Chapter 27

Walt Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic

Magnolia Course, Disney World

Orlando, Florida

October 17–20, 1996

Oh, god,” says Peter Jacobsen when asked about Tiger’s recent performance. “If this is how he is every week, then it’s over. He’s the greatest player in the history of the game.”

Tiger isn’t feeling like the greatest. He’s hunkered down with a nasty cold and sore throat.

But Michael McPhillips, director of the Walt Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic, is reaping the success of a monthlong campaign. “The Tiger has landed,” McPhillips crows, riffing on Neil Armstrong’s world-changing announcement of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

“A good crowd for us is usually in the 15,000 range on Sunday, and with Tiger, we might draw 20,000, maybe more,” McPhillips enthusiastically predicts.

Attendance is triple what it was last year.

“You go, T!” a young fan calls out. “Take care of bizness!”

Despite feeling under the weather, Tiger tosses balls, high-fives kids, and thanks his supporters.

“Tiger Woods just thanked me,” says one teenager. “My year is made, dude!”

As he walks the course, four bodyguards keep pace but don’t prevent Tiger from interacting with the fans. “To look out here and see so many kids, I think that’s wonderful,” he says. “It’s really nice seeing more minorities in the gallery. I think that’s where the game should go and will go.”

Time will tell if that prediction is on point. But there’s not long to wait on the one Tiger makes at breakfast before his second day of play.

“Pop,” he tells Earl, who’s staying with him in the rented house. “Got to shoot 63 today. That’s what it will take to get into it.”

“So go do it,” replies Earl. Later that day, when Tiger gets home, he asks his son, “Whaddya shoot?”

“Sixty-three,” Tiger says.

“Oh, my god,” says Earl.

The noisy overflow gallery makes the Magnolia course at Disney feel more like the wild kingdom than the Magic Kingdom, especially when Sunday spectators cutting through the underbrush startle a deer—and excite an alligator who chases the real-life Bambi across the 6th green.

The deer won’t be caught. Neither will Tiger, even though he woke up today feeling worse than ever, saying, “I can’t really hear. I’m so clogged. My throat’s not doing good. I’ve got no energy. I’m dizzy. Other than that, I’m great.”

He starts Sunday in a four-way tie for fifth place but spends the back nine trading leads with Payne Stewart, until at the last moment, Tiger ends up winning by a stroke.

When he putts out on the 18th, he’s won his second PGA tournament.

Mickey, Minnie, and Tigger join Tiger on the course in celebration. Of the seven pro tournaments Tiger’s played this season, he’s won two and amassed winnings of nearly $800,000. At number 23 on the money list, he’s earned a place at next week’s TOUR Championship.

Dressed in the colorful golf knickers he’s known for, the runner-up and fellow resident of Isleworth Golf & Country Club, Payne Stewart, tells reporters, “All the accolades need to go to Tiger for the way he’s played and conducted himself over the last eight weeks.” Not to mention: “He’s a wonderful player. He’s the shot in arm our tour needed.”

Tiger returns the compliment. “Payne’s a great guy. He’s inviting me over for rib-eye tonight,” he tells TV reporters. “Maybe, he said, he’ll buy me a beer.”

“You’re twenty, Tiger,” the interviewer reminds him. “You gotta wait until you’re twenty-one.”

“What people don’t know won’t hurt,” Tiger says with a sly grin.

Tiger and Stewart are just two of many professional athletes who own homes in the exclusive and secure eight-hundred-acre development, where savoring a win is a favorite pastime.

“As in any community, we’re always getting together to have a good time,” says Los Angeles Lakers star Shaquille O’Neal. Though he has a movie theater in his $3.95-million Mediterranean-style lakefront mansion, it’s more fun to go four doors down to catch a film with his buddy Dennis Scott of the Dallas Mavericks—or to challenge Seattle Mariners outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. to a pickup game of one-on-one on Shaq’s indoor basketball court, painted in Lakers gold and purple.

“As for Tiger,” O’Neal says, “once my tennis elbow [heals], I’ll be glad to take him to school on my miniature golf course in my front yard.”

Payne Stewart and Wimbledon doubles champion Todd Woodbridge partner in both golf and tennis, each spotting the other strokes or points. “Most people at Isleworth are very successful,” Woodbridge says. “It breeds success. You breathe the air of success.”

And sometimes a whiff of failure. Life among elite athletes is “always very humbling because you think you’re the best here and then you find someone who’s better than you.”

It seems like that’s Sports Illustrated’s assessment of Tiger versus the PGA Tour field. “Tiger! In Two Months as a Pro, He Has Transformed an Entire Sport” reads the cover of the October 28, 1996, issue, Tiger’s first as the cover subject.

Printed praise matters little to Tiger. It matters only that he measures up to his own exacting standards. So winning the Disney Classic isn’t enough.

“It may be surprising to some guys, but it’s not surprising to people who know me,” Tiger says of how well he’s been playing since turning pro. “I was never able to get any feel at tour events as an amateur,” he tells reporters. “One week I’d play in a junior event, then next I’d play Greg Norman.”

What excites his supporters and worries his opponents, though, is Tiger’s assertion that he’s nowhere near his A game.

“I really haven’t played my best golf yet,” he says. “I haven’t even had a great putting week yet.”