August 16, 1999
Every great rivalry starts somewhere
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
MEDINAH, Ill. (AP) — Sergio Garcia took $100 off Tiger Woods
during a practice round at Medinah Country Club early last week.
On Sunday, he nearly took something much more valuable —
the PGA Championship.
“He was emotional, he was fiery and he never dogged it,”
Woods said. “It was wonderful to see.”
Every great rivalry has to begin somewhere. This one began with
the tip of a cap, one to the other, across 219 yards of lake and
lawn and the shadows of an Illinois meadow. If golf is lucky,
it won't end until well into the next century, until Woods and
Garcia have to watch their waistlines closer than each other.
Round 1 went to Woods, along with the Wanamaker Trophy. But the
final 90 minutes of the final major of the 1990s belongs to the
ages.
The show began at the par-3 13th and never slowed. Garcia ran
in an 18-foot birdie putt there, pulled the ball from the cup
and as he straightened up, looked directly at Woods back on the
tee. With a matador's grace, the 19-year-old Spaniard tugged gently
at the bill of his cap and smiled at his rival, still four years
his senior but suddenly just three strokes ahead.
“I wanted him to know I was still there,” Garcia said,
“and to show him that he has to finish well to win. I did
it with good feelings, not like, `Make a triple bogey!' or anything.
“But I was telling him, `If you want to win, you are going
to have to play well.'”
Woods would say afterward he saw all he needed to see when the
putt rolled in.
“You have to expect your opponent to make it,” he said.
And the second after Garcia did, Woods leaned down and put his
tee in the ground. In retrospect, he might have lingered over
the scene a breath longer, giving his nerves a chance to settle
down. Instead, Woods smoked a 6-iron that rolled through the green
and settled down some 230 yards later, in a fringe of rough just
behind the putting surface. He hit one flop shot back over the
green, a second to 10 feet and two-putted for double bogey.
As Garcia stood on the 14th green, the roar from behind told him
as surely as the scoreboard in front of him could: “Game
On!” He was at 11 under, Woods only one stroke ahead.
It was the first time he started thinking about reeling in his
prey. But first the teen-ager had to get hold of his emotions.
“Right there, I realized that the fans were with me,”
Garcia said. “It was something incredible.”
But only an indication of things to come.
At the 452-yard, par-4 16th, Garcia blocked his drive right, walked
to his ball and found it nestled between two roots of a tree.
He was 189 yards from the pin. If he hit the root behind the ball,
besides risking a fracture, he risked missing the ball altogether.
If the ball hit the root in front, it could bounce back and hit
him — a two-stroke penalty.
Garcia pulled out a 6-iron. With a ferocity few beside Woods could
even appreciate, he let it rip.
“I just closed my eyes,” Garcia said. “And well,
when I opened my eyes and I saw the ball going to the green. I
was pretty excited.”
Pretty excited?
The last time you saw a shot that dangerous that good in a major
championship, it was Arnold Palmer uprooting a shrub with a 6-iron
at Royal Birkdale nearly 40 years ago. Garcia won't get a plaque
the way Palmer did — not yet, anyway — but he got a
spine-tingling ovation and a workout to boot, chasing up the fairway
behind the magnificent escape shot. He two-putted from 60 feet,
stopping his slide at 10 under.
And in the way rivals bring out the best in one another, he set
the stage for Woods to respond with a hero shot of his own.
At the par-3 17th, Woods hit his tee shot into greenside rough,
wedged it to 8 feet and found himself facing that moment when
potential, finally, has to give way to performance. He kept telling
himself, just let the blade of the putter release.
It did. Perfectly.
“And when I looked up,” Woods said, “the ball was
going in.”
A few moments later, his approach shot pierced the middle of the
18th green and the drama went out of the place like the air in
a balloon. Woods rolled his first putt to the edge, close enough
to knock the second down with a matchstick. When the ball hit
the bottom of the hole, he sighed. Then Woods hugged his caddie,
his mother, his coach and Garcia.
“He has a tremendous amount of fight in him,” Woods
said. “You can see it by the way he plays, just the way he
walks around the golf course.”
Woods has plenty of fight in him, too, dragged of him through
six pressure-packed holes by a challenge from Garcia.
Now we know what a rivalry looks like. And looking back at the
“Showdown at Sherwood,” the made-for-TV event that pitted
Woods against David Duval, it's a miracle the show didn't get
pulled for running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.
———
Jim Litke is a sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write
to him at jlitkeap.org.
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