Chapter 51

The 131st British Open

Muirfield

Gullane, East Lothian, Scotland

July 18–21, 2002

In early July, Tiger joins Mark O’Meara on his annual trip to Ireland, where they tune up ahead of the 131st British Open.

Scotland’s Muirfield hosted its first Open in 1892, and has hosted it thirteen times since. The links course measures 7,034 yards in two loops of nine holes played in opposite directions to minimize favorable winds for any one player. Nick Faldo knows it well, having won the last two times Muirfield hosted the Open, in 1987 and 1992. “You can’t have one game plan” to win on a links course, Faldo tells the New York Times. “With the winds changing all the time, you have to study the golf course.”

The weather this summer’s been dry enough to brown the fairways and greens, and the rough is dangerous, with three cuts ranging from short grass to waist-high hay. No one’s expecting rain.

On Sunday, July 14, Ernie Els watches a gorgeous sunset over the Muirfield clubhouse and the dunes that line the Firth of Forth estuary. “If that doesn’t inspire you, nothing will,” Els tells a friend of the spectacular sight.

Els and Tiger both open with 70, then in the second round Els pulls ahead with a 66 to Tiger’s 68. Tiger and Mark O’Meara are paired in the third round for a 2:30 p.m. tee time toward the end of the field.

On Friday afternoon, Australian golfer and 1995 PGA Championship winner Steve Elkington stops in at a North Berwick pub overlooking an ancient harbor. “I go into the Auld Hoose and there’s an old guy who has a silver jug that they just leave for him. They call him the harbor master, and he has this big, long beard,” Elkington says.

The man, who’s been reading the currents, issues a stern warning.

“Listen to me,” the harbormaster tells Elkington. “The weather is going to be s— at about three p.m. tomorrow.”

After finishing an early morning third round, Elkington returns to the Auld Hoose for a rest. “When I came back out, two hours later, I looked out the front door and there was a guy crawling along hands and knees trying to get in the pub, the weather is so bad.”

Though unaware of the harbormaster’s prophecy, Tiger is barely out on the first hole when apocalyptic weather strikes: “The temperature dropped, rain was coming sideways, blowing. And the gusts were over 40 [mph].”

Almost as abysmal as the weather is Tiger’s score. His third-round 81, the highest he’s ever shot in a professional round, is no reflection on his performance.

“It was just blowing so hard out there, it was tough to stand up straight at times,” Tiger says afterward. “I’m disappointed and frustrated, but I tried all the way around.” Still, he’s typically pragmatic, calling it “one of those fluke days that you had to throw out. It was just brutal for all of us.”

Irish golf prodigy Padraig Harrington shoots a 76, slipping from his spot at the beginning of the day—a five-way tie for the lead—in “the worst weather I’ve ever played golf in.” Two factors, Harrington explains, “were making the wind seem extreme—cold and wet—yet the wet was stopping the ball from rolling off.”

It feels miraculous when the weather finally clears, though it would take divine intervention—or a score of 59, one stroke better than what’s considered a perfect game—for Tiger to catch Els and ascend to the top of the leaderboard.

“I never gave up the chance of winning until the last three holes,” Tiger says, but his fourth-round 65 and 284 total is only enough for him to be in a nine-way tie for twenty-eighth—six strokes back from the winner, Ernie Els. The two-time U.S. Open champion emerges victorious in a four-way playoff for his first British Open win.

So much for a 2002 grand slam repeat.

As Tiger walks off the 18th green, he tips his hat to the Muirfield crowds, his mind already in Florida. “I’m going home to put some shorts and a T-shirt on and walk outside,” he says.

It’s only a quick stop home before Tiger is back on the road, traveling north to Chaska, Minnesota, for the 2002 PGA Championship, at the Hazeltine National Golf Club. In the second round, he hits into the fairway bunker on 18. With the ball below his feet, he hits a full 3-iron into the middle of the green. Broadcasting from the CBS booth, Jim Nantz declares it “one of the best golf shots I’ve ever seen.”

“Hard left to right wind, and my heels were up against the lip of the bunker. I’ve never felt contact that solid,” Tiger says. “It was the greatest-feeling shot I’ve ever hit in my entire life. On top of that, I made a 20-footer for birdie, and Ernie Els flipped me off.”

Els finishes at 72–71, three strokes back from Tiger’s 71–69. The five-way tie for the lead at 138 includes Texan Justin Leonard, 2001 U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen, and Rich Beem, an Arizona golfer ranked seventy-third in the world.

After winning the 1997 British Open at Scotland’s Royal Troon Golf Club five years ago, Leonard struggled on tour until he began working with Tiger’s swing coach, Butch Harmon. Over the course of the 2000 and 2001 seasons, Harmon has helped Leonard stabilize his base and shorten his swing.

In the fourth round, Beem unexpectedly begins to surge while Tiger makes two consecutive bogeys. Even birdieing the final four holes can’t put him ahead of Beem, who ends up winning his first PGA Championship by a single stroke.

The fallout is swift.

Days later, an unhappy Tiger cuts ties with Butch Harmon, his swing coach of a decade.

Just a few weeks earlier, Harmon told reporters, “One of the reasons Tiger and I have had such a long run is mutual respect.” To Harmon, that means a hands-off technique. “The teaching of Tiger Woods is totally over with,” Harmon notes. “It’s now pure maintenance. If he’s a little off, I’ve been with him so long, I can see it instantly.”

But Harmon misses the signs that Tiger is fed up.

According to Earl, Tiger’s displeased with Harmon’s self-referential style in TV interviews, saying, “We hit this 2-iron” and “We won this way.”

“We?” Tiger turns to Earl, incredulous.

In the span of a single month, Tiger’s gone from grand slam contention to losing two consecutive majors.

Ernie Els marks the changes as having begun back at Tiger’s disastrous third round at the British Open on Saturday, July 20. “That Saturday changed a lot of things,” Els tells Sports Illustrated. “Tiger had been getting all the breaks, with tee times, weather, everything. Since then it’s been different.”