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

by Rocco Mediate

  Woods is image-conscious in the sense that he tries not to say anything controversial and tends to steer clear of political issues. He is one of the few players on tour who is not a registered Republican — he’s a registered Independent.

  Mickelson is so image-conscious that other players call him Eddie Haskell. To his credit, he is the most accommodating player on tour when it comes to signing autographs (Woods hates signing autographs), usually blocking at least forty-five minutes after every round to sign. He also does things like referring to Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup captains as “Captain Nicklaus” or “Captain Azinger,” when everyone else calls the captains simply by name — as in Jack or Paul (or Zinger).

  To be fair, though, a lot of the animus through the years is simply the result of both being fierce competitors and the fact that Woods’s presence on tour during Mickelson’s career has probably prevented Mickelson from going down as one of the great players of all time. Mickelson had won three majors and thirty-four tournaments in all at the end of 2008 — Hall of Fame numbers by a wide margin — but probably would have at least doubled his wins in majors if Woods had gone to law school instead of playing golf.

  In one of his most candid moments, Mickelson revealed what he honestly thinks about having to compete with Woods coming down the stretch in majors. Tied for the lead after 54 holes at the 2004 Masters, he was asked if it helped to have Woods nine shots back and (for once) not in contention. Instead of giving the standard “I just play the golf course and worry about my own game” answer, Mickelson smiled and said, “It doesn’t suck.”

  Now, as the 2008 Open began, Woods and Mickelson — along with the wounded Adam Scott — were on the golf course at 8:06 A.M. surrounded by so many people it appeared as if most of San Diego County was following their group. For golf fans, the feeling about the two of them being paired together at the start of the U.S. Open was pretty much the same as Mickelson’s feeling in Augusta four years earlier: It didn’t suck.

  ROCCO’S TEE TIME ON THURSDAY MORNING was 7:33. His pairing was a young-old one: One of the other players was twenty-two-year-old Michael Thompson, who had gotten into the Open by finishing second in the U.S. Amateur Championship the previous summer. The other player was fifty-two-year-old Brad Bryant, who had gained an exemption by beating Rocco’s hero Tom Watson down the stretch in the 2007 U.S. Senior Open. Rocco was the only player in the group who had made it to the Open through qualifying.

  He was up at 4:30 that morning after a restless night. “It was one of those deals where you’re trying so hard to relax and stay calm that you can’t,” he said. “I was keyed up because I really thought I had a chance to do something, to play well. I finally got up because I couldn’t sleep anymore. I wanted to get to the golf course and get started as soon as possible. If they had put up lights for us to tee off, I’d have been ready to go.”

  He and Cindi went through their preround routine: forty-five minutes on the table as soon as they woke up to get him loose, then a search for bagels and coffee. That turned out to be easy: There was a Bruegger’s bagel shop near the hotel with a Starbucks next door. After his bagels, Rocco bought a four-shot espresso before they headed to the golf course. “That’ll get you going early in the morning,” he said, laughing.

  He was in the clubhouse by 6:30, meeting Matt on the range to go through the warm-up ritual. He was teeing off on the 10th tee, so he needed to give himself a few extra minutes, since players going off the back nine had been instructed to be ready to be transported out to the 10th tee at least fifteen minutes prior to their tee time. Torrey Pines is not a golf course that comes back to the clubhouse after nine holes, so players teeing off on number 10 had to be driven to the 10th tee.

  The Open has only used two tees on Thursday and Friday since 2002. Until then, everyone went off the first tee, with tee times as early as 6:30 A.M. and as late as 4:30 P.M. With the pace of play in golf slowing with each passing year, it became almost impossible — even on two of the longest days of the year — to get all 156 players around 18 holes by sundown. The two-tee start provided a lot more flexibility, with the latest tee time at Torrey Pines being 2:42 in the afternoon. That meant even if the late groups needed six hours — not uncommon at the Open on a difficult golf course with fast greens — they would be able to beat darkness.

