Chapter 11

USGA Junior Amateur Championship

Wollaston Golf Club

Milton, Massachusetts

August 2, 1992

Tiger’s been playing competitive golf for half his life, since he was eight years old. Now sixteen, he’s crossed the country from the California desert to the tall pines of New England and won more than one hundred junior tournaments.

As the defending champion of the USGA Junior Amateur, where no player has ever won a consecutive title since competition began in 1948, Tiger has a chance to make history at Wollaston Golf Club, a Massachusetts golf course founded in 1895.

On the 16th hole of the final, Tiger pulls even with leader Mark Wilson, an eighteen-year-old golfer from Wisconsin. Then comes the 18th, a par 4, where each player lands a ball in a different bunker.

Tiger fails to make par from there, two-putting for a bogey—but it’s still enough to earn him a win, making Tiger the first ever two-time Junior Amateur champion.

“I knew he would come back,” Wilson says of Tiger. “He’s just that good a player. I knew because of his reputation.”

The gallery watches as sixteen-year-old Tiger and sixty-year-old Earl embrace on the green. A tearful Tiger holds the hug for more than a minute as the one thousand spectators clap.

“I’m not one who usually does that,” Tiger tells the New York Times. “It just all came out. You just cannot believe how much tension I was feeling. It’s over, finally.”

August 25 brings a fresh challenge: the U.S. Amateur Championship.

Tiger arrives at the Jack Nicklaus–designed Muirfield Village Golf Club, in Dublin, Ohio, determined to improve his results from last year, when he failed to advance to match play.

He makes a strong move in the second qualifying round, scoring a 6-under 66 that comes at a physical cost: back pain.

“My back got tired,” Tiger tells the Los Angeles Times after he’s eliminated from the tournament. “I couldn’t fire my body through.”

His self-assessment is unsparing. “People say I could go on tour right now… wrong,” he says. “My muscle is not adult muscle. I am not finished growing yet.” Not only that, he’s also growing quickly. “I’ve grown one-half inch in the last three weeks,” he tells the Seattle Times.

He’s also dealing with other variables. “Other players don’t have to worry about getting up one day and suddenly hitting the ball 10 yards farther than you hit it the previous day. That’s my problem.”

Still, Tiger can’t stop thinking of a physical edge he noticed in the pro golfers he competed against at the Nissan Los Angeles Open. These guys have got their swings fine-tuned. I don’t. They know exactly how far they hit it. For me, because my body is growing, every day is different.

A year later, the seventeen-year-old is a rising high school senior who will soon be competing for golf scholarships. He’s narrowed his list of top-choice schools to Stanford, University of Nevada–Las Vegas, and Arizona State.

On August 1, 1993, coaches from all three universities are among the record crowd of 4,650 that has turned out for the semifinal and championship matches of the U.S. Junior Amateur at the Waverley Country Club, overlooking the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon.

Tiger’s looking to break his own record and win the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship for a never-before-attempted third time.

He’s not in peak form, still recovering from the case of mononucleosis he contracted less than a month ago. Ohio’s Ryan Armour, who lost to Tiger in last year’s quarterfinals, sets his sights on stopping the defending champion from repeating. In the final, they come to 17 with Armour 2 up, and Tiger has to birdie the 432-yard par-four 17th to stay in the match.

Tiger turns to Jay Brunza, his sports psychologist and major-tournament caddie, looking for inspiration.

“Got to be like Nicklaus,” Tiger says. “Got to will this in the hole.”

He makes the birdie, then birdies again on 18, leveling the match and forcing a playoff back on the 1st hole.

A par 4 on the extra hole brings Tiger to a record-setting third consecutive U.S. Junior Amateur title.

Earl runs out onto the green when it’s over, sweeping Tiger into his arms.

“I did it, I did it,” says Tiger as Earl repeats, “I’m so proud of you.”

“It was the most amazing comeback of my career,” says Tiger—dubbed “the best golfer around among those not yet allowed to vote” by Sports Illustrated—“I had to play the best two holes of my life under the toughest circumstances, and I did it.”

Even as sixteen-year-old Armour struggles with “the biggest heartbreak I’ve ever experienced,” he knows that in Tiger he’s encountered greatness. “It was like he was following a script,” Armour says. “I don’t think many people could have done what Tiger did, professional, amateur, junior amateur, whatever. That’s why he’s the best.”