Chapter 53

Buick Invitational

Torrey Pines Golf Course

La Jolla, California

February 13–16, 2003

Tiger’s two months’ recuperation postsurgery is the longest he’s gone without playing golf since he first learned to walk.

The question is, Can he walk—and play—now?

“I have absolutely no pain, and that’s great,” Tiger says as he readies for his season opener, the Buick Invitational. “I’m curious to see whether or not [the knee] will hold up. I haven’t been my best for a couple of years now.”

Tiger Woods, the number one–ranked player in the world since August of 1999, hasn’t been at his best for years? The idea is enough to send a chill down the spines of most competitors.

Phil Mickelson, however, takes a few potshots at Tiger, boasting to Golf magazine, “Tiger hates that I can fly it past him now. He has a faster swing speed than I do, but he has inferior equipment. Tiger is the only player good enough to overcome the equipment he’s stuck with.”

Tiger declares Mickelson’s comments “foolish” and calls him “kind of a smart aleck. He tried to be funny, and it didn’t work.” Still, the allegation that anything about his playing or Nike gear is “inferior” is just the grist Tiger needs. He and Nike immediately put out a new TV ad in which Tiger bluntly states, “I am not a Nike athlete. I am a whoever-makes-the-best-equipment-in-the-world athlete.”

Tiger comes to Torrey Pines on February 13 with something to prove, both to himself and to the world. Despite the rainy and foggy conditions, he’s motivated and a little salty, turning to spectators after a particularly good drive to announce, “Pretty good for inferior equipment, eh?”

There’s some tension when Mickelson ends up in the final group alongside the score leader—Tiger. When Mickelson misses a shot on the 6th, a voice from the gallery taunts, “Hey, Phil! Must be the shoes!”

Tiger steps back from the edgy exchange. Focusing on controversy, he says, is “not going to win you a golf tournament.” Taking his own advice, Tiger maintains his lead and wins by four strokes.

“Tiger was gracious about it, but I think he used it as fuel,” Brad Faxon, who finishes third, says of Mickelson’s earlier comments. “As if he needed any more fuel.”

Mickelson, who ends up in a three-way tie for fourth, laments his own performance but praises Tiger’s rapid return to form. “I like to play a couple of tournaments and work my way into a competitive mind-set,” says Mickelson. “He’s able to walk in and out of it at will.”

Easing back into things is simply not Tiger’s MO.

“I’ve missed competing,” Tiger says. “That to me is my rush, going out there and having to hit a golf shot that really matters.”

Tiger’s “off to his best career start… back atop the money chart after just four events, again imbedded in the national sports consciousness and seemingly playing better than ever,” gushes the Orlando Sentinel.

A decisive win at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Invitational on March 23 is notable not only for being Tiger’s fourth consecutive victory at that tournament, making him the first golfer in seventy-three years to win any particular tournament four years in a row, but also for the conditions he plays under on Sunday to earn his record-setting eleven-shot victory.

It’s not just the pouring rain, enough to turn fairways into lakes. It’s also that Tiger spends the entire round visibly doubled over in pain, alternating between puking and putting.

The culprit is a nasty bout of food poisoning that also caused his girlfriend, Elin, to collapse two days earlier at the clubhouse.

After accompanying Elin and paramedics to Sand Lake Hospital, in Orlando, Tiger paused before teeing off for the second round to update reporters on her condition. “With food poisoning and then walking 18 holes yesterday and getting dehydrated, it was hard for her to keep anything down. I told her she should just stay home today, but she’s stubborn.”

Not as stubborn as her boyfriend, it turns out.

His own symptoms hit on Saturday night. “Bad spaghetti,” he tells final-round partners Brad Faxon and Stewart Cink.

Who made it?

“E,” Tiger says, meaning Elin herself.

“I don’t want to be too graphic about what he said,” remarks Cink, but “Tiger told me he’d been up all night with stomach problems.”

Tiger gingerly sips a Sierra Mist and pauses periodically to heave into the bushes at the 2nd, into the woods at the 3rd, and into a nearby parking area at the 5th.

Faxon notices Tiger hurry to a porta-potty on the 12th and exit a while later.

“Are you OK? Do you want some Imodium?” Faxon asks.

Tiger gratefully accepts the medication. “Thanks.”

He vetoes going to the hospital himself. “The problem is, it’s easy to check into a hospital. Getting out is the hard part. I wanted to get an IV drip, get my fluid levels up, but I didn’t know if they’d let me out, so I decided not to.”

The five-stroke lead he holds coming into the final round is the only reason he’s here. “If I wasn’t in contention, I wouldn’t have gone. There’s no way,” he says. “Every single tee shot hurt because my abs were obviously sore from last night, and I continued on while I was playing.”

Even at such a steep disadvantage, Tiger’s lead only increases throughout the day. He hits a 3-wood shot on the 4th that stuns observers. “That three-wood was a beautiful shot,” Faxon says. “That iced the cake. As sick as he felt, he was ready to play. I don’t think he would’ve played much better than that if he’d felt great.”

Tiger wins with a final-round 68, eleven ahead of the second-place finishers: Faxon, Cink, Kirk Triplett, and Kenny Perry. But his only thought concerns “when I can get out of here and go to the bathroom.”

“The night was long, and the day was probably even longer,” Tiger says, adding in apology. “That being said, I’m very happy with the way I played.”