  Of course, getting players to the 10th tee can be an issue. In 2002, at Bethpage Black, the easiest route for transporting players went through a Superfund cleanup zone, and the Department of Environmental Protection was willing to allow the vans to go through the area only if everyone in every van stopped to sign a waiver sheet each day. The USGA opted for a different route.

  Each player at Torrey Pines was allowed to bring two people with him in the van when being driven to the 10th tee: his caddy and one other person. In Rocco’s case it was Cindi, who was almost as nervous as he was as they made the drive out. Rocco was wound up but ready. “If you don’t have some butterflies on the first day of a major, something is wrong,” he said. “I’d have been worried if I didn’t have them.”

  This was also the first major for Matt, since Rocco hadn’t played in the Masters. He was also keyed up, but he looked okay to Rocco. “I was actually amazed at how calm he was,” Rocco said later. “I’ve seen caddies freak out in pressure situations. Matt did great, not only that morning but the entire week.”

  They arrived on the tee just as the group of K. J. Choi, Steve Stricker, and Jim Furyk was walking down the fairway. They went through the usual pre-tee-time rituals: handshakes with everyone within a mile of the tee, the other players and caddies, the starter, the rules official who would walk with the group, the standard-bearer who would carry the board showing their score for 18 holes, and the scorekeeper.

  “You can have a sore hand before you tee off if you aren’t careful,” Rocco joked.

  At precisely 7:33, starter Jim Farrell began introducing the players as each stepped to the tee. At a lot of tournaments, the starter will mention everything a player has ever done in his life back to and including what role he had in his high school play. At the Open the introductions are simple. If someone has won the Open, he will be introduced as an Open champion: “From Windermere, Florida, the 2000 and 2002 U.S. Open champion, Tiger Woods.”

  Right after Thompson had hit his tee shot, Rocco heard McCarthy say simply, “From Naples, Florida, Rocco Mediate.”

  It was time to play.

  THE 10TH HOLE AT TORREY PINES is probably one of the easier par-fours on the golf course — a much easier starting hole than number one. Starting there, as opposed to number one, on the first day with Open nerves rumbling and the weather still cool — in the 50s — was an advantage for Rocco.

  “All I wanted to do was get the ball in the fairway and not do something goofy to start the tournament,” he said. “When I saw the ball come off the club and I knew it was going to be in the fairway, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. My thought was ‘Okay, that’s over. Now let’s see what we can do out here.’ ”

  He hit a six-iron into the middle of the green just as he had planned in his mind’s eye the night before and two-putted from 25 feet for a routine par. Everyone on earth would love to start an Open with a birdie. No one on earth is unhappy with a par.

  “All I wanted to do was get through the first few holes without any trouble,” Rocco said. “Once you get out on the golf course, you almost forget for a while where you are. It’s just a round of golf. But you need a little time to settle yourself down. That’s why the first few holes are so crucial. I probably talked the ears off poor Brad and the kid [Thompson] the first hour. That’s how I relax myself.”

  He got off to exactly the sort of start one wants at an Open. He parred the difficult par-three 11th hole, parred the 12th, and then birdied the first par-five he played, the 13th. That was the first time he noticed his name on a leader board. At one under par, with only a couple dozen players on the golf course, he was tied with a handful of players who had also gotten off
to solid starts.

  Thirty-three minutes after Rocco’s group teed off, the Woods-Mickelson-Scott group went off number one. Just the fact that Woods had gotten onto the golf course and to the first tee was a source of great relief to the USGA, to NBC, and to ESPN.

  That said, Woods got off to a less than auspicious start. His opening tee shot on the 448-yard first hole sailed left into deep rough. By the time he had hacked the ball out and gotten it onto the green, he had taken four swings. Two putts later he walked off the green talking to himself after a double-bogey six.

  Though some people instantly began murmuring about the knee, Woods’s being wild off the tee — especially early in a major — was hardly a new phenomenon. If he’s had anything approaching an Achilles’ heel during his career it has been his driving. One of the reasons he so often pulls off spectacular recovery shots is because he puts himself in position to need spectacular recovery shots. At the 2003 British Open, he had started the tournament by actually losing a golf ball in the deep rough off the first tee at Royal St. George’s. So a poor drive and a lousy opening hole were not new items on the Woods résumé.

