Nobody's perfect -- not even Tiger

For the first time in history, Tiger Woods was beaten after holding the lead going into the final round of a major championship.

Call it whatever else you like, but don’t call it a fluke.

Y. E. Yang, Asia’s first-ever major champion, was the best golfer over four rounds at Hazeltine Golf Course. There were no bad bounces, no weather catastrophes, and no slow-play warnings to affect the outcome of the match.

The defining moment of the tournament came when Yang holed out his chip for eagle from just in front of the 14^th green. Was it lucky to go in? Perhaps. But the shot was perfectly aimed and purely struck, and there was never any doubt it would at least be very close. Had it been Tiger who made the shot, fans would be debating whether it was one of the greatest clutch shots in history, but since it came from the club of perhaps the unlikeliest of heroes, it gets discredited a bit.

Here’s why that's wrong: Professional golfers do not get that way by accident. They work for it, and they are very skilled. Out of the over 50 million golfers worldwide, only 988 have earned so much as a dime playing professionally in 2009. So when Larry Mize chips in from 140 feet to win the 1987 Masters or Shaun Micheel hits an approach shot to within two inches to clinch the 2003 PGA Championship, it’s not because they’re lucky. It’s because they’re very, very good. Tiger just has these moments at an impossibly frequent rate – he’s the best golfer to ever live, and expecting anyone else to produce such moments at an equal rate is just plain stupid.

To those who try to marginalize Yang’s accomplishment by saying he’ll never do it again, I say: Who says he has to? As of right now, he owns one major championship. That’s one more than Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott, and Anthony Kim, each of whom have been ordained as Tiger’s biggest threat over the past 10 years. Well, we’re still waiting.

After Yang landed the knockout punch on 14, it was over. Tiger was still standing, but there would be no rally. If anything, the final margin should have been more than three strokes. Yang slid a putt just by the hole on the 15^th green to miss birdie and had a putt on hole 17 graze the hole before sliding out. The rally everyone expected Tiger to launch never materialized. He finished with bogeys on the last two holes of the tournament, the time when he most needed to make birdie.

For all of the hysteria of Tiger finally being beat, this instance was different for several reasons. Keep in mind, there are two forms of Tiger: One wins, and one doesn’t. When Tiger has everything clicking, he wins, and generally makes it look easy. When he misses putts or struggles with his driver, he doesn’t win. He merely finishes in the top-five, and that ability to still nearly win without playing his best golf is what makes him so good. It happens quite frequently, in fact. Over the past 10 years in majors, he has 12 wins and 12 non-winning top-six finishes.

Before this tournament, Tiger had at least a share of the lead going into the final round of a major tournament 14 times, and 14 times he was left posing with a trophy. Two rounds into the 2009 PGA Championship, he held a four-shot lead. All signs pointed to a step-on-your-throat, put it away, no questions asked third round from Woods that would have the trophy engraver getting a head start Saturday night.

And then it never came. For reasons that I will never understand, Tiger played to make pars in the third round and simply assumed his lead would stand pat. It did, but slipped from four strokes to two in the process. In reality, Tiger only had one impressive round – the first— and the fact that he kept the lead throughout the next two masked the fact that his scoring had gotten progressively worse, from 67 to 70 to 71. A small difference, but usually the difference between playing well and winning.

So, to clarify, it was not Tiger who changed, it was the circumstances. When Tiger has played to this level in the past, someone has always played better. It was inevitably going to happen here too, but in this case it took four rounds for someone to catch him instead of two or three.

It had to happen, though. Tiger wasn’t playing his best, and when he doesn’t play his best in a major championship, he doesn’t win. Nobody is that good. One statistic that doesn’t often get mentioned is the fact that Tiger has never won a tournament when trailing going into the final round.

Think of that statistic as saying Tiger has never won when he hasn’t played his best. But what happens when Tiger had the lead going into the final round when he wasn’t playing his best? Something had to give. He lost.

Even the greatest of all time can’t win when he doesn’t play his best.

The Invisible Champion

Cycling is a sport that lends itself to greatness.

Although many sporting events around the world claim to weed out the weak in their various disciplines, few, if any, do it as well as the Tour de France.

