Slaying the Tiger

by Shane Ryan

  That left the PGA of America as the parent organization of the country’s vast network of club professionals, rather than its touring pros.* There were, however, two notable exceptions. The PGA of America kept the PGA Championship, a valuable commodity as a major, and they also held on to a modest match play event called the Ryder Cup, which featured American golfers beating the hell out of a sorry group of Brits every two years.

  The schism didn’t kill the PGA Championship, or strip it of major status, but it did spark the identity crisis that has dogged it ever since. Each of the other three majors has forged an important niche in the golf world—the U.S. Open is America’s championship, the British Open functions as the crown event for all of Europe, and the Masters has managed to drape itself in so much prestige that it somehow eclipsed them all. But what is the PGA Championship? Before 1968, it was the players’ major, but that changed when it lost the all-important ingredient—the players themselves. In a move that must have irked their former masters, the PGA Tour even founded an event called The Tournament Players Championship.

  Where did that leave the PGA Championship? As a sort of historical leftover—a vestigial tail, so to speak, and one that had to fight for recognition as time went on. In the early PGA Tour days, Commissioner Deane Beman even had ambitions of turning the Players Championship into the fourth major, and there’s no doubt which event he thought it might replace.

  Even today, the tournament typically registers the lowest television ratings of the three American majors, and a 2012 Sports Illustrated survey of Tour pros revealed that if they had their choice of winning any major, only two percent would choose the PGA Championship. Hence taglines like “Glory’s Last Shot,” which was changed at the PGA Tour’s request in 2013, since they felt it diminished the FedEx Cup playoffs, or the 2014 official program, which featured the words, “This is Major”—almost as if golf fans needed the reminder.

  That kind of insecurity didn’t bode well for 2014, a year that had already been historically poor for television ratings across the board. The numbers told a sorry tale—with no Tiger Woods, the Masters gave CBS its lowest ratings since 1957 (with ESPN faring even worse in the early rounds), the British Open on ESPN tied its second-lowest Sunday ratings since 1981, and the U.S. Open yielded an all-time low in final round ratings as Martin Kaymer strolled to a drama-free victory.

  The PGA of America did have one ace up its sleeve—Valhalla Golf Club, which it had purchased by increments between 1993 and 2000. The course had hosted two previous PGA Championships and the 2008 Ryder Cup, and always seemed to produce the kind of dramatic golf that exceeded its reputation as a very basic track. This is where Mark Brooks beat Kentucky native Kenny Perry in a playoff in ’96, and where Tiger Woods survived the greatest duel of his golf career against the unheralded Bob May, sinking a birdie putt on 18 to force a three-hole playoff, which he won by a stroke. It’s also the sight of America’s only triumph in the past fifteen years at the Ryder Cup—that unremarkable match play event the PGA of America kept in its back pocket after the schism, and which blossomed with time into one of the sport’s greatest showcases.

  —

  As it turned out, Valhalla would deliver again in 2014, with a final round so spectacular that it reversed the ratings trends of a tough season and drew the PGA Championship’s best audience in five years.

  The fun began long before Thursday’s first round. For starters, you had Bubba making a fool of himself at the long-drive competition and finally turning the media establishment wholeheartedly against him. That was just the start of a long week that saw him swear freely on the course, complain about the weather, and try to dodge anyone holding a pen or tape recorder once he realized it had all gone horribly wrong.

  Then there was Tiger, who surprised us all by stumbling onto the grounds on Wednesday and announcing his intention to actually play. We had assumed that his back wouldn’t heal in time, but here he was, and he was still talking about making the Ryder Cup team—which, as he told Tom Watson, he wanted to do “in the worst way.”

  The only problem was that the mere idea of Tiger coming within a mile of Team USA was outrageous. Barring an outright win at Valhalla, he had done nothing to prove that he deserved a captain’s pick, but it was just another example of his fanatical self-belief. The same zealotry that had carried him to fourteen major titles was now making it impossible for him to see things realistically, or to admit that maybe he should slow down and stay home for a few months.

