As he had done on Thursday and Friday, Rocco got off to a solid start. His tee shot on number one just bounced into the first cut of rough, but he had a good lie and was able to get the ball on the green for a routine two-putt par. “Deep breath after that one,” he said. “That’s a hard enough opening hole that, especially with nerves in play, you can easily make bogey — or worse.”
Woods had started with a double bogey on Thursday and had been saved by a lucky bounce on Friday. On Saturday he hadn’t been as lucky. His third straight wild drive on the first hole led to another double bogey. Appleby also bogeyed the hole and, just that quickly, Rocco, Appleby, and Karlsson were tied for the lead, with Woods two shots back.
“You can’t get caught up in that stuff on Saturday,” Rocco said. “You’re always aware of the scoreboard, but in a way it’s exactly like the first two days. You just work your way around the golf course trying to make pars, throw in a birdie if you get a chance, and most of all avoid big numbers. You know if you can do that, at the end of the day, you’re going to be in position to win on Sunday. Which is ultimately what you want.”
Still uncomfortable on the second tee, Rocco again hit three-wood and again positioned the ball perfectly. Just as he had done on Friday, he hit a solid second shot and drained a putt — this time a 12-footer — for birdie to get to three under for the tournament and take the lead.
The third hole was playing remarkably short with a front hole location, so short that Rocco hit a pitching wedge. “Remember, this is a hole I hit a three-iron on during a practice round,” he said. “I’d hit six-iron and seven-iron the first two days.”
His shot landed squarely in the middle of the green, but he ran his first putt six feet past the hole and missed coming back. It was his first three-putt of the week. “Disappointing,” he said. “But it was bound to happen on U.S. Open greens. Still, I hated giving the shot back that quickly.”
He rebounded two holes later, again hitting a perfect cut off the tee — “People don’t think I can hit a cut, but I can when I really need to,” he said — that led to a 10-foot birdie putt. The rest of the front nine was relatively routine. He missed the green at the par-three eighth but pitched the ball to four feet and made the putt for par. His drive found the rough on number nine, so he had to lay up.
“Even if I hit the fairway on that hole, I’m probably laying up,” he said. “The par-fives were really the only holes where my lack of distance came into play. I think I hit one of them [the 18th, on Friday] in two. The longer guys, Tiger included, of course, almost always had a shot to go for the green in two.”
Most players considered the front nine at Torrey Pines more difficult than the back nine — Rocco included. “The back has two par-fives and a couple of short fours,” he said. “It should be the easier nine.”
After three days, Rocco had played the front nine in four under par. He had played the back nine through two days in one over par. It was a pattern that would continue.
While Rocco was piecing together a steady front nine, players were going in all different directions around the golf course. Woods had continued to struggle on the nine that he had annihilated the day before. He bogeyed the fourth hole before making his first birdie of the day at the seventh. A three-putt par at the ninth frustrated him greatly and meant he made the turn at two over par for the day and even par for the championship. At that moment, with Rocco a hole behind, Woods trailed by three.
Up ahead, Lee Westwood was putting together an excellent round and had moved into second place, three shots behind Rocco. The other contenders were falling back. The USGA had made certain the greens were stimping at 13 at the start of the day, and the hole locations were a little bit tougher than they had been on the first two days. What’s more, Open nerves were now very much in play.
The most surprising collapse of the day was Appleby’s. He was not a player who hadn’t been in the crucible of a major before. Appleby was thirty-seven and had won eight times on tour. He had been part of a four-man playoff (won by Ernie Els) at the British Open in 2002 and had played in the last group on Sunday at the Masters with Woods in 2007. He hadn’t fared well that day — finishing in a tie for seventh — but that hardly made him abnormal. Playing with Rocco, the loose and easy motormouth, should have been a far better pairing for him than playing with Woods.
