Slaying the Tiger

by Shane Ryan

  There’s an underlying truism to the spectacle and drama of most tournaments: The winner is the one who screws up the least. Sergio’s brain is built wrongly for these circumstances—he may finish with the most dramatic successes, but he’ll never make the fewest errors.

  * * *

  “Basically what this boils down to is yet another triumph for Woods over Garcia, and yet another self-inflicted wound for the talented yet seemingly fatally-flawed Spaniard, who has spent his career tilting at windmills, demons of his own creation.”

  —MONTE BURKE, Forbes.com

  When you look at it from Sergio’s angle, the reality of the relationship, spanning the years, must feel deeply unfair. While he suffered from depression and a collapse of his golf game after being dumped by Greg Norman’s daughter, Tiger cheated on his wife with at least eleven women. Where Sergio is funny and engaging and kind to his fans, Tiger remains aloof and cold. Where Sergio lives and dies for Europe at the Ryder Cup, Tiger treats it as a chore. While Sergio is well-liked by his fellow players, Tiger is disliked by many, and merely tolerated by some—good for the game, but an unfriendly egomaniac.

  And still, fans love Tiger for winning, and hate Sergio for whining. Even after Tiger’s fall from grace, he retained a magnetic energy that drew people in. “Winning takes care of everything,” went Nike’s Lazarus-themed television spot that accompanied Tiger’s comeback, and galling as that sentiment might be, it held a lot of cynical truth. The attraction remained.

  Meanwhile, those same fans soured on Sergio. They sensed the absence of courage, they heard his self-pitying sound bites, and they witnessed the total lack of accountability. It’s possible to respect a repeat loser who falls with dignity, but someone who can’t look his failure in the eye deserves only scorn. And it was this scorn, coupled with the constant losing, that became Sergio’s burden. You could see where an obsession with Tiger, and all he represented, might begin.

  Tiger barely had to break a sweat to set him off. Just keep winning, and nudge him with a subtle word here and there. The whole thing even seemed to amuse him. Maybe Sergio knew it, and maybe that explains the PR disaster that followed.

  At the European Tour Players’ Awards Dinner in late May, the Golf Channel’s Steve Sands approached Sergio and asked jokingly if he planned to have Tiger over for dinner when the two met again at the U.S. Open.

  “We will have him round every night,” Garcia said. “We will serve fried chicken.”

  In 1997, Fuzzy Zoeller speculated to reporters at Augusta that Tiger might serve fried chicken and collard greens at the champions dinner the following year, and called him a “boy” in the process. It was a pretty cut-and-dried case of condescending racism. The reaction was swift and severe—Zoeller lost his sponsorship with Kmart and Dunlop, and he hasn’t been heard from since.

  The reaction to Garcia’s words was no less sudden, and he held an emergency press conference to address the situation. He began by apologizing to his fans, to Tiger, to his European colleagues, etc. He had very few options in the ensuing days. He left a handwritten note in Tiger’s locker, and did his best to look contrite at every stop. He was abused by fans at home and abroad, but he took his medicine with a stoic silence.

  Finally, the chapter was closed. Unlike the Zoeller incident, most people understood that Sergio was, at heart, harmless—it’s hard to imagine a secret racist streak, but it’s very easy to imagine his hatred for Tiger careening out of control in a bad moment. And though the fried chicken incident will be a stain on his image, it was never going to bury him. All it really proved—as if we needed more evidence—is that Sergio is golf’s most fascinating example of a man with a talent for getting caught up a tree.

  —

  In 2014, he had rediscovered his self-belief, and Tiger had disappeared from the scene. But in a cruel irony, Sergio found himself right back in his role of second fiddle at the British Open. He settled into a familiar position, playing bridesmaid to another iconic champion with a ruthless ability to destroy his enemies. Sergio and Rory liked each other well enough, but on the course, McIlroy was unmistakably the new Tiger. And without skipping a beat, the thirty-four-year-old Spaniard stepped down to the lower rung—doomed, it seemed, to always be looking up.

