Chapter 30

AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am

Pebble Beach Golf Links

Monterey Peninsula, California

January 31, 1997

Tiger’s the hottest player in the game,” Mark O’Meara says. “We play a lot of golf together.”

At the Mercedes Championships at La Costa Resort and Spa, in Carlsbad, California. Tiger, wearing his already emblematic final-round red shirt, wins the first PGA event of the season in a rain-drenched playoff on January 12, raising his winning percentage to an odds-defying .333.

“Red is one of Mom’s colors,” Tiger notes, explaining that “every day in Thai tradition is represented by a color, and red is for Sunday.” Though less superstitious about it than Tida is, Tiger has noticed that he seems to win by more strokes when he wears red on Sundays. “How could I argue with Mom?”

He gives Tida the new Mercedes that comes with first place. The $216,000 in prize money makes him an official PGA Tour millionaire after only nine events. Tiger’s smashed the record previously held by Ernie Els, who earned $1 million after twenty-eight events.

Raising a glass of champagne, newly twenty-one-year-old Tiger says, “The coolest thing about all this is that I’m actually able to participate in a toast without worrying that I’m going to get arrested.”

Tiger will “compete in drinking a glass of water,” Earl likes to say. He’s finally met his match in Mark O’Meara.

It’s O’Meara’s thoughtful wife, Alicia, who welcomes Tiger to Isleworth, telling her husband, “That poor kid is sitting over there in his house alone. Let’s get him over here for dinner.” On January 13, 1997—O’Meara’s fortieth birthday—his wife, Alicia, surprises him with a dinner party and a new Porsche to be delivered by Valentine’s Day.

Despite the nineteen-year age gap, Tiger and O’Meara—whom Tiger calls Marko—bond over turning any activity into a competition. O’Meara proves superior at washing and waxing cars, but the younger man excels at ironing. “Every morning,” Tiger says, “I’ve got to iron all my stuff. Got to do it. Even if it’s dry-cleaned, I’ll iron it just a little bit, all of the little creases.”

To keep up, O’Meara buys his own clothes iron, but Tiger quickly invents a new wager. “Fly fishing,” he says. “Five bucks a cast, ten bucks a catch.”

“I’m going to figure out a way to clip you” at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, O’Meara tells Tiger—assuming the 1997 tournament is playable. Heavy rains washed out the 1996 event entirely. And Pebble Beach’s greens, planted with its signature poa annua grass, have been soaked by twenty inches of rain this January.

Clint Eastwood, the onetime mayor of nearby Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, has an idea for a way to clear the standing water on the greens. In his latest film, Absolute Power, set to open on February 14, Eastwood’s playing the role of a US president. Marine One isn’t available, but Eastwood has a helicopter of his own. He climbs on board with musician and amateur pilot John Denver, and they hover the chopper over the greens, spinning its rotor blades in an attempt to dry out the grass.

America’s number one public golf course, where sea lions sun themselves on cliffside beaches next to the Pacific Ocean, has certainly been good to O’Meara, a.k.a. the “Prince of Pebble Beach.” The tour veteran is a four-time event champion—1985, 1989, 1990, 1992—though he has yet to win a major.

“From Hollywood, California, please welcome Kevin Costner,” the announcer says. It’s 8:40 a.m., and cameras are clicking in the twelve-deep crush around the first tee.

Partnered with Tiger in the team competition, the 15-handicap golfer and Tin Cup movie star is all smiles and photo-ops with the fans cheering his terrific play—including three birdies—on the front nine. He’s replacing Earl, whose ongoing health problems prevent him from taking part in the pro-am. “When his father couldn’t play, I was happy to fill in,” says Costner. The movie star “loves the crowds,” but Tiger fights his annoyance with the people jostling for photos.

It’s a somewhat less golf-savvy crowd than attends other tournaments. One spectator questions a reporter what “the ‘negative 13’ next to Woods’ name means.”

“I want to see Tiger for the golf and Kevin ’cause he’s a hunk,” says one attendee from San Jose. “That’s why I’m here.”

