Tiger Woods, fresh off his third consecutive U.S.
Twenty-five years later, I still remember the buzz when Tiger showed up, along with a national media contingent.
At 2:30 p.m.
No one assembled in the tent that day could have predicted the impact Woods would have on the game, though Earl forewarned a few reporters who stuck around after the formal news conference that his son would be a “messiah” and would change not only golf, but the world.
As he strode from the practice range to the first tee, his then-caddie, Mike “Fluff” Cowan, emerged from the clubhouse with a black-and-white Titleist staff bag, still wrapped in plastic.
I was stunned at the number of spectators; never at a GMO had I seen the gallery four deep around the first tee and lining the rope all the way down the fairway to the green.
Brown Deer Park, short at 6,739 yards and with tree-lined fairways and doglegs that took driver out of Woods’ hands, really didn’t suit his game.
He would go on to shoot a 67 in the first round and followed with rounds of 69, 73 and a 68 that included a hole-in-one to foreshadow his flair for the dramatic.