The
man with the best chance of stopping Tiger Woods today was Seve Ballesteros.
No, the Spaniard was not in the field for the American Express Championship. But
Ballesteros was in charge of redesigning the famed 17th hole at Valderrama Golf
Club, and it nearly kept Woods from winning his fourth straight tournament.
"Pitiful," said Hal Sutton
after watching Woods and Tom Lehman hit shots that moved at a snail's pace across
the green -- all the way into the water.
"I
didn't know what to do. I didn't have that shot in my repertoire," added Nick
Price, who also had a front-row seat for the Woods horror show.
For years, the 17th hole was a par-5 that played to an elevated green. Ballesteros
was put in charge of the redesign for the 1997 Ryder Cup, and decided to take
a page out of Augusta National.
The hole was shortened to 536 yards, and a pond was added in front -- complete
with a sharply shaved slope that resembles the 15th green at Augusta.
And it got those kind of results.
David Frost took a 10 after three balls wound up in the water. Thomas Bjorn made
a 9. In all, 11 out of 61 players made double bogey or worse.
"You
know it's bad when there are two ball marks on the green -- and they're both yours,"
said Justin Leonard, whose approach spun back into the water. He got the next
one to stay on the green and made the putt for a bogey.
Woods wasn't so lucky.
Leading by one stroke, Woods hit a perfect drive and perfectly placed 6-iron within
100 yards of the hole, which was on the bottom shelf of the two-tiered green.
Protecting against spin
that might speed the ball back down the tier, he went with a 9-iron and bounced
once and stopped -- and then started to roll.
"I
played it off the bank, possibly an uphill 8-footer for birdie," Woods said of
his strategy. "That's what I needed to do. And that's the way I executed the shot.
Unfortunately, it went in the water."
The answer wasn't to hit it long. Lehman was just over the green, chipped down
and watched the ball creep down the green and never stop.
"That
hole needs to be changed," Lehman said.
It was. After the Ryder Cup, where Woods once putted a ball across the green and
into the water, course owner Jimmy Patino invested more money by adding about
4 feet of green to eliminate the severity of the slope in front of the green.
Compounding to the problems
today were blustery, dry conditions that increased the speed of the green -- and
the wind was blowing toward the water.
"My
ball actually picked up speed by the hole, as if maybe a gust hit it," Woods said.
There may have been even
more treachery in the works. Woods saw Sergio Garcia in the clubhouse, and the
Spanish teen-ager told him the greens had been cut three times in the morning.
"If that's the case ...
we figured 3 1/2 paces over the edge, and there's the pin," Woods said. "That's
not a lot of room to work with. It's unfortunate that it happened. Maybe they
could have gone more conservative and changed the pin to be more fair."
Even European players don't
like the hole after the redesign, particularly Colin Montgomerie.
"I
hate that hole," Montgomerie said. "It still is, and will always be, a very controversial
hole."