There is a little taste of poison for everyone. For sprinters, there are the mountains, where cracking can mean losing as much as an hour of time in a single day. For climbers, there are the time trials, where the inability to maintain power through long-distance sprints can result in valuable minutes lost. And for cheaters, there are the drug tests, where a positive sample will result in two years lost.

Cope with each of those things and you’re just getting started. Three weeks is a long time, and 2,000 miles is even longer. There is the possibility of heatstroke, an ill-timed equipment breakdown, or perhaps most underestimated, a fan encounter gone wrong.

There are no barricades at the Tour de France. Just ask Eddie Merckx, who lost the Tour in 1975 when a fan stepped into the road and punched him in the stomach. Lance Armstrong nearly suffered a similar fate in 2004, when his handlebar got caught on a spectator’s handbag, flipping him to the pavement during a critical mountain stage.

Because of all these factors, it takes a very special man to survive and win. Few such men exist. Sporting events that share this toughness also often experience repeat winners.

For example, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer have each won Wimbledon seven times. Harry Vardon has won the Open Championship six times, and Tom Watson five.

The Tour de France is no different. It has produced four five-time winners and a seven-time winner.

The next great champion has already arrived, though you wouldn’t know it.

Alberto Contador won the Tour in 2007. He didn’t win in 2008, but he also didn’t compete in 2008, the year in which his entire team was banned for something in which he had no part. Focusing his attentions elsewhere, he instead won the other two of cycling’s three most prestigious races, the Vuelta a Espana and Giro d’Italia. Doing so made him only the fifth rider (and the youngest ever) to win all three of cycling’s Grand Tours.

He returned to the Tour and won again in 2009. Perhaps most astounding is that his four victories (two Tours, the Vuelta, and the Giro) are the only four Grand Tours he’s raced in since 2006. Undefeated in four years.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but here’s guessing he keeps winning. And winning. And winning.

He is a fantastic champion for the sport. He is currently regarded as the greatest climber in the world. His ascents to mountaintops often look effortless, and the effect grows even more when looking at the pain of his fellow competitors. In 2007, he was a weak time trial rider, and it nearly cost him the Tour. He has eliminated that flaw, however, and in 2009 he finished second in the opening time trial, first in the team time trial, and first in the time trial on the Tours penultimate stage. In short, he is unbeatable as of right now and there is no denying his greatness.

And yet he remains entirely underappreciated.

Part of that is due to unlucky circumstances; his first victory came during the height of the Tour’s post-Lance hangover as well as a tumultuous time in terms of public trust, the previous year’s winner having been discovered a cheater and wiped from the record books. And of course, his second victory came during Lance’s return to cycling.

As such, every story continually opened not with the amount by which Contador led, but by the amount Armstrong trailed. Contador barely existed in the context of the race, and when he did, he was painted as the villain to his teammate, Armstrong.

Armstrong did all he could to insinuate that Contador is a bad teammate, perhaps the most laughable assertion of all.

Some background: In cycling, the other eight riders sacrifice their own ambition to work for the best rider on their team, the leader. As a leader, Lance was generally regarded as the most demanding of all. He expected, and received, perfect soldiers engineered for one purpose – winning him the Tour.

Joining Team Astana in 2009, he continually ducked the question of whether he would work for a stronger rider, saying he preferred to let it play out in the race. What a sudden change of philosophy.

Continually bested by Contador, Armstrong finally conceded the leadership role mid-race. Although he may have worked for Contador here or there, it was marginal effort at best and completely useless at worst, the race already being well in Contador’s grasp.

Armstrong finished 3^rd, and attacked yet again, saying Astana would have put three riders on the podium had it not been for Contador’s selfishness.

Here’s an interesting bit of information, however: In the last 20 years, only three times has a team put two riders on the podium. Two of them were in the years Contador won, and the third was wiped from the record book when the winner confessed to using three different performance-enhancing drugs and the rest of his team confessed as well.

So if you’re unwilling to admit he’s a good teammate, you must admit he’s had the worst teammates, because in both years he’s been undermined by teammates trying to get the win for themselves in a most serious breach of Tour etiquette that, given the evidence above, seems to almost never occur.