A fan in the gallery spots Bill Murray of Caddyshack fame.

“Bill, you’re looking better than Kevin Costner,” she shouts enthusiastically.

Murray pauses on the fairway to consider the compliment, then answers, “You’ve got a point.”

Actor Andy Garcia and partner Paul Stankowski win the team competition, setting a course record with 43 under par. It’s “the best golf I’ve ever played,” Garcia says. “Actors sort of get used to mimicry. When you get to play with pros, you fall into it.”

Tiger and Costner take fourth place. Tiger hopes to beat that in the pro tournament, joking that he’s picked up some new tricks. Such as? “Don’t hit the ball in the ocean,” he says drily.

O’Meara’s tied for second going into the final, three back from the leader, David Duval. Tiger’s tied for fifth. “I love Mark to death,” Tiger says. “We talked about it back home—‘Wouldn’t it be great to battle it out down the stretch?’”

He nearly makes it happen. A nervy try for eagle ends in a birdie and a fourth-round 64. But it isn’t quite enough.

The Prince of Pebble Beach takes the top spot for a fifth time. Tiger ties for second with Duval. “There must be someone floating high above the Monterey Peninsula who’s a huge Mark O’Meara fan,” O’Meara says.

On February 22, Earl undergoes a second heart bypass surgery: WOODS’S FATHER BETTER, says the New York Times headline above an article noting the care Earl’s receiving at UCLA Medical Center.

Complications threaten Earl’s recovery. Tiger sits at his father’s bedside, watching the electronic signals on the heart monitor. Suddenly, Earl flatlines.

“They said he was gone,” Tiger says. “We thought we had lost him.”

It’s a few terrifying moments before Earl is brought back. “I was in la-la-land there for a while,” he says.

After regaining consciousness, Earl describes his near-death experience, his feeling of walking into the light.

To Earl, who was raised Christian, it was a spiritual event.

“All I felt was warmth,” he tells Tiger afterward. “Do I go to the warmth or not? I made a conscious decision not to go to the warmth.”

There’s less warmth to be found in the piece journalist Charles P. Pierce has written for his cover story in the April issue of GQ, which blows raspberries at the religious overtones some people—including Earl—see in Tiger’s success.

Tiger’s nearing his second-round tee time at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Invitational at the end of March when he first catches sight of the magazine. He recognizes himself in the gray suit on the cover of the April issue, a photo taken at the photographer’s studio in Long Beach. What’s completely unfamiliar is the bold headline: THE COMING OF TIGER WOODS, SPORTS’ NEXT MESSIAH.

Employing the structure and language of a religious tract, the piece is part ode to Tiger’s natural talent. “I believe that he is the most charismatic athlete alive today,” Pierce writes. “I believe that his charisma comes as much from the way he plays the game as it does from the way he looks and from what he is supposed to symbolize. I believe that his golf swing—never past parallel—is the most perfect golf swing yet devised.”

But Pierce is convinced that where there’s faith, there’s heresy. He has a bigger score to settle: that Earl’s presentation of Tiger as a world savior exists only in his own imagination.

To prove his point, Pierce quotes from unguarded remarks Tiger made during their California limousine ride, the off-color jokes he told without realizing that he was on the record. The punch lines, some of them racial, some of them sexual, skew toward the humor of an inexperienced schoolboy with none of the sophisticated innuendo that might be expected of a multimillionaire product pitchman.

Reaction to the piece is instantaneous and treated as a scandal involving a young athlete whose reputation until then has been mostly pristine.

IMG quickly issues a press release containing Tiger’s response.

“It’s no secret that I’m twenty-one years old and that I’m naive about the motives of certain ambitious writers,” Tiger writes. “The article proves that, and I don’t see any reason for anyone to pay $3 to find that out. It’s easy to laugh it off as juvenile and petty except for the attacks on my father,” he continues. “I don’t understand the cheap shots against him.”

Nowhere in the statement does Tiger say what he’s really thinking. How could I have been so stupid?

He’ll have his guard up with journalists from now on.

Way up.