  As if to prove that this wasn’t going to be a Winged Foot redux, Woods proceeded to make three birdies on the front nine — at the difficult par-four fourth hole and then back to back at the par-three eighth and the par-five ninth. Thus, he made the turn at one under par, looking very much like the real Tiger Woods.

  Rocco also made the turn at one under. He had bogeyed the 14th after his birdie at 13. The 14th was arguably the most interesting hole on the golf course. It could play as long as 435 yards and as short as 269 yards, the USGA having agreed to Jones’s idea to have a tee that appeared to be almost on top of the green to create the possibility of a drivable par four. The hole was being played from the back tee on Thursday, though, and Rocco missed his first fairway, leading to the bogey. He bounced back at the par-five 18th, laying up with his second shot and then pitching the ball to five feet. From there, he made the putt to turn in 35 — one under par.

  There had been some debate within the USGA about how to play the 18th hole. During the San Diego tournament it had always played as a relatively short par-five, reachable in two as long as a player hit his drive in the fairway and made sure to clear the pond that fronted the left side of the green.

  “Traditionally we would have turned the hole into a long par-four for two reasons,” David Fay said. “The first is, we usually like to play the Open on a par-70 golf course. [Pebble Beach, normally a par-72, had played to a par-71 in 2000 after the USGA turned the par-five second hole into a par-four.] Second, we normally end the tournament with a long, difficult par-four, which is what the hole would have become if we had converted it.

  “Initially that was the plan. But the more we thought about it, the more we all liked the idea of creating a true risk-reward finishing hole. If a player needed a birdie at 18, he would have a decision to make on his second shot if he found the fairway. And, even though the green was reachable, with the pond and the length of the hole, it wasn’t one of those par-fives where a good drive means you’re hitting six-iron on your second shot.”

  The hole played at 573 yards, which by today’s standards isn’t that long. In fact, it was the shortest of the three par-fives on the golf course: The 9th was 612 yards long and the 13th was 614. Once upon a time, a 600-yard hole was an anomaly and considered completely unreachable in two shots. That had changed as equipment — clubs and golf balls — improved through the years. In 1997, when the Open had been played at Congressional Country Club, no player in the field had attempted to reach the 602-yard ninth hole in two. Eight years later, when the Booz-Allen Classic was played at Congressional, players were using irons for their second shots to the hole.

  Rocco has never been one of the longer players on tour. When he was younger he would rank somewhere between 80th and 100th in driving distance on the tour. Nowadays, he is never in the top 100 — even though he hits the ball about 25 to 30 yards farther off the tee now than when he first came on tour.

  “When I was first out here I probably averaged 260 to 265 off the tee, and I was pretty average in length, usually in the top 100. Now I hit it about 285 typically, and I’m nowhere close to the top 100. [In 2008, his average drive was 278.6 yards, which ranked 170th on the tour.] If I was still hitting it the same length as I hit it when I first came out, I wouldn’t be in the top 100 on the ladies tour. That’s how much it’s changed.”

  Rocco’s strength is in his accuracy off the tee. In ’08, even though he didn’t play especially well in the fall, he finished 86th in driving accuracy. A year earlier, he was 38th. In 2003, before he hurt his back again, he had finished 21st on the tour in driving accuracy.

  The 18th was anything but an automatic two-shot hole for him. “Only if I hit a perfect drive,” he said. “Even then, it was a three-wood for me and there was some risk in the shot.”

  As it turned out, the 18th was the one hole on the golf course where Rocco’s inability to bomb the ball like some others — Woods included — would turn out to be critical. For the week, Woods would average just over 320 yards per drive — 40 yards more than Rocco. But on Thursday, Rocco wasn’t concerned with that. He was more than happy to lay up at 18, hit his wedge close, and make his birdie. Having turned in 35 — one under, thanks to the USGA’s decision to make 18 a par-five — he was feeling very comfortable with his game and with the way his first round was going.