  On the European side, McGinley would be dealing from a stacked deck. I watched him have a long conversation with Victor Dubuisson during the Frenchman’s practice round—something I thought was impossible—and in between his existential shrugs, Victor even smiled once or twice. I had the passing thought that maybe I’d underestimated McGinley, a so-so player in his day and, on the face of it, a strange choice for captain.

  When Victor left, I watched in astonishment as he actually signed a few autographs along the ropes.

  “Parlez-vous français?!” screamed one of the fans, drawing a glare from Dubuisson and laughs from the crowd. The Kentuckians began shouting nonsensical phrases at him the way someone might bark at a dog just to see its reaction.

  “Sacre bleu!”

  “Comment allez-vous!”

  In the end, the galleries at Valhalla turned out to be the best, most rambunctious spectators of the season. The noise and passion beat anything we saw all year, and they deserved the Sunday finish they got.

  At the same time, it wasn’t a delicate or subtle group of people. On Saturday, I made the mistake of accidentally wearing a Duke University hat, forgetting that I was in the heart of Kentucky Wildcat country, where basketball reigned supreme and Duke was a hated enemy. I won’t recount my adventures that afternoon, except to say that “Duke cocksucker” was probably the nicest thing I was called. Somewhere around the turn that day, I stuffed the hat in my pocket.

  * * *

  “Out here in the heat and humidity and bluegrass, Valhalla is gangly, hard to love and still trying to grow up and find personal acceptance.

  Could that happen this week? Well, it’s going to be a struggle. Let’s just say that the chances of Valhalla earning respect this week are about as good as the Kentucky Derby switching from horses to lawn mowers.”

  —THOMAS BONK, LA Times, before the 2000 PGA Championship

  The Old Norse word “Valhöll” means “hall of the slain,” and in their mythology, Valhalla is where warriors go after death, to assemble under the god Odin and prepare for an apocalyptic battle called Ragnarök. My advice would be to wipe that image completely from your mind, because it’s ill-suited to the Southern gothic course bearing its name just east of Louisville—a repurposed plot of undulant land in the Ohio River Valley. This Valhalla sits close to the site of several Civil War skirmishes, where in 1862, Confederates came within ten miles of capturing Louisville and the entire state of Kentucky before being driven back in October.

  The slow, brown waters of Floyds Fork, a tributary of the Salt River, carve a sinuous path through the course. With the sycamores and birches growing out from the shore, the whole scene gives off a primordial vibe. The front nine is mostly low river plains, with the back nine rising to higher ground, lined with silver maples and oaks and hickories. It culminates in the 18th hole, an uphill par 5 that runs alongside Brush Run Creek, where a stone-terraced pond attracts wayward drives on the right.

  Now might be a good time to mention the heat. The climate in this part of the country is called “humid subtropical,” and that tells you just about everything you need to know. An occasional breeze blows from the east, but I emphasize the word occasional—for the most part, the heat is trapped in the valley, and when temperatures rise into the nineties and higher in late summer, it’s absolutely hellish. That’s especially true when it’s wet—in most parts of the country, rain will break a humid spell, but in Kentucky, it only makes things worse. On Sunday, in the muggy afternoon heat followin
g a rain delay, Igor Guryashkin of Louisville’s Voice-Tribune put it best as he surveyed the gallery, thousands strong, sweating in bourgeois agony.

  “It’s an upper-middle-class Vietnam,” he murmured.

  Players and writers are not overly kind to the course—it plays too easy, some believe, while others call features like the island green on no. 13 gimmicky, and say it lacks character. Personally, sweltering conditions aside, I loved it—the bluegrass roughs, the dense vegetation, and the deep umber of the river waters made it look totally unique. There were ancient undercurrents here, and walking the course felt like stepping into national folklore. Kentucky’s Valhalla didn’t feel very Norse, but I wasn’t surprised that it always delivered dramatic endings, as if adding chapters to a distinctly American mythology.

