PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA | It has been 25 years since that gray Sunday when Payne Stewart painted the Carolina sky with a fist-slamming par putt on the final green to win the 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. Stewart beat Phil Mickelson by a shot, but Tiger Woods – wearing more black than his customary Sunday red that day – was there, step for step, shot by shot, until his chances died with a missed 5-footer for par on the 71st hole. A whimper compared to Stewart’s big-bang finish.
Six years later when Michael Campbell won the second U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, it seemed until the unexpected end that Woods would add his name to the list of champions at a place where almost every great player has competed across the decades. But, like in 1999, Woods was betrayed by his putter as he finished two shots behind Campbell. A tie for third and a solo second, a total of four shots, are how close Woods has come at Pinehurst to having more major-championship silver in his trophy case.
It is against that distant backdrop – Woods did not play in the 2014 U.S. Open because of a back injury – that the 48-year-old has returned to the “home of American golf” to try again to win the national championship. The rough at the No. 2 course has been replaced by sandy scruff, and the green complexes are magnificently provocative with their slopes and knobs that bump and roll like moguls on a ski slope. Woods says he can win, but “it’s just a matter of doing it.”
It’s been more than half of his lifetime since Woods played in the first U.S. Open at Pinehurst, and his career achievements – notably, a record-tying 82 PGA Tour titles, including 15 major championships – may have exceeded what anyone foresaw 25 years ago. The primary question has changed from, Will Woods do it? to, Can he do it? Can he still coax the physical endurance, the mental discipline and whatever magic might remain in his game to contend again in a major championship?
