This Week at WorldGolf.com: August 14, 2007
PGA Championship shows when Sunday comes around, it's Tiger Woods vs. Jack
The difference between a Thursday-kind-of-Tiger Woods and a Sunday-kind-of-Tiger Woods is amazing.
When major golf tournaments roll around, Woods goes through what can only be described as a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality transformation.
At the PGA Championship this past week, Woods appeared a little terse, a little tense the first few days. Not outright rude, but close. Even when he shot his record-tying 63 in stifling heat at Tulsa's Southern Hills Country Club on Friday, he acted as if he wanted to be somewhere other than answering reporters' questions about his magnificent round.
Why was that?
"I'm just hungry," Wood said. "I had a banana on the way over from the scorer's tent, but it wasn't enough."
Late Sunday, of course, after Woods had saved his season with his first major win of the year, he was a different person. He was everybody's buddy, calling people by their first names, smiling, laughing - the media equivalent of slapping you on the back and buying you a beer - and turning reflective about how his new family made his 13th major different from all the others.
This is a subtle difference, but it is a difference. Most other top players, those who have a reasonable relationship with the media in any case, relax a little after the round. Okay, the day's over, pressure off, I'll tell you how I'm feeling, what I need to do tomorrow.
With Woods, it seems like he wraps that cloak of pressure around himself through Sunday, at least in the majors.
"You shot one of the best rounds in a major in history, how do you feel?"
"Big deal, I'm not done yet," seemed to be the real sentiment behind his words.
It would have been a "nice little record to have," Woods said, but it's real function, in essence, is that it enabled him to get back into the tournament.
Missing the putt on No. 18 that would have given him the record? Just another stroke on the card.
Most other players would have taken a little break to savor the moment. It just gives you a little insight into how Woods feels about records. There's only one that counts with this guy, the 18 major championships Jack Nicklaus won.
This is a remarkable, Ahab-like quest we're witnessing here, the athletic obsession of our era.
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Dates: July 23, 2007 - December 31, 2007
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Tiger Woods won his 13th career major last weekend at the 89th PGA Championship. Our man was on the scene at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla., and thinks he's figured out how other pro golfers might come to someday beat the World's No. 1 on Sunday of a major championship.
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