Now that Tiger is going to turn forty, a significant milestone no doubt, I want to relive one of the few stories I was able to experience with the golf legend.
We have go back to the PGA in 2009, when Y. E. Yang won at Hazeltine. The two first days, I was in the game that was just after Tiger’s. He was playing alongside Padraig Harrington, defending champion who had won in 2008, and Rich Beem, winner of the 2002 PGA, which had been held on that same course. The first day on the 11th hole, a long par 5, it was nearly impossible to reach the green in two shots. I was going for my second shot from the fairway while Tiger, Harrington and Beem were on the green and my caddie and I realized that it couldn’t be reached in just two, so the plan was to drop the ball around twenty or thirty meters from the green, more or less. But I hit a solid shot and suddenly I could see from afar how Harrington was looking at the ball that fell right up next to the green…
Even worse was the commotion made by the audience cheering at the green. Thus, immediately, while my fellow golfers were going for their third shots, I went to the next tee to apologize. Beem told me that he had almost started to laugh and not to worry; Harrington also told me it was no problem…¿And Tiger? He hardly even looked at me and, on top of that, he didn’t say anything to me at all. After finishing the round, Woods came out from signing and turning in his card and I was going to turn mine in, so we passed by each other on the walkway at the entrance….Tiger stopped, congratulated me for the shot on the 11th hole and told me: “you have to tell me how you did that”. I laughed and told him that of course I would tell him.
My conclusion of this strange encounter was that Tiger almost didn’t even look at me when I went to apologize on the tee of the 12th hole because he doesn’t allow for anyone or anything to break his concentration, and much less so in a Major.
In order to put the week into context even more, although it’s painful: when I went out onto the tee of the 71st hole of the tournament I had a good chance of ending up among the top five…But I finished with a triple bogey and bogey and was knocked down almost twenty positions. Truly a shame.
TENGOLF NOTE: Alvaro Quirós’s story surely brought back great memories for Rich Beem. In the year 2002, he sealed his PGA victory precisely on the 11th hole at Hazeltine, where he made an eagle in the fourth round after hitting an extremely long drive and a 3 wood so perfect and so majestic that the ball landed just two meters away from the hole. Beem’s stratospheric eagle was the only one throughout the entire week on the 11th at Hazeltine, while in the 2009 edition, not even one was made. In fact, there were 73 birdies and 89 bogeys throughout the entire four rounds…