But the day started poorly for Appleby, with a three-putt at the second and a four-putt at the fifth, and went downhill from there. As focused as he was on his own play, Rocco couldn’t help but feel compassion for Appleby. “You know we all have days like that,” he said. “It’s especially baffling when it happens after you’ve played well for two or three rounds and that much more frustrating because it isn’t as if you can’t play. The day before, you could play. That’s the game, though; that’s why it’s the hardest game in the world.
“Here’s the thing about golf: If you go onto the golf course without confidence and without your best swing, you aren’t going to play well. If you go onto the golf course with confidence and with your best swing, you might play well, but there’s no guarantee.”
Appleby ended up shooting 79, which eliminated him from contention. After 36 holes in a golf tournament, a player who is 10 shots back or less still has a fighting chance to win (especially if his name is Woods), because two low rounds can get you close to the leaders. After 54 holes, that number is usually cut in half. Once in a blue moon a player six shots back (see Nick Faldo, Masters 1996) going into Sunday may win, but most of the time that involves a collapse by the leader (e.g., Greg Norman) combined with few players ahead of him on the leader board. If someone is five or six shots back going into Sunday and there are ten or twelve players ahead of him, he has virtually no chance to rally. After his 79, Appleby was eight shots behind the leader and in a tie for 19th place. Game over.
The game was still very much on for Rocco, Woods, and Westwood. By the end of the day, they had created some separation between themselves and the rest of the field.
For a brief moment, it appeared that Rocco might actually separate himself from everybody. He birdied the 10th hole to get to four under par and at that moment led Westwood by three shots and Woods by four. Even then, he wasn’t focused on the margin — too soon — but on trying to keep what was now a very good round — he was two under par for the day — rolling in the right direction.
“Part of you is thinking, ‘Hey, just keep this going and if you can get it into the house at four under or if you somehow can get it to five with two par-fives still to play, you’re going to be in great shape,’ ” he said. “But there’s this little tiny voice in there that reminds you this is the Open and Tiger’s still out there and it isn’t going to be that easy. That’s just not the way golf is.”
Sure enough, it was a par-five that tripped him up and put his round into reverse. His drive at the 13th hole found the rough, not a big deal in itself, since he was probably going to lay up anyway. He laid up well enough, but his wedge wasn’t especially good, leaving him with a downhill 25-foot putt.
“It was one of those you aren’t trying to make, you’re just trying to get it close: have a tap-in par and get out of there,” Rocco said. “But it was one of those putts where if I just breathed on it, I wasn’t going to be able to stop it.”
The putt rolled five feet past the hole and the par putt slid just low for an ugly bogey. There are few things golfers hate more than a six on their scorecard. Rocco had avoided making one for 48 holes.
“It’s annoying, but you know it’s going to happen,” he said. “I mean, Tiger started his tournament with a six on a par-four and he was still doing okay. I needed to shake it off. Unfortunately, I didn’t.”
He parred the 14th hole, but then came the par-four 478-yard 15th. “I hit two bad shots and got two bad lies there,” he said later. “To be honest, I probably made a pretty good six.”
Though there really is no such thing as a pretty good six, this was something close to it. His drive w
ent left into a hole in the rough and he had to gouge the ball out. Still in deep rough, he came up short of the green with his third shot. From there, he spun a pretty good wedge to about 15 feet and two-putted.
That made two sixes in three holes after none in 48. In three holes and 30 minutes, Rocco had gone from leading the championship by three shots to trailing Lee Westwood, who had just finished with a one-under-par 70 to post 211 — two under par — for 54 holes.
Rocco was tied with Woods, who, as he so often does, had turned what looked like an awful day into a good one with one spectacular hole. It was the 13th, the same hole that had started the trouble for Rocco. It wasn’t surprising to see Woods turn his day around on a par-five, because par-fives are one of his greatest strengths. There aren’t very many that he can’t reach in two, and when he doesn’t get on the green he is almost always somewhere around the green, where his superb short game frequently leads to an up-and-down birdie.
