The 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links in California 25 years ago celebrated the life of defending champion Payne Stewart, who died in a plane crash eight months ago.
Also, 18-time major champion Jack Nicklaus had parted ways.
It has also been changed to the Tiger Woods Corner Crown. Tiger Woods produced one of the biggest performances in men’s golf history in four days.
Woods arrived at Pebble Beach Golf Link three weeks after winning his 19th PGA Tour victory and his fourth victory of the season in a five-stroke victory in the Memorial Tournament, becoming the first background winner of the event hosted by Nicklaus.
In fact, Woods won 11 of his last 20 PGA Tour events, beating Ernie Elles in the playoffs at the opening season Mercedes Championship in Hawaii. He defeated Matt Gogel with a two-stroke on the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on February 9th, coming back from the seven strokes on the final seven holes. He then fled the field four times on March 19th at the Bay Hill Invitational, the Arnold Palmers tournament.
With just 24, Woods has become the top $15 million golfer with $15 million in revenue on course. He won the 1997 Masters in the record-breaking 12-strokes and the 1999 PGA Championship at Medina Country Club, midway through his career grand slam.
Woods was an overwhelming favorite to win again at the US Open in Pinehurst No. 2 the previous year, after being tied to a third two-stroke behind Stewart.
“If the conditions are dry and windy, it’s a matter of patience,” Nicklaus said before the tournament. “But if they’re throwing darts, Tiger will shoot a very low score, whatever the conditions are. And he’ll probably break the open record.”
Nicklaus set a score record for 272 US Open 72 holes in 1980 at the Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, New Jersey. Lee Jangzen marked the mark in 1993 on the same course.
If Woods maintains his passionate pace, the US open scoring record can’t stand the chance.
“He had already arrived big in one tournament (at the Masters in 1997), but that was the beginning of a tournament where he beat Tiger on many shots,” Stewart Sink said. “Not only is it a victory, but Omi Gauche’s victory, over 5-6 shots. That’s unheard of to think of how close we are all in terms of skill.”
Australia’s Stuart Appleby, the three-time PGA Tour winner at the time, evaluated Woods’ chances of winning more concisely, saying, “Tiger would be liked everywhere. He would be preferred by parking.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that.”
As Woods arrives at Pebble Beach Golf Link and begins preparations on Sunday, his caddy Steve Williams didn’t long to realize that he was the beat-beat-beat guy on the Monterey Peninsula again.
Three weeks ago, Woods competed at the Deutsche Bank Open in Hamburg, Germany. He was reportedly paid $1 million to try to defend his European tour title. In the final round, Woods’ second shot, No. 11, landed in the water, resulting in a double bogey. He tied the third four-stroke behind winner Lee Westwood. It was Woods’ second time in his career that he couldn’t win after taking a 54-hole lead.
After watching Woods hit the ball on range Monday morning, Williams and Woods swing coach Butch Harmon asked him to cut down on his practice routine before the tournament began.
“We didn’t want Tiger to overdo it before the tournament started, because we both never saw him hit the ball with that precision. “We didn’t want Tiger to play much before the tournament.
One of Harmon’s closest friends, Sam Reeves, has been watching Woods’ swings since the early days of their partnership.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Reeves told Williams. “I’ve never seen him hit the ball that well.”
Woods had two practice rounds with his best friend, Mark O’Miara. NBC lead golf announcer Johnny Miller and 1973 US Open champion joined the group at No. 16 teebox on Tuesday.
“Johnny wasn’t sure Tiger would be the next best,” Williams said. “And Mark O’Meara basically told him, ‘Hey, watch this kid play in some holes. This guy is going to be the best player you’ve ever seen.”
The wind was bright and the sun was shining as Woods teeed off in the first round of Thursday morning with Sweden’s Jesper Parnevik and Jim Furyk. Pebble Beach’s diabetic greenery was soft and accepted by the change.
Woods placed him in the clinic and applied a 6-under 65 without bogeys to earn a one-stroke lead over Miguel Angel Jimenez. It was the lowest round ever at the US Open in Pebble Beach.
After spending a few hours at club practice, he placed the green the night before because he didn’t like the way the ball rolled in the bumpy Pore Anua green.