  First things first—the week of the WGC-Bridgestone, I was staying in a room out in the hinterlands of Ohio, somewhere between Akron and Cleveland, next to a large pond full of frogs that came out at night to torment me with their belching. In a room across the house, a nice Canadian man named Dave had come to this same house with his wife, all the way from the hinterlands of Ontario, for the same purpose—golf. We exchanged stories nightly, and on Saturday, he told me that he had been particularly surprised to see Jason Dufner give his putter away to a child in the middle of his round. A Scotty Cameron, no less!

  I asked him to tell me the story once more, and tuned my ears for any deviations. Like a good witness, he repeated each detail verbatim. The Canadian wasn’t cracking, and I had to admit that certain aspects checked out—Dufner had an impulsive streak, especially when he was frustrated, and he couldn’t putt to save his life. I’d followed him at the PGA Championship the year before, and it remains one of the most remarkable major victories I’ve ever seen for the simple fact that he had almost no confidence on the greens. He hit beautiful drives and pinpoint irons, then stood shaking over three-foot birdie putts, of which he made about half. Somehow, this formula saw him through

  “I just like Duf,” Keegan Bradley had said earlier in the week. “He makes me laugh. He’s a weird guy. But he’s also one of the best players out here, so I enjoy playing golf with him. Everything he does is good, and I watch everything until he gets on the green….But I look away when he’s got the putter in his hands.”

  No subject is out of bounds between the two, and they pick on each other relentlessly, to the point that it sometimes goes too far and leaves one of them seething. Bradley particularly enjoys making fun of Dufner about the PGA Championship he lost in 2011, giving Bradley his first and only major title. It struck me as a rather sensitive topic, and I asked him whether he had at least waited a respectable period before firing the first volley.

  “Yeah, it was probably a year and a half later,” he said, “and then it all broke loose. But he’s brutal on me. There have been times that have been touchy. But I love it. It’s tough, but you gotta take it.”

  He went on to further insult Dufner’s putting, and I remembered this conversation as I listened to my Canadian friend. What did we know about Dufner? Weird guy, can’t putt, a bit impulsive. Dave from Ontario was making sense. But did he really give his putter away?

  The next day, before the leaders had even teed off, Dufner finished his awful tournament with a 77, plummeting to +14 for the week. He eluded me at the flash area, but on a desperate sortie to the locker room, I found him waiting for his food and sinking miserably, inch by inch, into a leather chair. He had the definite look of a man who did not want to be approached by a journalist.

  “Hello, Jason,” I said, sitting beside him. I knew to avoid pleasantries. “I heard a story that you gave your putter away to a kid yesterday. I wanted to make sure it was true.”

  “Yup.” He kept his eyes straight ahead.

  “Was that on number twelve?” I asked.

  “Ten.”

  So, eight holes with no putter.

  “What did you putt with?”

  “Three-wood.”

  It turned out the kid had followed him the rest of the round, still holding the putter.

  “Anything else I should know?” I asked, feeling very much like I’d overstayed my welcome.

  For the first time, he looked at me. “No.”

  —

  That wasn’t the only bit of novelty in Akron—and thank God for that, because Akron is a town that needs all the novelty it can get.

  Early on in the week, after an errant shot, Bubba had shouted, “I just can’t focus!” at poor Ted Scott. Steven Bowditch t
old an Aussie reporter that the WGCs were his favorite events, since you still won money even if you shot 80 four straight times. When I walked by Jonas Blixt outside the clubhouse as he signed autographs, and jokingly asked if he could sign my reporter’s notepad, he gave me that inscrutable Swedish grin and said, “I’d like to sign your chest.” A woman on the ninth green told Rory that she loved him like her own child. Graham DeLaet threw a bag-kicking tantrum on Friday when he missed a series of short putts. A fan gave David Feherty a loud “you da man!” as he walked past, and without cracking a smile, Feherty responded, “I’m a woman.” Jason Day withdrew with vertigo-like “dizziness” after Friday’s round, probably the result of cortisone shots for his thumb combining with anti-inflammatories he was taking for a throat issue—the perfect culmination of a sabotaged year. And on Saturday, Tiger yelled at a cameraman who had gotten too close: “Can you guys give me some fucking space?”

