Chapter 65

The 107th U.S. Open

Oakmont Country Club

Oakmont, Pennsylvania

June 14–17, 2007

Nike Golf has an early Father’s Day present for Tiger: a thirty-second spot that debuts on the Golf Channel and NBC Sports and airs throughout the U.S. Open. Filmed at Nike Golf’s research and development facility, in Fort Worth, Texas, the ad shows the team that created Tiger’s clubs hard at work on a custom set of tiny clubs that they place in a golf bag embroidered with the words BABY WOODS.

The spot cuts to Tiger—dressed in a Stanford T-shirt—opening his front door to receive the box marked NIKE GOLF.

“Hey, perfect,” he says to the delivery driver. “Thanks, man.”

Tiger’s eager to become a dad and carry on some of the memorable traditions Tida and Earl created. “My parents always told me they loved me every night, every time we said goodbye. I was never afraid to fail, because I knew that I would always come home to a home of love.… I was lucky to have that my entire life.”

Though Jesper Parnevik points to his own record—“as soon as we had our first child, Peg in 1995, I won five tournaments the next three or four years”—Tiger refuses to speculate how fatherhood might change his game “because I’ve never gone through it before. But I do know Elin and I are excited, and that this is far more important than the game of golf.”

Most people who know Tiger scoff at the idea of anything slowing him down. “Hah!” says John Cook with a laugh. “Tiger is able to do more things well by flipping a switch nobody else has. When it’s time for golf, he’s all golf. When it’s time for family, it will be all family.”

Elin is due in early July.

Although Oakmont Country Club, where this year’s U.S. Open is being held, has been called “the hardest course in major championship history,” Tiger’s not feeling intimidated. “I’ve had success on difficult golf courses before, yes.”

“Felt good vibrations from Tiger Woods,” says Johnny Miller, a PGA champion turned NBC commentator, in agreement. “He looks like he’s right on his game.”

The U.S. Open ends on June 17—Father’s Day. It’s a tight competition. Tiger ultimately ties with Jim Furyk for second place, losing to Angel Cabrera, an Argentinian former caddie and father of two, by a single stroke.

It’s going to take a while to get over this one, Steve Williams assumes as Tiger silently boards the plane back to Florida. What Williams doesn’t realize, though, is that as soon as they arrive back in Orlando, Tiger goes straight to the facility endowed by Arnold Palmer and his wife: Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies.

It’s close to midnight. Elin is already there.

The news breaks the next morning: Elin and Tiger’s first child has arrived two and a half weeks early. “Elin and I are delighted to announce the birth of our daughter, Sam Alexis Woods. Sam was born early on Monday morning, June 18th,” Tiger posts to his website. “Both Elin and Sam are doing well.

“Landed in Orlando, went straight to the hospital,” he says. “And next thing you know, we have Sam Alexis in our arms.” More details come out a few weeks later, when Tiger is at the Congressional Country Club, in Bethesda, Maryland, promoting the A&T National. Elin, he reveals, had begun experiencing pregnancy complications on June 14 while home in Florida, at the same moment that Tiger was playing round 1 of the U.S. Open.

“It wasn’t life-threatening or anything,” Tiger explains, “but she just had a few problems and had to be admitted. It wasn’t easy. It was not easy, because I wanted to be there. And the doctor and Elin said, ‘There’s nothing you can do. So go out there and just get a ‘W.’ Well, came close. But that night was infinitely more rewarding than any ‘W’ ever could have been.”

Tiger’s friend Notah Begay III offers some context, highlighting Tiger’s famous ability to block out distractions. “When he’s on the golf course, he’s a golfer. And once he steps off, then he’s a celebrity, he’s a father, he’s a husband,” Begay says. “I think in that particular instance, he was so focused on winning that golf tournament and knowing that his wife was strong enough to deal with the things that she was dealing with. Give her some credit, too.”

The new parents easily agreed on what to name their daughter.

“We wanted to have a name that would be meaningful,” Tiger says. The name Sam “just happened to fit. My father had always called me Sam since the day I was born. He rarely ever called me Tiger. I would ask him, ‘Why don’t you ever call me Tiger?’ He says, ‘Well, you look more like a Sam.’”

Golf Digest publishes exclusive photos of the newly expanded family, including one of Tiger holding Sam in his left arm while balancing Yogi, their blond Labradoodle, on his lap while border collie Taz and Elin look down at the sleeping baby.