  Unlike Woods, he found the fairway at number one and parred the hole. After a par at number two, he walked onto the tee at the third hole and was stunned by what he saw. The hole is 195 yards long, but since it is close to the water, how it plays depends on the direction of the wind.

  “When Lee and I played it on Sunday, I hit a three-iron to get on the green,” Rocco said. “They had moved the tee up a little bit, but the wind was with us. Matt and I had to decide between six-and seven-iron.”

  They finally decided on the six, and that turned out to be the right decision. “For a second I thought I’d holed it,” Rocco said. “It rolled just past the hole.” That shot led to a tap-in birdie. He then birdied the fourth, and as he walked off the green, it struck him that he was — at that moment — leading the championship.

  “It wasn’t yet noon on the first day,” he said. “Half the guys weren’t even on the golf course. Still, it was kind of a cool feeling. It’s the kind of thing you’d sort of like to take a picture of. I mean, how often can you say you’re leading the U.S. Open? I certainly don’t think I’d ever done it before — even for a hole.”

  He only had one hiccup over the last five holes. At number seven, a hole he would struggle with all week, his drive found a bunker down the left-hand side of the fairway. “The hole really sets up best if you cut the ball around the dogleg,” he said. “I can play a cut sometimes. At the fifth I cut the ball off the tee all week. But I really thought if I started the ball out right with my draw, I could keep it on the fairway. Problem was, instead of hitting a draw, I kept hitting hooks. That’s what got me into trouble.”

  He had to lay up out of the bunker and missed a 10-footer for par. That dropped him to two-under. He parred the eighth and the ninth — there was no chance to go for the green at nine — and was very happy to sign for a two-under-par 69.

  He was also exhausted. “Whether you’re playing well or not, 18 holes of Open golf is draining,” he said. “There’s pressure on every shot, not just because it’s the Open but because there’s so little margin for error. Sometimes you don’t realize how hard you’re grinding until the round is over and you feel like you want to just go curl up somewhere and sleep for about ten hours.”

  Of course he couldn’t do that. It was early in the day, and the USGA was planning on bringing all of the Big Three into the massive interview room once they finished, so they didn’t want to back up traffic in there. Players who play well on Thursday and Friday but aren’t considered interview room–worthy are taken to what is kn
own as the “flash area,” behind the 18th green. There is a small podium, and TV cameras can be comfortably set up a few yards from the player. Most players would much rather go to the flash area than the interview room, which is usually far enough from the clubhouse that one needs to be taken there in a cart. What’s more, with a large media contingent in the interview room, there are more questions and the sessions last longer.

  At Torrey Pines the media tent was next to the second fair-way of the north course, which meant a cart ride for those asked to go there to talk. Even so, Rocco would have been fine going to the interview room. He’s one of those rare players who enjoys the give-and-take with the media. “I know they like me because I tend to tell them the truth,” he said. “And I like talking, so why wouldn’t I enjoy it?”

  He was perfectly happy to go to the flash area, especially since he was tired. Someone asked if he liked being under the radar. “I’ve been under the radar my whole career,” he answered, laughing.

  He was asked a total of seven questions — the last one, naturally, was about Woods and how tough it might be to come back after such a long layoff.

  “I’ve been injured over the years and come back, but not obviously so that everyone knew or made it a big deal. Everyone is watching him, everything he does is news, and he is the best player that ever walked on grass.

  “So yeah, it’s got to be really hard, but he’s — look, everyone has asked me and my friends, Is he still the favorite? Absolutely he’s still the favorite. No disrespect to anyone else, but he’s still the favorite. He’s the best player in the world. He has some rust going maybe, but if he shoots around par, even par, one-under, one-over, he’ll be very happy.”

  At that moment, Woods was playing the 17th hole and he wasn’t especially happy. He had hit another wild drive, this one at the 14th hole, and it had led to his second double bogey of the day. That put him back to one over par for the tournament. When he three-putted the 18th for par, he finished the round at one over par, shooting 72. By then, though, he was far more sanguine than he had been walking off the 14th green.