When Woods grabbed the lead’s share on a birdie on the 14th, Miller dropped the bomb on an NBC broadcast.
“I think it’ll be very close to the rest of the field, but I really believe I have this hype. I believe Tiger will break all US open records this week and win by a big margin,” Miller said. “…I felt that if he could get off to a great start, if he could do what he did, it might be a week for him to say, ‘YA, look at guys.’ ”
Golfers who tee off in the morning had quite a benefit before the thick soupy fog caught in the afternoon. When play was interrupted, 75 players were still on the course.
“He scored very well,” Sergio Garcia said after the round. “But if you film under one or two, he can struggle very easily on this course. You can go to two or three like that. The tournament isn’t over. It’s just beginning.”
“It’s not just a fair fight.”
Woods had to tee off to the 4:40pm PT in the second round as many golfers had to finish the opening round on Friday morning.
By the time he was preparing to tee off at No. 1, Nicklaus had walked the 18th fairway to wipe away tears. He tilted his visor to the crowd. It gave Golden Bear a standing ovation after knocking a second shot on a par 5 hole to the green with a 3-wood. He putts three for par.
At his last US Open, Nicklaus posted 82 over 11. He missed a total of 155 cuts of 36 holes.
“I think the US that’s open to me is a complete investigation of golfers,” Nicklaus said after the round. “Competition, what it does to you, how difficult it is to tackle it. I enjoy it. I enjoy the punishment.”
At that moment, no one had the game as completely as Woods. After picking up the tournament’s first bogey on the fifth hole, Woods thrusts a tee shot into the sixth right rough. Most players punched out, leaving a lack of green in the ball.
It’s not the forest.
“I often said that some of the most underrated Tiger games were his play from rough,” Williams said. “He’s an incredible player who removes the ball from the rough and moves the pin very close. He’s just a strange ability and he’s very strong.”
Not only will Woods have to make the ball muscular from the rough, but he will also have to clean up the growing tree on the side of the cliff to pull the blind shot from about 202 yards.
Williams didn’t flinch when Woods asked for the 7 iron.
“After caddying Tiger for a while, you sometimes like him to play it safely,” Williams said. “But that was something I knew right away that he could get the club. I didn’t know if he could get it on Green.
Woods made a violent hack with his ball. It somehow cleaned the cliff, landed in front of the greenery, bouncing off, and stopped 18 feet from the cup.
NBC Oncourse Reporter Roger Multby summed it up best in the broadcast: “It’s not a fair fight.”
Tiger missed the Eagle putt and settled on a birdie.
“That amazing shot just set the tone for the rest of the week,” Williams said.
On Cliffside Par-3, Woods hit a tee shot up to five feet and sunk another birdie putt to 8 under. Another birdie at No. 11 put him a two-stroke in front of the field.
After the mist returned, Woods reached Hole 12, near the darkness. Play was stopped shortly after he teeed off, but Woods and his playing partner were allowed to finish the hole.
Someone had told Woods that no one had made birdies on Rock Hard Green all day. He slammed a towering five-iron shot to about 30 feet and meandered into a birdie putt that he could almost see.
“Tiger loves to make statements,” Williams said. “Everyone else wanted to mark the ball and come back the next day. But Tiger likes to leave with an exclamation point.”
Wood gave him a 12-hole under three in the second round and a 3-stroke lead over Jimenez, under nine in the tournament.
“We have a long way to go, and the second round is not over,” Woods said. “This is a tougher course than Augusta. You need to keep playing well in the mornings.”
Missing golf ball
Woods returned to driving range at 5:07am on Saturday morning and hit the ball under Harmon’s careful eyes. Woods didn’t have time to go to the putting green as it would be a shortened warm-up.
When Woods reached the 13th tee, Williams realized there was a problem.
“When I got to the tee and put my hand in my bag, there were only three balls,” Williams said. “I didn’t know why. There should have been a half dozen.”
Woods was still unhappy with the stroke, so he took three balls out of his bag and placed them on the carpet of his hotel room the night before. He had forgotten to put them back in his bag.
In the way Woods stripes the ball, Williams didn’t think he needed more than three in the final six holes of the round. He decides to maintain his discovery in himself, in order to avoid putting pressure on the forest.
