Of all the club twirls on Tiger Woods’ illustrious CV this might have been the all-time greatest. Woods had a particularly memorable few days in the 2009 Presidents Cup at Harding Park in San Francisco, winning all five of his matches, and the only time that he would see the par-5 18th will go down in history for the nature of his reaction.
Woods and Steve Stricker, who he would partner in all four of his pairs matches, were actually one down with two to play in their Saturday foursomes against Tim Clark and Mike Weir. At the time neither International player was inside the top 30 in the world while Woods was ranked first and Stricker third.
Had Woods missed his 25-footer at the penultimate hole then the visitors would have had a putt to win the match but the World No. 1 did what he does best to square the match.
At the par-5 18th Stricker’s drive left Woods with a long iron in to a tightly cut pin and the result was sensational.
“They were over to the right edge of the green and that’s a pretty tough shot to that flag. And any shot on the green there gives us a putt at it and then as well as he’s (Stricker) putting, I liked our chances,” Woods explained in the Saturday night press conference.
“I had 218 front and it was actually a perfect number with the wind coming off the left. I knew that 3-iron, I couldn’t hit it long. It was a perfect number for me to carry it right to the front edge. And when I hit it, I just tried to bleed it off the left edge of the green, and it came off perfect.
“I just remember walking after it because I could just see it flying out there and falling a little bit to the right. And I hit it well enough that I knew this was going to land just short, and from there, I knew that it couldn’t be more than 20 feet away.”
At the 2009 Presidents Cup, Tiger delivered the club twirl to end all club twirls. pic.com/tpWOwl8sNj
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) September 23, 2024
The result was a win for the hosts and they would head into the afternoon fourballs with a three-point lead.
Speaking by the greenside Stricker, who had been the driving force behind the American victory that morning, said: “It was fun to watch, I had a front row seat and it was pretty cool. We all know what he does and he stepped it up when he had to, it was pretty impressive.”
“How do you do that all the time?” asked the interviewer.
“Er, luck,” joked Woods.
The Americans would go on to win 19.5-14.5 with Woods and Phil Mickelson contributing 9.5 points between them.
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