Chapter 44

The 82nd PGA Championship

Valhalla Golf Club

Louisville, Kentucky

August 17–20, 2000

As defending 1999 PGA champ, Tiger heads to Louisville, Kentucky, where the Wanamaker Trophy will be contested for the eighty-second time.

The Valhalla Golf Club is named for a sacred place in Norse mythology—the great hall where the communion between Viking souls and their gods was celebrated. “It sets up well for anyone who hits the ball high,” Tiger says of the course, which Jack Nicklaus opened in 1986. “Obviously, that is the way Nicklaus golf courses are designed. You have got to bring the ball in high.”

On Wednesday, August 16, Nicklaus is practicing on the 4th hole when he gets sad news. His ninety-year-old mother, Helen, has succumbed to a two-year-long illness. “Her greatest fear in the last year or so was that she would pass away during one of golf’s major events,” Nicklaus says. “I know her wish would be for me to stay here and play.”

Jim Awtrey, CEO of the PGA of America, also has a wish—that Nicklaus play Valhalla with Masters champion Vijay Singh and U.S. Open and British Open champion Tiger.

The trio tees off at 9:13 a.m. on Thursday, August 17. “He shot the easiest 66 today,” Nicklaus says after the round. “It looked like a 60. Phenomenal control, phenomenal concentration, phenomenal putter.”

On Friday, Tiger says to Nicklaus, “It’s been an honor playing with you, Jack, I’ve enjoyed it, now let’s just finish off on a correct note.”

“You got it, let’s go,” says Nicklaus. The emerging story on Friday is not that Nicklaus misses the cut but Who’s Bob May?

Thirty-one-year-old Bob May is a little-known PGA pro who sits just five shots behind Tiger after round 2. Sportswriters scramble to pull together a profile. But Tiger’s already up on May’s stats.

May, a Southern California golfer seven years Tiger’s senior, was named the 1985 American Junior Golf Association Player of the Year (an honor Tiger won in both 1991 and 1992) and at sixteen qualified for the Los Angeles Open at the Riviera Country Club (seven years before sixteen-year-old Tiger played there on a sponsor’s exemption).

Back then, Tiger’s goal was “to hopefully one day win as many tournaments as [May] did.” Though May hasn’t fared particularly well in the PGA, he did win the 1999 European Masters last September.

Going into Sunday, Tiger leads May by a single stroke: 203 to 204.

“This guy won’t back down,” Tiger says to Steve Williams.

He’s right. Tiger has an early bogey, and May pulls ahead by two on the 4th. Tiger evens it up by birdieing 7 and 8, but May goes a stroke ahead again on 11, and that’s how it stays through 16.

“What have we got, Stevie?” Tiger asks his caddie as they stand in the 17th fairway.

“Ninety yards,” Williams says.

Tiger selects his club. “Lob wedge.”

He overhits by five yards—to two feet, making the birdie putt and pulling even with May.

On 18, an uphill 542-yard par 5, Tiger and May each reach the green with two good strikes. Having knocked his first putt fifteen feet past, May sinks the second for a birdie, leaving Tiger with a short putt, a six-foot knee-jerker, which he makes. “That’s why he’s Tiger Woods,” May says when the ball drops.

The new three-hole playoff format begins at the 16th. Tiger makes a twenty-foot birdie, but on the 17th drives the ball off the cart path yet miraculously saves par—then pars again on 18, leaving him one stroke clear for the win.

“This was one memorable battle,” Tiger says after he hoists the Wanamaker Trophy for the second consecutive year.

After the champagne toasts, Tiger sinks into a stretch limousine. “My calf is killing me,” he says of the pain settling into his right leg. “Man, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

Tiger has won three of the four majors this calendar year, the first player to do so since Ben Hogan in 1953. He ends the 2000 season with six wins and eight top-ten finishes, leading the field in money and scoring.

After the PGA Championship, Jack Nicklaus revisits his assessment of Tiger. “I kept saying, ‘I can’t understand why we don’t have anybody else playing that well.’ I am more understanding now. He’s that much better.”

The Masters is eighty-six days away when the questions start. The 2001 PGA season opener, on January 10, is the Mercedes Championship at Hawaii’s Kapalua Resort.

“Would you say,” a reporter asks, “‘I don’t care if I win another tournament this year, I’ll just win the Masters?’”

“I couldn’t live with myself if I said that,” Tiger answers. “It wouldn’t be me.”

With the Masters looming in April, the press closes in on the definition of the grand slam.

Q: There’s going to be a debate at Augusta, if you should win, whether that’s a Grand Slam or whether it has to be done in calendar year.… If you were to win Augusta this year, is that a Grand Slam?

TIGER WOODS: Let me ask you this. Do I hold all four?

Q: Yes.

TIGER WOODS: Then there’s the answer.

Q: Does it have to be in a calendar year?

TIGER WOODS: I [would] hold all four at the same time.

Q: First you have to win it. Then will you let us argue it?

TIGER WOODS: You can do whatever you want as soon as I win.

Tiger ties for eighth at the Mercedes and for fifth at the Phoenix Open, then it’s on to the PGA’s West Coast Swing.

At one point, fans injure Tiger’s left knee in their push to get his autograph. “I can’t hit balls right now, no way,” he tells reporters covering the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on February 1, 2001. “I tried to swing. It’s not going to happen today.”

Tiger plays the pro tournament, finishing at 8 under, eight strokes back from Davis Love III’s 16-under 272.

Agent Mark Steinberg describes Tiger’s existential niche: “Now, he is world icon status.”

He can afford to focus on winning the majors, but he still needs a home. Tiger’s outgrown the town house IMG secured for him when he turned pro, in 1996.

In mid-March, he moves into a new house in Isleworth. The location is prime—the south end of the driving range—but the space is barren of furniture.

Tiger improvises, decorating the mantel with his prized possessions. They all have the gleam of precious silver: the U.S. Open trophy, the Claret Jug, and the Wanamaker Trophy he’s held for the second consecutive year.

“Put another one up there,” Tiger says, “and it would look pretty good.”