PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Tiger Woods had one request before he jumped into the back of a silver Lexus RX 350.
“Could you turn on the heat?” he joked with a low fog hanging over the Monterey Peninsula well after noon on Tuesday.
The heat already has been on Woods from golf fans for his off-course infidelity and from golf legends for his on-course cursing and club-throwing.
Woods quickly cooled any conversations about his wife Elin Nordegren, his personal rehabilitation, his time away from the game and everything else swirling in his world besides the revolution of Nike golf balls with one quick answer to a query about his marital status.
“That’s none of your business,” Woods told one reporter before the conversation returned to golf and to his historic demolition of the field and Pebble Beach Golf Links in the 2000 U.S. Open.
Woods set a U.S. Open record by shooting 12 under par and winning by 15 shots over Ernie Els and Miguel Angel Jimenez.
“That was really a wake-up call for a lot of guys,” said Els, who was paired with Woods for the final round that year. “A lot of guys started changing their game a lot. And a lot of guys took their physical fitness to another level.
“And 10 years later here we are. We’ve got a lot of strong, physical, athletic guys out here on tour.”
Woods’ Pebble precision also inspired the current generation of guys who grew up wanting to be the next Tiger, including pros Rory McIlroy, Anthony Kim, Ryo Ishikawa and amateurs here such as Ben Martin, Morgan Hoffman and Russell Henley.
“Going into 2001, he won four majors in a row, and every time you turned on golf, you turned it on to watch Tiger,” McIlroy said. “A lot of the younger generation grew up watching how well he played, and he inspired me and he probably made us better players because we realized that’s how good we could be if we worked harder.”
Woods was king on the course, and he carried the crown off it as well with endorsements that turned him into a billion-dollar brand.
“Now it’s a little different,” McIlroy said.
Woods’ accomplishments on the course made him almost invincible inside the ropes until Y.E. Yang turned into a safari hunter and shot down Tiger in the 2009 PGA Championship. Woods had been 14-0 when atop the leaderboard after 54 holes of a major.
Then the rest of Woods’ world came crashing down in the days following his driveway car crash.
He’s become human. He’s become injured. He’s become beatable.
“The mentality has changed,” McIlroy said. “If you go up against Tiger on a Sunday, you know that you’ve got a good chance to beat him.”
We’ll see about that this week on the 7,040-yard course with the Pacific Ocean acting as a water hazard and poa annua greens that only Woods mastered 10 years ago. We’ll see how much has changed in those 10 years with Woods, with the field and with the course set up to the U.S. Open’s ultra-difficult conditions.
“The more I play, the more I get my feel back,” Woods said. “And what I was saying to a lot of guys who were at (the) Memorial is that where I was in the beginning of June is where a lot of the guys are in January and February. So I’m just starting to get my feel back, and I know I have to be patient with it.”
Woods played two practice rounds with his friend from Isleworth Country Club, Arjun Atwal – the 2008 Chattanooga Classic champion – who noticed improvements in Woods’ game during their fun practice sessions and slightly more serious practice rounds at Pebble.
“From what I’ve seen, it’s getting better every day,” Atwal said. “It all depends how he feels, and we’ll see what happens when the bell goes off.”
We’ll see if Tiger still has any roar.