“It’s something that Elin and I talked about on our first night,” Tiger says about the joy of new parenthood. “How can you love something so much that didn’t exist the day before?”

Once Sam is a few weeks old, Tiger even tries putting a golf club into her tiny hands. She “couldn’t quite hold it,” Tiger admits. “But it was there,” he adds with a grin.

On the Fourth of July, President George H. W. Bush walks the grounds of the Congressional Golf Club. Just as Tiger had planned, American servicemen and servicewomen take part in the opening ceremony of the Earl Woods Memorial Pro-Am.

Tiger places sixth at the inaugural AT&T National, but according to Golf Digest, pulling together the successful event in a record 116 days has significantly raised his leadership profile. “Tiger Woods has D.C. in the palm of his paw, turning on this city more than any presidential candidate, more than any Washington Redskin, National, Capital, more than Michael Jordan when [he] tried to resurrect the Wizards. It’s like he’s become the adopted sport star, in a city looking for one.”

Less successful is Tiger’s bid for a third consecutive win at the British Open, instead returning from Carnoustie, Scotland, with a tie for twelfth place.

Tiger’s left knee is badly injured. He’s somehow torn his ACL. Tiger claims it must’ve happened while he was running on a golf course at Isleworth, but caddie Steve Williams finds the situation “something of a mystery” and isn’t convinced. Hank Haney suspects that the injury occurred when Tiger was kicked in the knee during a Navy SEALs training exercise.

Tiger decides against surgery. He continues to talk about joining the SEALs, telling Haney that even though the SEALs have a twenty-eight-year age limit and he’s over thirty, it’s “not a problem” because “they’re making a special age exception for me.”

Mark Steinberg, Tiger’s agent at IMG, assures Haney that there’s no chance Tiger will move forward with these military fantasies. “He’s not going to do that,” Steinberg says. “There is no way. He can’t. He’s got obligations. He’s got to pay for that sixty-million-dollar house.”

On August 5, Tiger does what only two golfers in the modern era—Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead—have done before: he wins six times on the same course.

“I just got in my own little world,” Tiger says of that day’s victory over South African golfer Rory Sabbatini at the WGC–Bridgestone Invitational on the South Course at Firestone Country Club, in Ohio, where he also won in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2005, and 2006. “I just… let my clubs do the talking.”

The following week, Tiger competes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for his fourth PGA Championship, defending his 2006 title. As daily temperatures upwards of ninety-nine degrees send two hundred spectators and crew to seek medical treatment, Tiger faces his fiercest opponent: the blistering heat. Only five players manage to finish the tournament under par.

The course at Southern Hills Country Club is a five-mile walk. Tiger’s peak physical condition carries him through the four-day endurance test, which ends on August 12, when he notches a thirteenth major victory, two strokes ahead of journeyman golfer Woody Austin and three up from key rival Ernie Els.

He continues to gain on Nicklaus’s record. “When you first start your career, 18 is just a long way away,” Tiger says. “And even though I’m at 13, it’s still a long way away. You can’t get it done in one year. It’s going to take time.”

Maybe so, but as the Denver Post points out, “This win gives him more major championships than the rest of the players in the world’s top 10 combined.”

The first faces Tiger sees in the scoring tent belong to Elin and Sam. Elin’s dressed the two-month-old baby in Sunday red, like her father. “To have her here brings chills to me,” says the besotted new dad.

“It’s a feeling I’ve never had before, having Sam there and having Elin there,” Tiger says. “It used to be my mom and dad. And now Elin, and now we have our own daughter. It’s evolved.

“This one feels so much more special than the other majors.”

He enjoys everything about his baby girl, even when she fusses and cries. “I don’t sleep well, anyway,” Tiger claims. “I’ll be up all night. Doesn’t really change from that aspect.” Now, he says, “When she wakes up at 2 a.m., I get on the leg-press machine and put her on my lap. Six hundred reps later, she’s out.”

He’s warming up for a stellar finish to the season. In mid-December, Tiger once again wins the “Tiger” trophy in the Target World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club, in California.

On the 18th green, Tida creates a special winner’s circle. The new grandmother holds up Sam for Tiger to kiss, and he adds one for Elin. After he once more donates his $1.35 million check to the Tiger Woods Foundation, the family is going Christmas shopping.

“On the golf course, it’s been a great year,” Tiger declares. “Off the golf course, it’s been the greatest year I’ve ever had.”