Tiger Has This Open by the Tail

The real Pebble Beach Golf Links showed up Saturday, right on time for the third round of the U.S. Open. Just when you thought the quaint little seaside links was playing about as warm and soft as the belly of one of those cute sea otters, it got ugly in a hurry.

Why? Simple, really. Thursday and Friday, it was a no-wind situation.

This is the great thing about Pebble. To really be itself, this golf course needs to work like a recipe. You take some narrow fairways and some hardened greens, then add wind. Know what you’ve got? Par tartare.

As it turned out, Pebble Beach was up to the challenge for the first time in this 100th U.S. Open. Good thing too, because the grand old place finds itself dangerously close to the endangered species list as far as the U.S. Open is concerned. It measures only 6,846 yards and that’s getting to be too short to prevent the best players in the world from stomping all over it.

A little wind goes a long way around this place. And the wind that blew off Carmel Bay on Saturday wasn’t the kind that was snapping trees into piles of twigs or anything. But it was enough to cause a lot of problems for airborne golf balls.

This is what Larry Mize found out when his shot into No. 7 landed on the No. 8 tee box, about 40 yards off line.

Thomas Bjorn hit his tee shot far to the right at No. 4 and it blew back into the fairway and landed in a bunker on the left.

Colin Montgomerie actually managed to save par at No. 5 after the wind deposited his ball on the edge of the cliff.

Of the 63 players in the field, exactly 14 of them hit the green at No. 8 in regulation.

Bad news? Are you kidding? It was just the news that the USGA was hoping for when they set up the course for the Open.

Pebble Beach needed wind, they said. Exactly. Yes, of course, this is true. Pebble Beach needed wind like Dr. Frankenstein needed Igor, Bonnie needed Clyde and Jekyll needed Hyde.

You get the idea. Without their natural partners, they just weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

Those people at the USGA, who wait until they are in the worst possible mood before they set up U.S. Open courses, had already done their darnedest to turn Pebble Beach into a career graveyard. Warning signs were everywhere. The rough was tough. Beware of the fairway. The greens drew screams.

Still, the players had their run of the place until the wind finally came up Saturday.

Not surprisingly, there were some really ugly scores turned in. Jim Furyk had an 84, Darren Clarke an 83. Sergio Garcia shot 81, Montgomerie 79, Mark O’Meara 78 and Hal Sutton 83.

Meanwhile, there was one guy who played it like no one else. Of course, it was Tiger Woods, the pre-tournament favorite and the first-round, second-round and third-round leader, all in one. It figures. If there was ever someone who should be able to have his way on a course carved out of the Del Monte Forest, it would be a guy named Woods.

Tiger had his share of wind-blown experiences too, including his tee shot at No. 18 to finish his second round in the morning, when his ball landed on the slippery rocks of Carmel Bay. If his shot was off-line, so were his words, which NBC carried live in one of the more colorful, profane moments in recent broadcast history.

To think that NBC had shelved its early morning children’s programming to carry the U.S. Open and then Tiger paints the airwaves blue, well, let’s just say there must have been some very surprised kids sitting there with their jaws dropping into their bowls of cereal.

Woods later apologized for his outburst, which was only correct.

But do you think Pebble Beach said it was sorry for the nasty way it treated the golfers?

The first time that happens, sea otters will fly. The superintendent will take a chain saw to that tree in the 18th fairway and make a bench there. Par will be whatever you darned well feel like.

The third round of the U.S. Open was a return to reality, a cold slap to the face. Par this, baby.

On this day, the golf course won. The players had their titanium this and their cavity-backed that and their forged whatevers.

Meanwhile, poor, defenseless Pebble Beach--all it had was its natural defenses, down to its last blade of mowed grass. Then, it all changed abruptly. Look what the wind blew in.