It’s ridiculous, really. This notion that what Tiger Woods has done in 2009 will be somehow diminished if he doesn’t win a major championship.
His final opportunity comes this week when the 91st PGA Championship is played at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn. Woods will be the favorite as he is in any golf tournament. But the winner of 14 majors will have to perform better than he has in his three previous majors to have a chance at winning a 15th.
Putting woes plagued him at Augusta National, where he finished four strokes behind Argentina’s Angel Cabrera. An opening-round 74 haunted him at the soggy U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, and the British Open was a disaster, with Woods missing the cut at a major for the just the second time in his professional career.
Nevertheless, he has rebounded from major left knee surgery to win four times on the PGA Tour, including the Buick Open last Sunday. He also tops the money list and leads the FedEx Cup point standings. That in itself reaffirms his status as the game’s best player.
“I think just being able to come back and play and be successful again has been a tremendous step in the right direction,” Woods said last week. “If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year before I even played whether I’d have four wins by now, I couldn’t see it because walking 18 holes was going to be a task.
“Looking back on it, now playing the Match Play and where I was physically then and where I’m at now is just night and day,” he added. “It was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, especially when I was just starting back. To win and not only win but be consistent as I’ve been the entire year, that’s one of the things I’m probably the most proud of.”
One of the consistencies in Woods’ season has been his inconsistency in the majors. He won the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines last year on basically one leg, but this year he hasn’t held a lead in a major on two good knees.
“I just have to put it together at the right time,” he said. “That’s the whole idea. You can’t win majors playing poorly. You’ve got to play well.”
Woods, who has won four PGA Championships, played well at Hazeltine in 2002, where he birdied the final four holes but finished one stroke behind winner Rich Beem. The par-72 layout on the outskirts of Minneapolis has been lengthened to 7,674 yards, making it the longest in major championship history and 314 yards longer than in 2002.
The field will include 100 of the world’s top 101 players, including Phil Mickelson, who missed the British Open while his wife Amy and mother underwent treatment for breast cancer. Also in the field will be Padraig Harrington, who won last year’s PGA Championship at Oakland Hills outside Detroit.
“Personally, I like to see a golf course with length to it,” Harrington said. “The best majors are played on golf courses that have options. If the golf course is too short, it tends to get tricky with pin positions because that’s the only way of defending it. When you have a bigger, stronger golf course like Hazeltine, you can set a very fair course.”
Much of the length is on a back nine that features the longest par-3, par-4 and par-5 ever in a PGA Championship. The par-3 13th is 248 yards, the par-4 12 is 518 yards and the par-5 15th is 642 yards, though the pins likely will not be played all the way back.
The PGA will be the third straight tournament for Woods, a rarity for someone who normally takes the week off before a major so he can practice at home. Woods says he prepared himself throughout the year to meet the physical demand of this stretch, which will include the FedEx Cup finals, beginning at Liberty National Aug. 27-30.
“It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t play that much at the beginning of the year,” Woods said. “I played very sparingly to get myself into the position physically so I didn’t have any setbacks so physically I could handle playing this much. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t play that much early, and that’s one of the reasons why I feel like I can play a lot late.”