Woods Won’t Beat O’Meara This Week

With the possible exception of the financial consultant, Mark O’Meara probably has had more influence on Tiger Woods’ professional golf career than anyone else, which isn’t bad, given that Woods is the gold standard of the game.

At the same time, it’s more than just a matter of following the dollar signs.

It was O’Meara who guided Woods to his teachers, Butch Harmon and then Hank Haney. It was O’Meara who moved to Isleworth in Florida, where Woods also lives. It was O’Meara, the devoted fisherman, who showed Woods how to tie a fly.

Mix in O’Meara’s influence on which management company to choose and what equipment to use and a straight line can be drawn from O’Meara to Woods.

O’Meara, though, downplays that.

“I don’t think he needs a whole lot of help,” O’Meara said here Tuesday as he and others prepared for the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. “His father has had a major impact on his life, but he just has this gift and sometimes you can’t teach that.

“Champions sometimes are born and if you take a champion that’s a natural champion and has a gift and you have a guy that’s committed to trying to get better, and that’s what Tiger has always done. He’s unbelievable.”

O’Meara, though, is way ahead of Woods in one regard. He’s won the Pebble Beach tournament five times. Woods, who won it in 2000, trails him by four.

This week, O’Meara is the only one of those two with a chance to do it again, because he’s playing this $5.4-million tournament and Woods isn’t.

O’Meara turns 50 next year and said he would then be scheduling his tournaments on the Champions Tour, not the PGA Tour, so 2006 represents something of a going-away party.

Just don’t think that Woods and O’Meara are going their separate ways. Even their real-estate deals appear to be conducted in unison.

O’Meara’s house at Isleworth has been on the market for a few months and he has bought a condo there. He also purchased a lot at the Tradition in La Quinta, intending to build a house, and he owns a four-bedroom townhouse in Deer Valley, Utah, because he likes snow sports.

Woods has said he plans to downsize at Isleworth and may buy a condo there. He owns a condo at Manhattan Beach and he recently spent $38 million on an estate at Jupiter Island, Fla., because he likes ocean sports.

The players who live in those houses are more alike than anyone could have suspected, considering that there’s about a 19-year age difference, they’re from different backgrounds and they clearly play different games. If Woods is power, O’Meara is finesse, not that O’Meara is unable to admire an alternative approach.

“I’m his friend, but I’m also a huge fan of Tiger Woods,” he said.

O’Meara has picked up his share of fans in his career, which began in 1980 when he made it through qualifying school. In 25 years, he has won 16 times and made nearly $14 million in prize money. His best year was 1998, when he was 41, made $1.78 million and won the Masters and the British Open.

He is the oldest player to have won two major championships in the same year. For 17 straight years, O’Meara finished in the top 100 on the money list and was in the top 10 six times.

Last year, he started the season on a major medical extension because of a wrist injury in 2004 that limited him to 17 tournaments.

This year, he is using his one-time exemption for being in the top 50 on the PGA Tour career money list.

Next year’s exemption doesn’t matter because O’Meara isn’t going to need one, and Woods will be on his own. Not that it bothers O’Meara.

He said the best way to motivate Woods is to tell him he can’t do something.

Pointing to double doors at the back of the room, O’Meara said to tell Woods the doors don’t open.

“That’s a sure way to get Tiger Woods to go over and get the doors to open,” he added.

As usual, he said it like someone who knows.