But of course, the story isn’t about Lance, and it isn’t about Contador’s disposition. It’s about what happens on the road.

Alberto Contador has won two Tour de France titles at an age younger than when Lance won his first. If he can stay healthy, he will almost certainly challenge Armstrong for the record of seven titles.

Whether you like him or not, you must admit he’s the best – quite possibly one of the greatest of all time – and that alone should be worth a second look, and a deeper appreciation.

USA-Mexico recap

Bob Bradley just experienced the defining moment of his time as head coach of the United States soccer team.

Forget the historic victory over Spain and the near-miss against Brazil. The 5-0 loss at the hands of Mexico in the Gold Cup final will have much larger ramifications.

This was a throwaway tournament, a series of meaningless games with absolutely nothing at stake, and Bradley treated it as such, composing a roster almost entirely filled with backups who had essentially zero international experience. The benefits, it seemed, were twofold: give younger players much-needed playing time and rest key players before World Cup qualifying resumes in August.

Fortunately, the United States is lucky enough to be located in arguably the world’s weakest region of soccer. Opening up the tournament against weaklings such as Haiti and Grenada, the Americans handled their business and gained valuable experience in the process.

The gamble looked like it paid off when the plucky backups defeated a full-strength Honduras (one of their top rivals in World Cup qualification) twice – first in the group stage of the tournament and later in the semifinals.

Right now, the United States has one objective – qualify for the 2010 World Cup. Having made the leap from global laughingstock to legitimate threat, the US national team has qualified for the past five World Cups following a 40-year drought from 1950 to 1990. A spot in the tournament is no longer hoped for, it is expected.

Despite such recent stability, there is absolutely no margin for error. Because CONCACAF (the region of soccer teams including North America, Central America, and the Caribbean) is so weak, only three teams (compared to 13 from Europe) automatically qualify. The fourth place finisher advances to a playoff against a South America team.

With the final round of qualifying halfway completed, the United States is on the correct side of the dividing line (currently in place second out of six remaining teams), their perch is a precarious one indeed – only one game separates them from the third or fourth spot. And although it seems unlikely that the United States could sink to the dark depths of the fifth or six spots, it is entirely possible to slip to fourth place, and the requisite playoff against a likely superior South American team.

That possibility, it turns out, begins with Mexico.

Mexico, current occupant of the dreaded fourth spot, hosts the United States in the next qualifying match on August 12^th. Mexico has the history (The US national team is 0-23-1 all-time in the Mexican version of the Coliseum, Estadio Azteca), but the US is coming off an incredible Confederations Cup performance and seems to be playing their best soccer in recent memory. Conversely, the Mexicans are currently on their fourth manager in the past year and missing the World Cup seems entirely too real a possibility.

And so it was under these conditions that the two teams arrived in the Gold Cup final in New Jersey: Mexico licking their wounds and looking for any kind of spark, and the United States saving their starters in eager anticipation of a legitimate shot at their first-ever Estadio Azteca triumph.

The idea was simple – beating Mexico’s top players while using backups would be the straw on the camel’s back, the submission move that would ultimately cause Mexico to tap out of the World Cup. The risks seemed to be zero – only losing a meaningless tournament, but at the same time preventing Mexico from seeing (and preparing for) the United States’ best players.

There was, however, a hitch in those plans. Unaccounted for in that equation was a loss of epic proportion – which is exactly what the Americans were dealt.

The 5-0 score was exactly as it seemed. There were no deceiving qualities, no fluke goals. It was a bloodbath. An evisceration. And most importantly, it came on American soil, in New Jersey, with a crowd so pro-Mexico that the Americans never got so much as a single cheer in their own stadium.

Bad news first: the score reflects extremely well on the Mexico team, because a large majority of those players who shredded the United States will also be playing in the World Cup qualifying match.In a span of 90 minutes, the team with the least amount of goals in the final qualifying round found the back of the net five times, or only one time less than in their last five qualifying matches combined. The fact that they scored it against a bunch of scrubs is irrelevant; confidence, creativity, and well-placed aggression were all on display in a performance that restored the swagger to a team so desperately in need of it.