Until that point, his play on the par-fives for the week had been ordinary, actually below ordinary for him. As he walked onto the 13th tee on Saturday afternoon, he had played seven par-fives in the tournament and was four under par, pretty good by most standards, not so hot for Woods. By comparison, after his bogey on 13 a few minutes after Woods played the hole, Rocco would be two under par on the par-fives. Given that he had only had one chance to even think about going for a green in two, this was a small margin.
It all changed for Woods beginning on the 13th, a hole he had eagled on Friday to turn his round in the right direction after bogeying two of his first three holes. He was three over par for the day and one over for the championship when he reached 13, and he needed to make something happen.
Naturally, he did.
Just as naturally, he did it in a way only he could possibly even think about. His drive on 13 was way right, another off-line tee shot in a day that was full of them.
“When I was warming up, I didn’t hit anything that was particularly crisp or clean,” he said later. “Even warming up, I had a two-way miss going that I was trying to clean up where at least I just had a one-way miss, you know, miss it one way, left or right. I went on the golf course and had a little bit of a two-way miss, but not as bad as on the range.”
This miss was well to the right, but as often happens with Woods, he caught a break. The ball landed behind a concession stand. Since a concession stand is an immovable object but not a natural hazard like a tree, he was entitled to a drop. After looking over his options left or right of the concession stand, he opted to drop on the left.
“My tee shot was a terrible shot,” he said, laughing. “When I looked to the right of the concession stand [which he didn’t know was a concession stand until told later in the interview room], the grass wasn’t all that great. On top of that, I would have had to try and carry that barranca on the right-hand side. If I didn’t get a good enough lie, I didn’t know if I could carry that.
“So I went left. And if I happened to draw a poor lie there, at least I know I could wedge out to the fairway, bottom of the hill, and try and make par and move on. If I happened to catch a good lie, then I could probably get to the green and maybe steal a four out of there.”
He caught a good lie. The rest became part of Open lore soon after. “I had 210 [to the] front and I hit a five-iron,” he said. “I was actually aiming at the back bunker because I did not want to leave the ball short of that pin. It landed on the top of the green, and I was surprised that it stopped. It somehow landed soft enough where it stopped.”
The ball actually hit on the front of the green, rolled all the way through the green, and stopped just on the fringe about a foot from rolling into the back bunker.
Only Woods could hit a drive that far off-line and somehow end up looking at a putt for eagle. Granted, the putt was about 65 feet long, but at least, he thought, a two-putt would be good enough for birdie and get him turned around in the right direction.
“Robert’s [Karlsson] ball, his mark, was off to the right-hand side and Stevie [Williams] and I read it and we were saying, well, if you hit it just above there, if you die it on the high side of that, that should be about right. And I said, well, if I just get the speed right, I should get inside three feet.
“And it went in.”
Ho-hum, a 65-foot eagle putt he was just hoping to get to within three feet after hitting an almost impossible shot to get on the green. What’s more, it wasn’t a fluke putt by any stretch, one that happened to hit the hole going very fast. The ball was never going anywhere but the middle of the cup. A perfect putt.
The roar that accompanied the putt dropping could be heard all over Torrey Pines and most of San Diego County. Woods, who had been relatively unemotional for most of the week (perhaps not wanting to make any sudden movement that could jar his knee) did one of his Tiger fist-pumps, a triple pump, in fact. “It’s all spontaneous,” he said later. “On that one, I went nuts.”
Back on the tee, Rocco certainly heard the roar. “I knew he’d made an eagle,” he said. “That definitely wasn’t a birdie roar; it was an eagle roar.”
And so the 13th hole proved to be a turning point in the tournament for both Rocco and Tiger. It halted Rocco’s momentum and it got Woods going. Rocco went 6-4-6 on the 13th, 14th, and 15th. Woods went 3-5-4, bogeying the 14th. That still represented a four-shot swing. By the time Rocco reached the 16th tee, Woods had parred the 16th and was even par after 52 holes of play. Rocco, who had been four under and five shots ahead of Woods a little more than an hour earlier, was now one shot ahead of him and a shot behind Westwood, who was in the interview room at that moment, talking about what it would mean to him to win a major championship.
