2. 18th hole, Torrey Pines South Course
Final round of the 2008 U.S. Open
On a broken left leg that was also home to torn knee ligaments, Woods grimaced, limped and at times staggered through five days of golf to defeat Rocco Mediate in a 19-hole playoff to win the national championship and join Jack Nicklaus as the only players to win the career Grand Slam three times over.
“It was Superman stuff,” said Dottie Pepper, a two-time major champion and current TV analyst. “One of the greatest achievements in the history of sports.”
One of the man of steel’s biggest moments among many came on the 72nd hole, where an eagle on the 573-yard par-5 would give Woods the win and a birdie would earn him a berth in a playoff the next day.
Woods drove into a fairway bunker and then erred by laying up in some gnarly rough typical of a U.S. Open. He had 95 yards to the front of the green, 101 yards to the hole for his third shot.
“It was a 56-degree number, but I needed the spin,” Woods said. “Well, there were a couple of things that happened where I got lucky. One, that was still in the era of square grooves. And two, somebody had hit out of that same exact spot sometime that week and I was actually in a divot. I could get clean contact so I could get my sand wedge on the back of the ball, so I knew I could spin it. Stevie (Williams, his caddie) convinced me to hit 60 and I needed to hit it as hard as I could to get as much spin on the ball as I possibly could.
“And lo and behold I hit 60 up there and it spun back.”
The ball came to rest 12 feet from the cup. The putt would slide downhill from right-to-left, on speedy, bumpy Poa annua greens chewed up by foot traffic and the sun.
“I changed my stroke on that one a little bit because it was going to be so bouncy,” Woods said. “I hit up on it a little bit to try and get the ball rolling earlier. Growing up on Poa annua, that’s what I’ve always really done. I hit it more with my hands and I made sure I released it a lot. The stroke felt good. And then the ball took forever to break because it was bouncing most of the time.”
The ball caught the right edge of the hole and dropped. The earth shook as the fans thundered their approval and Woods roared to the heavens.
“I vividly remember one thing about that celebration. I remember screaming and I remember realizing I was screaming at the sky,” Woods said. “I was looking straight up. And then I put my head down quickly because I was wondering what I was doing.”
The next day Woods toppled Mediate on the 19th extra hole for his third U.S. Open title.
Coming up: The No. 1-ranked putt of Woods’ career. Why does this putt rank No. 1? Because Tiger says so.