
“I thought the fans were great,” he said. “They just wanted to see good golf.”
Rocco was a little bit put off when Costas asked him about his “poor” play after the Open and brought up the Sunday 85 at the PGA.
“In one sense it isn’t his fault, because he didn’t understand the circumstances,” he said. “Obviously I wasn’t going to sound like I was making excuses, but the fact is I didn’t play badly. I was nineteenth at the British Open, I played well in Washington, and I missed one cut. That isn’t bad.”
Instead of disputing Costas’s point, Rocco just shrugged in reply and said, “I guess I’m getting old.”
He turned forty-six on December 17, the same day as the Costas show. There was a bittersweet feel to the end of the year. In one sense, 2008 had been a dream year: He had lived out his fantasies of competing for a U.S. Open championship and of going toe-to-toe with the world watching against the greatest player in history. He was overwhelmingly happy with Cindi, and he was relieved that he and Linda had reached an understanding about how to go forward as parents and that the boys were dealing with all the changes in their lives.
But there were still the ongoing concerns about Cindi’s health. “She’s been through so much,” he said. “She’s a young woman [forty-three], but the pain she’s gone through is unbelievable. I just hope she’s going to be okay.”
There was also a sense of loss when he thought back to Torrey Pines. Even though he still talked publicly about how wonderful the experience had been — and meant it — he couldn’t help but what-if on occasion. What if the delay at 15 hadn’t happened on Sunday, what if the putt had dropped on 17, what if Woods’s putt had stayed an inch outside the hole rather than just dropping in, what if there hadn’t been a seven-shot gap on the par-fives.
“There are moments when I think back to a shot, a hole, a moment, and I wish it had been just that much different,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade that week for anything. But I would have loved to have held that trophy. Just that one time.
“The way people responded to it all was beyond unbelievable. They treated me like a champion. There were times when I had to say to people, ‘Look, I’m proud of the way I played, but I didn’t win. The other guy won.’ I was close, I played as well as I could possibly have played, but I didn’t win.”
But that didn’t stop Rocco from setting high goals for 2009: He wanted to lose some of the weight he had put on over the past six months. His plan was to go back to the workout regimen that had been successful for him before. He wanted to contend in more majors, make the Presidents Cup Team, and make it back to the Tour Championship.
“As soon as we get back to L.A., I start,” he said the day after the Costas show in New York. “I’m not going to play until Phoenix [at the end of January] — that gives me six solid weeks to be home, to rest, to get in shape, and to take a breather. I haven’t had one at all since the Open.”
Even though the house in Naples was still unsold, the Open had helped put him back on solid financial footing. He had ended up making $1,420,875 in official money for 2008, a little bit more than $1 million of it at the Memorial ($201,000) and the Open ($810,000). He had earned another $410,000 in Silly Season prize money, in addition to the guarantees he had been paid for some of those events. He had made a good deal of money on outings, with more to come in ’09, and after worrying he might lose his Callaway deal (up at the end of ’08), he had re-signed for two years and twice the money — $500,000 a year — as on the previous contract.
By finishing second at the Open, he had earned exemptions into the 2009 Masters and the 2009 Open, which would be held at Bethpage Black, a course Rocco loved. That was the good news.
The bad news was what he would have earned had he won the Open: a ten-year exemption to play in the Open through 2018; a five-year exemption on the tour, meaning he would not have to worry about the money list until he was ready for the Champions Tour at the age of 50; and five-year exemptions into the other three majors.
“All that would have been nice, very nice,” he said. “But I’ve never been one to worry about things like that. I mean, who in the world would have thought I would be sitting here with twenty-three years in on the tour, the only time missed being because I was hurt. I’ve had an amazing time. I’ve lived my dream and more. Anything from here on in is gravy.”
He paused. “I would love one more shot at a major, though. One more shot.”
Regardless of what the future holds, Rocco Mediate will be remembered for those five extraordinary days at Torrey Pines in June of 2008. He will be remembered for his golf, for his humor, for his boundless enthusiasm, and for his grace under pressure and in defeat.
“On my wall at home I’ve always had a poster from Rocky,” he said. “It says, ‘He was a million-to-one shot.’ Well, I think in all I was probably a billion-to-one shot.”
He smiled. “People forget; Rocky lost the first fight. Then he came back
and won the championship. Maybe there’s a sequel out there for me too.”
A young Rocco in a rare moment of quiet contemplation. COURTESY TONY AND DONNA MEDIATE
The swing in its early stages. COURTESY TONY AND DONNA MEDIATE
Ball-striking was never an issue. Putting often was. COURTESY TONY AND DONNA MEDIATE
Rocco and his hero-mentor Arnold Palmer. COURTESY TONY AND DONNA MEDIATE
The fact that Rocco could get down on his knees to look at a putt was proof that his back was healthy. COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Rocco was part of an impressive weekend leader board at the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
As the week went on, the ovations grew louder with each made putt. COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
So near yet so far… Rocco understood how much every miss meant in the playoff. COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“We were two friends playing golf—and trying to kill each other.” COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Rocco sits down by number 18 to sign his card while Tiger checks his. They were still tied after 90 holes of golf. COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Rocco: “This calls for a hug.” Tiger: “Great fight.” COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Tiger with the trophy, Rocco with the medal (in his pocket). “I didn’t even want to look at the trophy. It wasn’t mine.” COURTESY U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Acknowledgments
WHEN ROCCO MEDIATE AND I agreed to do this book together, the last thing he said to me after all the details were worked out was, “Hey, we’re going to have a blast.”
Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open Page 28
