TULSA, Okla. -- Tiger Woods had no sooner wrapped his mitts around the gleaming trophy for winning his 58th PGA Tour event Sunday, hoisting it into the air, when he began auditioning for a new role.
|
|
| I wonder how many of those objects will be on Ebay by tonight? (Getty Images) |
Three weeks removed from the soggiest, coolest British Open in years, Woods this week is headlining at Southern Hills Country Club, trying not to melt in the region's blast-furnace heat that, as you might recall from high school, once turned Oklahoma into the Dust Bowl.
In Scotland, the temperatures hovered around the mid-50s during live play. As for Tulsa in the dead of August, the only clime that temperate is the inside of a beer cooler. Thus, as Woods collected the first-place check in Ohio for winning the Bridgestone Invitational, he hopped on a plane to Tulsa with mixed feelings and a wary aye, aye, aye.
"What is it, 120 today?" he said Sunday night.
It surely felt close to it, which for Woods was only too apt. After all, it has been a decidedly hot-and-cold year for the game's No. 1 player, particularly at the major championships.
Woods, the defending champion, enters this week's 89th PGA Championship on the heels of one of his best performances of the year, a runaway eight-shot victory at Firestone Country Club against most of the top guns in the game. But like the Grand Slam thermometer readings this year, Woods' game has been mercurial.
He finished second at the season's first two majors despite playing less than his best, then was never really in contention during a sloppy week in Scotland, finishing in a tie for 12th.
"You never want to be shut out," he said. "You never want to have a year where you don't win a major championship. This year I've come close in two and it just didn't happen. I've been in this situation before."
Woods, of course, not only can take the heat, he can beat it. He flew into Tulsa late Sunday night and was on the first tee Monday at 6:20 a.m., playing alongside Camilo Villegas and Bubba Watson. Back in the day, he and dawn-patrol running mate Mark O'Meara had a term for teeing off at first light without benefit of warm-up on the range: "Cold-shafting it."
Woods better get warm in a hurry, because he's fresh out of opportunities on the majors stage. If he fails to win this week, it would mark the third time in five seasons that he hasn't secured one of the season's premiere titles, and the first time he's finished 0-for-4 in a single year since he retooled his swing over 2003-04.
Those who have been paying attention might have noticed a trend that doesn't bode well for Woods, not to mention some of his decorated brethren. Including the four majors already contested on the LPGA, all seven Grand Slam events this year have been collected by first-time major winners. And the PGA Championship has produced more one-and-done major winners of late than any of the other men's majors. This decade alone, the PGA's winners include David Toms, Rich Beem and Shaun Micheel -- the latter pair haven't won another tournament, period, much less another major. Only once in the past 37 years has a season produced four first-time major winners for the men.
While Woods draws psychological circles around the majors on his competitive calendar, he said the season has hardly been a washout. He has won a tour-high four times, missed playoffs at the Masters and U.S. Open by a combined three shots, and on the personal front, added a new member to his family with daughter Sam. Last year, the middle of his season was a blur after his father died and Woods took two months off. So, even though Woods won the British Open and PGA titles late in the year to bring his career-majors tally to an even dozen, he felt unfulfilled.
