Chapter 41

Buick Invitational

Torrey Pines

San Diego, California

February 10–13, 2000

Tiger has an early tee time at the pro-am ahead of the Buick Invitational. It’s 6:42 a.m., and nine television crews have already set up their equipment on the 1st. Then comes the thrum of a news helicopter flying above Torrey Pines.

The cameras are focused on a player on the verge of the unfathomable. Three days ago, Tiger won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am by closing a seven-stroke gap in the final seven holes of the tournament. A victory here at the Buick Invitational would extend his streak.

No one knows Torrey Pines better than Phil Mickelson, who grew up playing the course. But both as an amateur and as a pro, Tiger’s won events on this course, too, including the 1999 Buick Invitational, when childhood friend Bryon Bell was his caddie. Steve Williams has this week off, because Bell “deserved a chance to defend, too,” Tiger says.

But the defense is futile. Mickelson draws on his home-course advantage to best Tiger by four strokes, winning the tournament and breaking Tiger’s sizzling streak.

“If I had my ball this week, I’d have won by five,” Tiger says over the telephone.

It’s Sunday, May 14, and Tiger is on the phone at the TPC Four Seasons Resort, in Irving, Texas. He’s finished 10 under par in the Byron Nelson Golf Classic, one stroke behind Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, and Jesper Parnevik, who won the playoff and the tournament.

Even though the playoff wasn’t televised—CBS ended its television coverage once Tiger was out of contention—today’s results only underscore Tiger’s disappointing fifth-place finish at the Masters in April.

“For some reason, the golfing gods weren’t looking down on me this week,” Tiger said at Augusta National. He played both tournaments with Titleist 681 “T” Forged irons, Titleist Vokey Design wedges inscribed TIGER, and the Titleist Professional—a ball with a liquid core and wound construction—though at Augusta he hinted he was thinking of making a switch.

He’ll next play a European Tour event, defending his 1999 Deutsche Bank–SAP Open title at the Gut Kaden Golf and Land Club, outside Hamburg, Germany. Now Tiger’s jump-starting the process with this call to Kel Devlin. Nike Golf’s global director of sports marketing is in Portland, Oregon, eating his Sunday dinner.

“Can you meet me in Germany on Tuesday morning?” Tiger asks.

Since January of 1999, Tiger has been testing a Nike Tour Accuracy, a solid-core ball developed by Nike and engineered by Hideyuki “Rock” Ishii, of Bridgestone Golf.

Devlin and Ishii log countless air miles bringing prototypes to Tiger whenever and wherever he has time to test them. One version of the ball is eliminated for failing to deliver the satisfying click that Tiger hears when he connects his putter with the Titleist Professional.

Tiger makes a game of driving the balls for speed. And his feel is uncannily accurate. “I hit that one a little low on the face, so that’s probably 2,600 RPM,” Tiger says during one testing session.

The reading from the launch monitor: 2,570.

“This golf ball didn’t come by accident,” caddie Steve Williams says. “When Tiger signed with Nike, [the ball] was one of the projects. It didn’t happen overnight. It was a couple years of engineering that went into developing the ball and getting it exactly right. And it wasn’t going to be put into play until such time that it was exactly how he wanted it.”

In early 2000, at Big Canyon Country Club, in Newport Beach, California, Tiger chose his two top prototypes, but he wasn’t ready to play them competitively—until now.

After Tiger calls him, Devlin reaches Ishii at Bridgestone’s offices in Japan. “I’m dead serious,” Devlin says. “We’re going to meet Tiger Tuesday morning on the first tee.” They have less than forty-eight hours. Ishii packs a suitcase full of balls and boards an afternoon flight.

Before Tiger’s plane takes off for Hamburg Airport, he makes another call, this time to the Titleist CEO, Wally Uihlein. They added a clause to Tiger’s sponsorship agreement last year giving him a contractual right to play a Nike ball in competition, but he hasn’t done so yet. That’s about to change, Tiger tells Uihlein.

At nine o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, May 16, Devlin and Ishii arrive on the first tee at Gut Kaden Golf and Land Club.

Turns out, Tiger hasn’t let his caddie in on his plans.

“What the f— are you two idiots doing here?” Steve Williams says, scoffing at the idea that Tiger is considering switching balls midseason.

Wind and rain are lashing the course, so Devlin uses an umbrella to protect the boxes of Nike Tour Accuracy balls Ishii is carrying. To Tiger, the testing conditions are perfect. The Titleist Professional he drives off the first tee lands in the rough. He next launches a Nike Tour Accuracy. The ball barely drifts in the whipping wind, landing on the fairway and consistently outperforming the Titleist ball in an array of shots.

“I guess we’re switching balls,” Williams concedes.

Tiger doesn’t repeat at the Deutsche Bank–SAP Open, but Nike Tour Accuracy’s performance in tournament play convinces him that the ball is a winner. He places an order with Ishii.

“Tiger asked me to make him a couple hundred of the balls so he could take them home and practice with them so he could get ready for the U.S. Open,” Ishii says. “That’s when we knew he would play it.”

On the 18th green at Muirfield Village Golf Club, the Memorial Tournament is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary by honoring its legendary founder, Jack Nicklaus. Fifteen thousand people, including Nicklaus’s ninety-year-old mother, Helen, have gathered for a fifty-minute ceremony.

It’s an emotional tribute, but music from the Ohio State marching band lifts everyone’s spirits. Tiger gives an interview fondly recalling the day Nicklaus—now in his last full season on tour—was leading a clinic and offered to watch the then freshman at Western High hit a few balls.

“You might have a future in this game,” Nicklaus told him.

“Here I am,” Tiger says today as the tournament’s defending champion.

No player has ever repeated as champion at the Memorial, but Tiger has a new weapon in his arsenal: the Nike Tour Accuracy.

Lee Patterson, media director for the PGA Tour, asks Tiger: “Is it safe to say the Nike ball issue, we can put it to rest and you’re ok with it?” The question comes after Tiger’s 9-under second round.

Tiger laughs, saying, “I would like you guys to put it to rest.”

He follows it up with a third-round 65. Tour veteran Harrison Frazar says what every player in the field is thinking: “He hit shots today that I don’t know if any other human can hit.”

Tiger replies with a note of caution. “If it were over, there would be a trophy.”

The next day, Tiger wins it, along with a check for $558,000.

To Williams, the value of the Nike Tour Accuracy is a measurable commodity. He says, “You’d have to say it was worth one or two shots per round, for sure.”