Chapter 54

Presidents Cup

Links Course, Fancourt Hotel and Country Club Estate

George, Western Cape, South Africa

November 20–23, 2003

It’s almost too dark to even see where the balls are going.

The fifth Presidents Cup, with the US team in red versus the Internationals team in blue, has been an intense four days of back-and-forth single-match play. The defending champs, the Americans, are led by captain Jack Nicklaus, fielding a twelve-player team that includes Tiger Woods, Davis Love III, and Phil Mickelson. Gary Player captains the Internationals team, featuring Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, and rookie Adam Scott, among others.

Player and Els are feeling the extra pressure of representing South Africa, their native land. “Ernie was playing on home soil,” says Dennis Alpert, the Presidents Cup tournament director. “He’s the Big Easy and was like the ambassador of the event.” On top of that, Player designed the Fancourt Links Course himself.

There’s also a lot of pressure on Tiger to perform. After earning back-to-back Green Jackets at the Masters in 2001 and 2002, this year he tied with five other players for fifteenth place. He’s won five tournaments in 2003 and no majors. But he’s still the number one–ranked player in the world.

The two teams are well matched. Maybe too well matched—after Sunday’s singles session, they’re tied 17–17, necessitating a sudden-death playoff. As the sun sets, Tiger is chosen to play for the United States and Els for the Internationals. After the announcement, Alpert says, “Tiger’s demeanor completely changed. He went stone cold.”

With ten thousand spectators watching and darkness quickly falling, the two set up on the 18th for their first playoff hole. Both par.

Next comes the second playoff hole, on the 1st.

Tiger pars. Ernie drives into the rough, flies his second shot over the green, and now, facing a twelve-foot putt for par, calls over his caddie, Ricci Roberts. “Best you come have a look at this.”

“The pressure of reading that putt was massive,” Roberts says. “What a relief when Ernie banged it in, dead center.”

“It was really fascinating stuff,” says Adam Scott. “And incredibly, incredibly nerve-wracking watching them on the sidelines.”

It’s near-total darkness by the time Tiger and Els arrive at their third playoff hole, the 2nd, a par 3. Tiger knocks it ninety feet from the pin, over a ridge.

“We couldn’t even see the hole,” Nicklaus says. Miraculously, Tiger manages to two-putt for par. “He just played it perfectly.”

“That was one of the most nerve-wracking moments I’ve ever had in golf,” Tiger says, calling it “one of the biggest putts in my life.”

Now the heat is on Els, who steadies himself by asking, “It’s only a game, isn’t it? It’s a game you don’t want to lose, but it’s a game.”

The relief is palpable when he manages to also make par.

At this point, the team captains, Nicklaus and Player, step in. They’ve been on the phone with the PGA commissioner and have reached a decision. As defending champions, the US team could argue that they ought to keep the Cup, but instead they’re making it an official tie.

“Competition is about goodwill,” says Nicklaus. “In the spirit of the game, my guys have agreed that we will share the Cup.”

Tiger is on board. “I think it’s the perfect decision.”

In the van, he holds up his trembling hands for inspection. I’ve never been this nervous in my life, he says. As they near the clubhouse, Tiger has one request: “Do you guys have cranberry juice here? Can you get me a vodka cranberry?” he asks. “Make it a big one.”

Dennis Alpert, the Presidents Cup tournament director, handles the drink order personally. He mixes a pint of the stiff drink and brings the glass to Tiger in the locker room.

“Tiger took the drink and chugged it like it was water,” Alpert says, noticing Tiger’s hands still shaking.

“Could I get another, to take the edge off?” he asks Alpert, who happily brings Tiger a second cocktail as well as a Miller Genuine Draft. Tiger makes short work of both.

“It was like a musician winding down at the end of a concert,” remarks Alpert.

Tiger’s emotions are equally high two days later.

He’s been making important plans. He’s going to propose to Elin.

“After a very short time in our relationship, I knew I was going to marry Elin and she was going to be in my life forever,” the twenty-seven-year-old admits. After months of planning, he’s finally found the “perfect and romantic setting.”

Instead of returning to the States after the Presidents Cup, he and Elin—and a party that includes caddie Steve Williams and his fiancée plus Tiger’s longtime pal Jerry Chang and his wife—arrange to spend Thanksgiving week at the Shamwari Private Game Reserve.

Shamwari is owned and founded by Adrian Gardiner, a family friend of Ernie Els. The superluxurious reserve is located on the banks of the Bushmans River between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown on the South African coast and is home to leopards, elephants, hippos, and antelope. When fellow PGA player and Masters winner Mike Weir and his wife vacationed there a week earlier, they even saw rhinos and lions.

Tiger’s group is exclusively booked in a lodge called Lobengula, and Gardiner ensures that “not one press person got near him during his entire stay—we went the extra mile to protect his privacy.”

On Tuesday, November 25, Tiger is looking for even more seclusion.

Shamwari ranger “Lucky” Nhlanhla Khumalo supervises a romantic “bushveld” overnight safari for Tiger and Elin, during which they’ll sleep under the stars and cook over an open fire. But at sunset, the couple disappears into the bush.

Khumalo starts to worry as twenty minutes go by. Have they been eaten by tigers?

Luckily, the couple reappears safe and sound, along with a new glittering star: Elin “sporting a huge diamond,” an impressive antique engagement ring with a circular diamond worth around half a million dollars today. Khumalo later tells People magazine, “The diamond was half as big as my finger.”

The moment, Tiger admits, “was a thriller. To putt for victory in a major is nothing in comparison,” he says. “Even if you say ‘Will you marry me?’ with the right feeling, the answer could be ‘No.’”

Thank goodness, Elin says yes.

The twenty-three-year-old bride-to-be calls her father, Thomas Nordegren, to tell him, “Daddy we are engaged.”

He congratulates the couple, then tells the Swedish newspaper Expressen, “I’m very happy about this.”

Gardiner is also happy and in his enthusiasm posts an ill-advised message, including photos, about the engagement on the Shamwari Private Game Reserve website. “I am pleased that the couple chose Shamwari for a break, and that he chose their sojourn in the wildest area of Shamwari to propose to Elin,” Gardiner writes.

The intensely private Tiger is furious. “For a place that supposedly prides itself on privacy, they totally let us down,” he says, lashing out on his own website a few days later. The worst of it is the slight to his parents. “I really wanted to talk to them about it before the news got out,” he says, “but it was too late.”

As Tiger and his new fiancée fly home aboard a private Gulfstream jet, word of their engagement is shared and celebrated across the globe. Many reports focus on what a catch the millionaire number one–ranked golfer is—though Elin’s former employers have a slightly different take.

“Tiger is the one who got the catch,” Mia Parnevik states. “With the weird lifestyle he leads, he might never have met a nice girl. He’s lucky he found Elin.”

“I think she’s a bit too good for him,” Jesper Parnevik says, only half joking.