  That all led to the main event, on Sunday, when Tiger hurt his back on the second hole and could only gut it out until the ninth tee, at which point the pain won and he withdrew. A golf cart carried him to his car, and as hordes of journalists sprinted out from the media center, he limped over, grimacing the whole way. We surrounded him in a semicircle, like curious children gazing at a zoo creature, as he took off his Nike spikes, moaned a little for the video cameras, and disappeared behind the tinted windows of an SUV.

  —

  As I left the locker room on Sunday after tracking down Dufner, I saw something strange at a table in the dining area—Rory and Sergio, along with a smattering of agents and caddies, were eating lunch together before the final round. I knew the two were pals, but it still felt strange to see either of them consorting with the enemy in the moments before battle.

  Rory kept a resolute poker face, smiling when necessary, laughing politely at jokes, but mostly just surveying every face with his usual pregame silence. Sergio, on the other hand, was a motormouth, full of nervous chatter and the kind of loud laughter you hear from people who are trying very hard to broadcast that they are having a good time. If he sounded transparent to me, I could only guess that Rory felt it, too.

  When they made it out to the range, it was the same scene—Rory off on his own, with his caddie, J.P., and his dad, Gerry, intense and isolated. David Feherty made the rounds, stopping briefly to chat with Rory before moving on to Marc Leishman. His story must have been very funny, because it soon roped in Sergio and Justin Rose. I missed most of the main details, but got close enough to hear the punch line. Turning to his side, Feherty took a dramatic pause, squatted low to the ground, and delivered the kicker:

  “He shit all over himself!”

  Sergio and Rose doubled over laughing, Leishman just grinned and blushed, and Feherty shook his head. “Those were the days,” he said, and was off.

  Sergio, though, couldn’t stay quiet for long. He walked over to Adam Scott for a quick chat about room service, then approached a cameraman to ask how he felt in the hot weather. “When you’re as cool as me, you don’t get hot,” the man said.

  “Ah, good answer! Good answer!” Sergio raved.

  A peal of thunder rang in the sky, but the black clouds passed, and after Sergio wandered past the table with all the different balls in their color-coded bags, it was time to make the walk to the first tee.

  The brick clock tower of the clubhouse loomed behind Rory and Sergio, and the crowds lined the bleachers and walkways and clubhouse paths. Watching the scene, I believed completely that Rory would win. But even great players have bad rounds, and maybe today was Sergio’s moment to exorcise a demon or two.

  Starting three back, Rory knew he had to come out and tie Sergio as soon as humanly possible in order to change the tone. The quicker he could force Sergio to grind, the quicker he could beat him with superior pressure play down the stretch.

  Rory took driver on the short, uphill par 4, blistering it 315 yards into the left rough, while Sergio laid up. With 129 yards remaining, Sergio’s approach was very mediocre, leaving thirty feet to the pin. Rory, with just seventy-eight yards, decided to take dead aim and hope an overhanging tree didn’t get in his way. It did—the ball clipped the leaves on the way to the green—but the impediment only helped. The shot landed three feet from the green, and after Sergio hit his lag close, Rory made birdie.

  Already, he’d chipped one shot off the lead, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he hit the leaves on purpose, knowing exactly how they’d affect the ball. It was a stupid theory, and a wrong one, but Rory’s game was making people like me think some very strange thoughts.

  On the second, a par 5, another bomb by Rory sailed true—carving the middle path through a gauntlet of spruce, pine, oaks, maples, and sweetgums—and landed 311 yards down the fairway. He reached the green with a 5-iron from there, and two-putted for birdie. Sergio caught his second shot from the fairway a bit fat—“Is it fair to say that if he hit any farther behind it, he’d have to add it to yesterday’s score?” Feherty asked another journalist, as he marched by. A decent pitch got him to within six feet, he hit his birdie putt tentatively, and watched the ball run past the hole. Two strokes gone.