  —

  On Thursday at the PGA Championship, the year’s three major winners set out together in the featured group. Golf can rarely be counted on to deliver the ideal Sunday duel—how many times did Tiger and Phil battle it out down the stretch at a major, or Jack and Arnie?—so this threesome is typically as good as it gets. If nothing else, it provides a unique competitive theater for the year’s biggest stars, even if lasts just two days. I was particularly excited this year, because the combination of Rory McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, and Bubba Watson presented a confluence of strong personalities, and there was no predicting how they’d mix.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t amount to much of anything but a showcase for the man from Northern Ireland. The opening days at Valhalla belonged to Rory, and reaffirmed what we’d learned in the past month—nobody compared.

  On Thursday, he had already reached -3 by the turn—and many of us were already christening him the winner—when he made two rare unforced errors. A double-bogey on the 10th and a missed par putt on 11 undid all the good work of the front nine, and sent him falling back to even for the day. He threw the putter at his bag after 11, and marched to the next tee knowing he’d just ruined his hot start. I wondered if we’d finally see him wallow, or let discouragement hinder the rest of his round.

  But this was Rory in 2014, and I should have known better. He shook off the malaise and made four straight birdies, sinking putts from everywhere, to roar back to -4 by the 15th hole. On 16 and 17, he had two more birdie tries, and reacted with astonishment when he missed the putts. So did everyone else—he was rolling it so perfectly on the greens that every miss felt like an anomaly. On 18, still very much in the zone, he reached the green in two and missed his eagle putt by inches. When he tapped in for birdie, he had played his last seven holes in 5-under—a spectacular finishing flurry.

  He started modestly on Friday, but on the front nine, he was keeping up with Bubba off the tee, and occasionally outdriving him. With the veins on his forearms bulging and sweat pouring off his brow, Rory blasted drive after drive with the same power—and greater consistency—than the longest driver in the game. It’s no wonder that Kaymer admitted to a bit of intimidation; even Bubba, off in his own world, must have noticed.

  The course in general was built for long drivers that week, and the damp conditions meant that short hitters like Graeme McDowell wouldn’t get the kind of roll-out that helped bridge the distance gap on dry, hard courses.

  “I’m just banging my head against the wall out there,” McDowell would say later. “It’s impossible for me to compete unless I’m hitting 3-hybrid to ten feet all day long, which I’m not going to do. Watching the coverage this afternoon was depressing. Seeing Rory hit 9-iron to 17; it’s like, you know, I hit 3-iron in the morning.”

  Rory finished with an eagle on 18, and had established a one-shot lead over Jason Day and Furyk, both at -8. Rickie Fowler lurked just a shot behind, trying to become only the third player in history to finish top-five in all four majors in one calendar year. Phil Mickelson was at -6, making one of his few real appearances near the top of any leaderboard in 2014, major or otherwise. Tiger, to nobody’s surprise, missed the cut.

  —

  In the final group on Saturday, Rory and Day played even for the front nine, allowing the rest of the field to catch up. When Day yanked a ball left of the creek on the second, David Feherty managed to find it in the high grass. It enabled Day to walk barefoot across the creek and play out to the green for a par save, while locals grimaced and prayed he wouldn’t trip over a copperhead snake.

  On nos. 10 and 15, Day succumbed to the same reversals that had disheartened Kaymer—he got closer on his approach, and watched Rory knock in a longer birdie putt just before missing his own. After 15, they were tied at 2-under for the day, but Rory was ready with his patented great finish. A fifteen-footer for birdie on the 16th brought him to -12, and after a good shot from the bunker on 18, he stood in front of a wall of photographers and sunk his seven-foot birdie putt to finish at -13, one shot clear of the Austrian Bernd Wiesberger. Fowler and Mickelson had closed well behind them, and would play in Sunday’s second-to-last group.

  For Fowler, it would mark his fourth straight shot at a come-from-behind win in a major, and his most realistic chance yet. In order to break through, he’d have to prove that he could withstand Rory’s inevitable closing sprint, and put together some late fireworks of his own.