For two days, Rocco had been doing one of two things off most tees: hitting a draw that found the fairway or the first cut of rough or, on occasion, turning his draw into a hook and ending up in trouble on the left side. Standing on the 16th tee, he felt a little bit frazzled for the first time all week. Two sixes will do that. So will leading by three one minute then looking up the next and finding yourself in second place, with the third-place guy, who happens to be named Woods, just one shot behind.
“It wasn’t like I was freaking out or anything,” Rocco said later. “But I didn’t have that sense of calm I’d had all week. For the first time, I was a little upset with myself. I knew I had three holes to play and that I just needed to stay calm and not do anything stupid the rest of the way and I’d be fine. Lee wasn’t going to win the golf tournament on Saturday. Neither was Tiger, and for that matter, neither was I. I just needed to get a good tee shot, get the ball on the green, and get going in the right direction again.”
He didn’t get what he needed. The 16th is a 225-yard par-three. It is long enough that Woods, during his warm-up, had practiced hitting some cut five-woods, thinking that might be the club he would need later in the day at the 16th. There wasn’t quite as much wind when he got there, and he had hit a four-iron. Rocco tried to hit a three-iron, but just as he had been doing with his driver of late, he lost the ball left, landing in a green-side bunker. When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll. He drew a difficult lie and was fortunate to get his shot from the bunker to about 15 feet. From there he two-putted for another bogey, meaning he had played his last four holes in four over par.
He was now tied with Woods at even par for the championship. Westwood had a two-shot lead. When Woods hit another horrific drive at 17, it looked as if Westwood would be the 54-hole leader. No one else had made any kind of move as the golf course got tougher and tougher in the late afternoon and early evening. Geoff Ogilvy had managed to shoot 72 and was at one over par through 54 holes. D. J. Trahan had shot 73 and was also at one over. Hunter Mahan, who had shot 69, the low score of the day among the leaders, led a group of six who were at two over par.
Westwood was the only player in red numbers at that moment, with Woods, in trouble deep in the right rough on 17, and Rocco, fuming as he walked off the 16th green, both at even
par.
Woods hit an ordinary second shot, a seven-iron. The ball headed left, coming to a halt on a tongue of one of the bunkers in relatively deep rough. He wasn’t that far from the hole, about 30 feet, he calculated later, but the ball was likely to come out of the rough “hot” — moving fast — so he faced a difficult task to get the ball up and down for par. The ball was on an uphill lie, and he had to stand awkwardly to keep from falling backward into the bunker. A tricky shot, to say the least.
“I hit it too hard,” Woods said. “It came out hot. And then one hop and it went in.”
Yup, went in. Even when he’s bad, Tiger Woods is good. If the ball hadn’t hit the flagstick it would have been at least — according to Woods — eight feet past the hole. It might have been more. But it hit the flagstick dead-on and dropped straight into the hole for a miraculous birdie. The roar was even louder than when the putt had dropped at 13, in part because the ball’s going in was such a shock to everyone watching.
“When he makes a putt like the one he did at thirteen, it’s amazing, but you can see the ball rolling in the direction of the hole, you know it’s a good putt, and then you start to think, ‘Hey, that might go in,’ ” Rocco said. “When he chips in, you’re thinking, ‘Whoa, that’s moving fast; oh my God, it went in. Even for him, that was an amazing shot.”
Somehow, Rocco managed not to become unhinged by the roar echoing back at him and by the awful four holes he had just played. He hit arguably his best drive of the day, and after Woods and Karlsson had left the green, he floated an eight-iron to about 10 feet. “I thought, ‘Wow, a makeable birdie putt; I remember what those look like,’ ” he said. “I also thought it would be really nice to make one.”
Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open Page 21