Woods Falters, but Still Wins NCAA Title by Four Strokes

Tiger Woods came back to the pack Saturday, but there was nobody there to greet him and the Stanford sophomore won the NCAA golf championship by four strokes.

Woods followed impeccable rounds of 69-67-69 with an eight-over-par 80 Saturday on the 7,039-yard, par-72 Honors Course near Chattanooga. The three-under total of 285 was the only sub-par finish in the field and good enough for a four-shot victory over Rory Sabbatini of Arizona, who shot 75 Saturday.

Arizona State held off Nevada Las Vegas by three shots to win the team championship.

Woods, a graduate of Western High, is known to mark his career by the accomplishments of the young Jack Nicklaus, who won the NCAA title in 1961, but Woods was in no shape Saturday to put it in perspective.

“I can hardly think, let along figure that one out,” he said. “It may take a while, as it did at the U.S. Amateur. That took two or three weeks. I don’t know how long this one will take.”

“Tired,” Woods said when asked how he felt after adding the NCAA title to his two U.S. Amateur titles. “It took a lot out of me today. People will never know how much it took for me to get it back.”

Woods’ day and nearly his tournament began to fall apart at the par-four ninth, where he tried to flop his third shot onto the green but instead knocked it into the water on the other side. He took a triple bogey, then bogeyed the next four holes to lose seven shots to par in only five holes.

By then the nine-stroke lead he had to start the day was more than half gone, and Woods said he felt the tournament slipping away.

“I was thinking, ‘I’ve got to get it back,’ ” he said. “That’s why I’m so exhausted. I dug really deep to get it back.”

Sabbatini, who played in the same threesome as Woods, was impressed by his poise.

“He played a normal man’s game for a while,” Sabbatini said. “He was slipping pretty badly, but he managed to calm himself. That shows you what a champion he is. He could have lost this tournament, but he didn’t.”

Mike Ruiz of UNLV shot 72 Saturday and finished in a tie with Darren Angel of Arizona State (76) for third. Tim Clark (74) of North Carolina State and Brad Elder (77) of Texas finished tied for fifth.

The 84 golfers left in the field managed only four sub-par rounds Saturday.

In the team championship, Arizona State began the day with a five-shot lead over UNLV. The Rebels shot the low team round of the day at 15-over 303, but the Sun Devils had just enough to hold on.