Impervious again, Tiger Woods turned away a question about his marriage a few days ago with an icy “That’s none of your business.”
It was his way of announcing he was back. The simpering of his public humiliation is over, his latest injury behind him. There were few places more appropriate than Pebble Beach, where he famously destroyed the field at the 2000 U.S. Open.
If you’re partial to morality plays, this is getting interesting, which is more than golf has been able to say about its competition since Tiger turned pro 14 years ago. Today’s final round of the U.S. Open should tell us whether the tour still has a dominant player.
Woods was nowhere for the first two rounds and then suddenly, Saturday, he was everywhere. His charge up the back nine was brazen and mesmerizing, like so many of his attacks over the years. His pivot came early in the day, following two early bogeys that dropped him nine shots off the lead.
The momentum built slowly and inexorably, from good shots to great shots, culminating in a circular, slow-motion putt for birdie at 17 and a daring 260-yard laser from behind a tree to set up an eagle attempt at 18. He finished with eight birdies, his record for a single U.S. Open round.
“In all the U.S. Opens that I’ve won, you have to have a nice little stretch of nine holes, and I did that today,” Woods told NBC afterward, a poker-faced warning from the Tiger of old.
Phil Mickelson, briefly ascendant at the Masters, threatened to turn the would-be rivalry real for a minute there. His second-round 66 while Woods struggled suggested the possibility of a fifth Mickelson major — and second in a row over Woods.
Mickelson emerged at the Masters as the anti-Tiger, and not just as a matter of personality. Not only did he win in Tiger’s first major since his . . . um . . . unpleasantness, he won in front of his cancer- stricken wife, Amy, producing a tearful, tender scene off the 18th green.
In contrast to the unrelenting Tiger tabloid headlines — “Porn star claims Tiger love child!” — the warm Mickelson family story was an obvious symbolic counterpoint.
As if to reinforce the morality play, the two both struggled through birdie-free first rounds Thursday at Pebble Beach, but reacted quite differently. Mickelson blamed his putting. Tiger blamed the greens.
“I think two players used the word awful on Thursday,” USGA executive director David Fay said Saturday. “Phil said he putted awful. Tiger said the greens were awful.
“As far as the greens are concerned, he’s wrong. That old statement that you’re entitled to your opinion? He is entitled to his opinion, but he’s off on his facts. These putting surfaces have never been better.”
It is hard to imagine Fay feeling free to take a public shot at Woods before his fall from public grace. It’s also hard to imagine the old Woods making such a public complaint and revealing a psychological competitive vulnerability.
In any case, both during and after Tiger’s third-round 66, Mickelson searched the coastal course for the confidence he wielded so briefly Friday.
In the midst of the melodrama stand a couple of lesser-known golfers with a head start going into the final round.
In this case, the lesser-known players atop the leaderboard are Dustin Johnson of the U.S. and Graeme McDowell of Northern Ireland. In the past, such players have generally been destined to play hapless victims, their games unraveling in the crucible of the final round, but the implacable, 26-year-old Johnson matched Tiger’s 66 on Saturday and leads him by five strokes going into the final round.
Woods is 34 now, barely a year removed from left knee reconstruction, still very much enmeshed in one of the more sordid, inexplicable tabloid stories of our time. Among golf analysts, it had become fashionable to question whether he would ever be the same, whether we would ever see the dominant Tiger of old.
Saturday, he answered that question. If he wins today, it will be the biggest comeback to win a major of his career. In a world that likes him less than it once did, Tiger has 18 holes in which to prove that he’s better than ever.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297, dkrieger@denverpost.com or