  Phil was no stranger to the pressure of major championships, but he had admitted after the first round that his disappointing year—which included zero top tens, to that point—had dulled his instincts, and made him more prone to nerves. His season had undoubtedly suffered because of an FBI investigation that threatened to implicate him in an insider trading scandal, together with a Las Vegas gambling maven and a billionaire investor. Mickelson was cleared of the original charges in June, though the New York Post reported in late August that investigations into a related matter continued. They also noted that Mickelson had been stopped by FBI agents at several points during the season, including once at the Memorial in June. The stress had a deleterious effect on his game, and he was only now recovering his form.

  He’d have to come out scorching on Sunday if he wanted to make up three shots on Rory. Starting in the late spring, questions about age had been landing on older players like Phil, Tiger, and Furyk. This would be a chance to strike a blow for the old guys, and to drive a stake into the youth movement in the season’s final major.

  * * *

  “You know, it’s beginning to look a little Tigeresque I suppose. I said to the boys at The Open, I didn’t think we were going to see the new Tiger era, as in someone creating their own kind of Tigeresque era just yet….I’m not eating my words, but I’m certainly starting to chew on them.”

  —GRAEME MCDOWELL, Sunday, as the leaders took the course

  Rain soaked Valhalla on Sunday morning, and casual water built up all over the fairways and greens, making early conditions very difficult. The PGA of America let the early wave play as long as they could—sacrificial lambs, in a way, in the fight to ensure that the players who mattered would beat the sunset—but finally, just before one p.m., they had to call the golfers off the course. These are nightmare situations for any major; the battle for TV ratings is tough enough on its own, but a Monday morning finish is the ultimate kiss of death.

  When play resumed two hours later, the action slowed to a crawl. Worse, the walkways around the course had turned into mud pits, which meant many of the 46,000 fans in attendance would slip and fall. The only bright side for Valhalla was the new irrigation system, which worked beautifully to drain the worst of the standing water and get the course into playable shape by 2:40. Without it, a Monday finish would have been inevitable. But with Rory and Wiesberger set to finally tee off at 4:19, there was still a faint prayer of finishing.

  On the range beforehand, the sun returned with a vengeance, and the combination of torrid heat and post-rain humidity can’t accurately be described with words like sultry, sticky, sweltering, or stuffy. It got to the point that we looked forward to the passing of the television blimp, and praised it like a merciful god when it blotted out the sun.
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  Butch Harmon stood with Rickie, then moved on to Phil. For reasons I still can’t understand, Phil was wearing black from head-to-toe, including pinstripe pants that made him look like he was on the way to a mob conference in the Catskills. Rory, as usual, isolated himself from the rest. The cameramen chased them as they moved from the range to the putting green, beneath the clubhouse’s giant Omega clock tower. I followed Phil and Rickie to the first tee, where one fan got a huge laugh by shouting, “Light it up, little man!” at Fowler. Another encouraged Phil with a cry of “Today’s your day! Rory’s gonna choke!”

  On the first hole, a short dogleg left, Phil got off to a hot start by draining his birdie, and setting the thousands of spectators afire. There was no question about who the fan favorite would be—even one of the grim policemen broke character and applauded, his thick mustache twitching in pleasure.

  Rickie hit his drive into the creek on the second. That must have made the designers happy, because they had moved the green a good twenty yards left to bring this water into play. He took the penalty and scrambled for bogey, but on the third, a long 205-yard par 3, he flew his approach over the muddy waters of Floyds Fork and stuck it on the soft green three feet from the pin. Phil got close, too, ten feet away, and both rolled in their birdie putts.

  The fourth hole is a short par 4 that takes an extreme bend to the left, and players aim for the right side of the fairway, setting up an open approach to the center of the green, safe from the bunkers. That’s exactly where Rickie ended up, and it gave him a mere seventy-six yards to the hole. A nifty wedge left six feet for birdie, and he hit it again. When news came from behind that Rory had three-putted the third green, it meant that five players were now tied at -12, including Phil, Rickie, Wiesberger, and Henrik Stenson.

  The wet heat stifled, but it wasn’t affecting Fowler, who continued to shine on no. 5 with another perfect 305-yard drive. He went flag-hunting on his approach, and left it just in the fringe. After Phil got out of trouble from the rough, Rickie stood over his nineteen-foot chip, struck it with just the right touch, and watched as it dropped in the hole.