The good news, however, is that the score reflects nothing on the squad that will take the field for the United States on August 12^th, because none of those players were on the field for this massacre. They will be ready to go, and this might very well be a wakeup call they needed, a well-timed message about the dangers of lost focus.

Make no mistake about it: Bob Bradley will be judged by the outcome of one very important game in a couple of weeks, and deservedly so. If resting his stars and preventing Mexico from gaining any sort of familiarity with them pays off with a historic Azteca victory (or really, even a tie), the US will gain a huge boost and simultaneously deliver a crippling blow to their biggest rival.

However, if Mexico triumphs, the Americans will see their southern neighbors only one point behind in the standings with four games left. And if Mexico can piece together a win, don’t expect them to stop. The effects will last longer than just one game, and Mexico will likely put pressure on the United States to collect big results in road games at Trinidad and Honduras.

Although the outcome has yet to be determined, one thing is certain – Bradley will be remembered by the result.

That Cinking Feeling

In the end, the real victim was Stewart Cink.

One of the most consistent guys on Tour (owning a top-3 finish at each of the three US-based majors), and someone respected greatly by his peers (including being voted onto the Policy Board by fellow PGA Tour members), Cink was expected to be an extremely popular winner when he finally broke through to win a major tournament.

And then he ran into history.

59-year-old Tom Watson, five-time winner of the Claret Jug, golf’s oldest and most famous trophy and the prize for an Open Championship victory, held the lead for a majority of the 72-hole championship, seemingly young and invincible once more.

To provide some perspective to the uniqueness of the situation, consider this: The oldest person to ever claim the Open Championship, “Old” Tom Morris (widely regarded as the founding father of professional golf), was 46 at the time. In 1867.

Watson, no longer possessing distance off the tee, found new ways to confound opponents, draining seemingly impossible putts one after the other. As others waited for him to collapse (despite holding the 36-hole lead, he was listed that night as only a 40-1 favorite to win), he held on.

Carrying him along the way was an army of the loudest, proudest, smartest, and drunkest fans in the game of golf. The Scots, who watched him win their championship an astounding five times, including once at this very course in 1977, filled the air with hearty (and slurred) cries of “Come on, Toom!”

He very nearly pulled it off.

Standing in the 18^th fairway and holding a one-stroke lead, Watson waffled between the 8 and 9 irons before finally going with the stronger club. The decision cost him, as his ball flew onto the green but kept rolling and rolling, until it finally exited into the rough surrounding the greenside area. His first putt was good, settling eight feet from the hole, but his second never had a chance, and with that – his first three-putt of the week – it was time for a playoff.

Enter Stewart Cink.

Cink, who quietly lurked after rounds of 66, 72, and 71, fired a final-round 69 courtesy of an ice-water-in-the-veins birdie on the 72^nd hole of the tournament to finish at two under par for the Championship. Playing 30 minutes ahead of Watson, he could only wait to see if his score held up.

It did.

For a fleeting second, he must have wished it hadn’t.

Turnberry holds roughly 30,000 spectators. All but three – his wife and two kids – were rooting for Watson (“Come on, Toom!”), and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to suggest such a ratio applied to those watching at home.

With the whole world cheering for the Impossible Dream, Cink stepped up to the tee unfazed. He grabbed a one-shot advantage on the first playoff hole and never looked back, overwhelming Watson by six strokes in the four-hole playoff.

The Claret Jug was his, but instead of being treated like the champion he is, he was embraced by many golf fans as a man who had just cancelled Christmas. Which is to say, not at all.

It’s hard to feel bad for Tom Watson. He has, over the course of a brilliant career, collected five of these very titles, and eight majors overall. Sunday at Turnberry was the icing on the cake, a legendary performance that will seal his reputation as the greatest links golf player to ever swing a club.

No, he didn’t win. But he came damn close. His performance will forever be the story of the 2009 Open Championship.

It’s all very unfortunate for Stewart Cink, who called facing Watson in the playoff and his eventual triumph “a dream come true.”

Here’s hoping history doesn’t treat it as a nightmare.