In hole No. 13, Wood ran his tee shot down the rough rock, and a powerful rush out of the tall grass raked the ball. He made a par and then threw the ball to a young fan near No. 13 Green.
“The child was so excited that his dad showed him that he had a ball named Tiger,” Williams said. “And then, “Hey, I think maybe I should get that ball back.”
“But I don’t think you can do it in front of all the people around Tiger. He says, ‘What’s going on here?”
Woods picked up another birdie on the par 5 on the 14th and played par on the 15th and 17th.
However, a disaster occurred at 18 tees when Woods pulled the drive to the left and brought it to the rocks along the Pacific coast.
Tiger didn’t know he was one ball. If Woods lost the last one, he could not borrow it from his playing partner either. Under the rules of golf, he had to finish the round with the same type of ball he was using. Or they had to evaluate the two-stroke penalty to use another one. He was the only golfer on the field using Nikeball.
When Woods reached for the driver again, Williams suggested that he might want to use a two-iron from the tee.
“Tiger said, ‘Get your f******g driver head cover!” Williams said his recent book, ‘Rowarred Together.’ “We didn’t want to tell him it was our last golf ball, because he probably told me to put my butt on a 17-mile drive and then onto a Greyhound bus from there.”
Luckily for Williams, Woods’ second tee shot was straight and dried land was found. He lets Bogie post a 2-under 69. Under his 36-hole total of eight he left six shots over Jimenez and Denmark’s Thomas Bjorn, breaking the US open record to get the biggest advantage at the halfway point.
Only the other four golfers have become standard.
Woods’ advantage had begun to weigh some of his competitors.
“I think we have to realize that there are 156 guys in this tournament,” Jimenez told reporters. “The media thinks there’s only one man.”
“He had more.”
Heading into the third round, it was all over. Woods made one big mistake – a par 4 triple bogey 7 after his approach found Rough. He finally reached the green on his fifth shot and missed the putt. Woods walked to the fifth tee and laughed.
“That was what impressed me the most and meant that Tiger was in full control,” Williams said in his book. “Have you ever seen Tiger Woods laugh when he made a double or triple bogey?”
On the day the winds had howled and the greenery of Pebble Beach finally dried, Woods was able to post an even number of par 71.
“He’s there in his tournament, right?” Padraig Harrington said at the time.
The defeat required NBC Sports to wonder if golf fans would see the final round on Father’s Day. That was the opposite as millions of forests were adjusted to see how low they were and how many strokes he would win. The last two days have become the most notable US open round since 1975, since viewers were tracked.
Woods had a bogeyless 67 card in the final round, leaving him with a total of 12 under 272 with 72 holes.
Woods’ 15-stroke victory was the biggest win in major championship history, surpassing Old Tom Morris’ 13-stroke victory at the 1862 Open Championship. He was the first player in the 106-year history of the US, finishing the double-digit standard digits.
“It was a complete show with one guy,” said NBC golf announcer Dan Hicks. “I think people picked up on the fact that this is history and one man is dominant like that. How can one man take it to under 12 and the next guy be a plus 3? We don’t see anything like that.
“I think it was fascinated by the perfect guy in a game where no one really approaches. So it’s an absolute sistine chapel for major championship performances and I believe it will never be equal.”
When Woods signed the scoring card after the final round, he turned to Williams and asked what the fuss was in the 18th tee in the second round.
“He could see me nervous and he had a nine-shot lead,” Williams said. “What do you get nervous about? He could see something wrong, but I never mentioned it until I told him. We laughed forever about it.”
Williams also never forget what Woods told him next.
“Steve, I’m going to play even better at St. Andrews’ British Open,” Woods said. “I want you to get your ass over there and I want you to know all the grass blades on that course.”
The following month, Williams went to St Andrews, Scotland a week earlier. On July 23, 2000, Woods defeated Bjorn and Elles on eight strokes, catching a jug of Clarett and becoming the youngest golfer to complete a career grand slam.
He won the final leg of the so-called “Tiger Slam” the following April by gathering the second green jacket at the 2001 Masters.
“I think Tiger’s skill level was the biggest in history,” Sink said. “The Major identified it on a larger range as they had heavy rough and his strength overcame the heavy rough. They had a lot of lengths. His power overcame it.
“They needed everything more – and he had more.”