  Rory’s drive on the third hole, a 442-yard par 4, was his best yet, struck pure and hard, traveling 331 yards, nothing but fairway. Forty yards behind him, Sergio found the left rough, where the ball struck a fan’s hand and knocked her diamond ring into the thick grass. A search party commenced, and the jewel was finally recovered—which is more than you could say for Sergio, who failed to land his approach on the green.

  Rory was better again—he lofted a perfect second shot over the small pond guarding the green, leaving himself nine feet for birdie. On the way to the green, a fan turned to his friend, pointed at Sergio, and said, “He’s the definition of anti-clutch.”

  Sergio, now in full flailing mode, chipped his third shot to six feet, and watched as Rory canned his birdie. Three shots gone, and he had to hole a tricky par putt just to stay tied for the lead. When he missed, he stared in disbelief at a spot on the green and tapped in for bogey. In disgust, he tossed the ball to a standard bearer.

  Four shots gone. With three birdies in three holes, the WGC-Bridgestone had a new leader: Rory McIlroy.

  I could go on—fifteen holes still remained—but why bother? At that moment, everybody knew the tournament was over. At the start of the day, most of us thought Rory would be too much for poor Sergio to handle, even with a three-shot lead. If anything, we had underestimated how quickly they’d switch places. The cushion had vanished in the space of three holes, and despite his new mind-set and satisfying romantic life, Sergio was still Sergio.

  It reminded me of the press conferences at the 2012 Ryder Cup, when American players and captains insisted that Brandt Snedeker, despite his penchant for collapsing in big moments, had a fierce competitive streak. That may have been true, for all we knew, but when it came time to step up on the 18th hole against Rory and Graeme McDowell in the very first match on Friday, he put his tee shot forty yards into the rough, and the Americans lost. Then, on Sunday, he fell 5&3 to Paul Lawrie as the Euros stormed back for a dramatic win.

  Lesson learned: Being a winner takes more than simply wanting to win. If hope defined a player’s career, everybody would be Rory McIlroy.

  For all his talent, Sergio has something that keeps him down. Pigs will fly, and hell will freeze, before he beats Rory McIlroy head-to-head in the final round of an important tournament—at least without a tub full of anxiety pills to pacify his restless brain.

  Rory was kind in the aftermath. He allowed himself just a muted fist pump on the 18th green, where he tapped in for a 66 and a two-stroke win, and he hugged Sergio. The man in second tried to take it in stride, as he always does, muting his sorrow and noting that the “spin of the greens” had changed after the rain, which apparently left him discombobulated.

  In the media room, Tour officials took the two miniature Spanish flags they had prepared and placed them under a potted p
lant. In their place, they set up the Northern Irish flags next to the colorful trophy, framing the place where the new world number 1 would soon take his seat.

  —

  On Saturday night, Rory allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to reach that plateau. He stopped his dreaming before he got too far—“Sergio is still three ahead of me going into tomorrow”—but you couldn’t help thinking that he knew exactly what would happen on Sunday.

  When the dream came true, he dispensed with the false modesty. Somebody asked how many wins he thought he could snag before the season ended, and he began counting on his fingers—calculating how many tournaments remained. A few of us laughed, but it didn’t seem the least bit arrogant or presumptuous. We believed him.

  After the formal Q&A session had ended, as he signed the flags and boxes and hats and even a fathead emblazoned with his face, I sidled up to ask the important question: What movie had he watched the night before? What could possibly follow Jackass Number Two, which had seen him through Saturday night at Hoylake?

  “Last night. What was it last night…I was flipping through channels, there was a bit of…”

  He stared at the ceiling. When he looked down, he was smiling.

  “Kick-Ass 2.”

  21

  GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA

  Intolerable Cruelty at the Wyndham

  Try this dilemma: You have a forty-eight-foot putt on the 18th green of a golf tournament. If you make it, you enter a playoff and have a chance to win your first PGA Tour event since 2010, snag a two-year exemption, and land in next year’s Masters. But there’s a catch—if you three-putt for bogey, you lose your Tour card and have to take your chances at the Web.com Tour finals series, where you’ll be battling more than 130 hungry, desperate golfers over four weeks for just twenty-five spots. So, do you take the big risk? Or do you hit a nice lag and keep your card?