ESPN.com - Golf Online - Even in defeat, Woods worth watching

By Jim Litke
Associated Press
Monday, August 28

Here's what makes Tiger Woods worth watching, even in a made-for-television event against a guy he beats most nights in his sleep:

Woods has become the best show not just in sports, but all of television. You take your eyes off him, even for a minute, and you risk missing something no one's ever done before.


	A missed birdie putt on the first hole got Tiger Woods headed in the wrong direction.

Fighting fatigue and the flu, Woods ran out of magic Monday night in the "Battle of Bighorn," losing to Sergio Garcia 1-up. The 20-year-old Spaniard birdied four of the last five holes, including two long birdie putts ripped out of the pages of Woods' playbook.

"At least," said Woods, "I gave him a run for his money."

More important was what Woods gave golf for the last week or so.

This past Saturday, he was walking up the 18th fairway with Phil Mickelson and lapping the field again. It wasn't a major. Bob May, who chased Woods to the wire in the last of the the majors for this year, has taken his slingshot to another PGA Tour event halfway across the country.

So only golf junkies were supposed to be watching the final minutes of the telecast from the NEC Invitational in Akron, Ohio. And Mickelson had just given them a jolt by wielding his 8-iron like a scythe to cut the ball out of the rough and land it just short of the 18th green.

Then Woods took his turn.

What followed had the CBS announcers in the fairway and the tower stepping on each other's lines. The result sounded like something straight out of Carl the deranged greenskeeper's "Cinderella Boy" monologue from "Caddyshack." Only this was on live television.

"Tiger's in really, really nasty rough ... he's got 184 yards to the pin ... pitching wedge (!) ... to 8 feet (!!!) ."

After one of the most remarkable shots ever, Woods missed the birdie putt. And still shot 67.

Then Sunday comes, he plays a few holes, wolfs down a cheeseburger during a rain delay, rifles his last shot through near-darkness to two feet, and shoots another 67. He wins, he breaks another scoring record and makes another acceptance speech. The only difference between this Sunday and last is he doesn't get to sleep in his own bed.

Monday morning, Woods wakes up in Akron, appears at a clinic for one of his sponsors, then hops on his private jet. What awaits him at the end of a journey to Palm Desert, Calif., is yet another of those well-paying exhibitions golf pros use to make ends meet.

Woods being Woods, this one has a title, "Battle of Bighorn," and it will pay him considerably more -- $1.1 million -- than most exhibitions. And instead of playing in a foursome with the usual corporate chieftains, Woods has to play mano a mano with Sergio Garcia.

The best thing to be said about "Battle of Bighorn" is, it sounded like a good idea at the time. When ABC cleared space in prime time and cut the deal last spring, Woods was just coming off a streak of six consecutive victories and Garcia was still his most attractive rival. Of course, back then the young Spaniard still had game and Woods still had rivals.

So maybe the only suspense left is what kind of ratings "Bighorn" draws. But what else are you going to watch?

"Big Brother" on CBS? "Mysterious Ways" on NBC? "Nitro" on TNT? Padres at Cubs?

Watching Woods instead gives you the best they have to offer, anyway. What he gives up in drama, he more than gives back in honest showmanship.

Ali was like that, but television was just getting started then. Michael Jordan was like that, too. There were dozens of nights in February when his team was resting comfortably atop the standings and Jordan was far enough ahead in the scoring race to take a night off. But he never did.

He understood that to make the biggest shots at the biggest moments, he had to make them at the smaller ones, too.

Woods is like that. Only he's delivering those moments in such a compressed time frame that anybody who blinks risks missing something. It's why the networks stopped taking chances, why Time magazine put him on the cover the week of the Republican convention.

Only four years ago, Woods was playing in the final group of another golf tournament that also ended Sunday. That was the U.S. Amateur. He's raised his game several levels since, but the competition looks the same. The problem is that the guys with enough talent to challenge Woods don't have the heart, and vice versa. No one is willing to outwork him.

En route to a 61 on Friday that sent shivers down the spine of everybody who has to play him, Woods walked off the 15th tee and into a clearing. He found a gap in the tree line and stood there transfixed, staring off in the distance at a television tower with a cloth hanging off it like the tail of a kite. He was intent on gauging a breeze almost no one else felt. Only then did he step back on the tee and hit his drive.

That's what his competition is up against. A friend who should have copyrighted the idea said the "Battle at Bighorn" would have been more interesting if Woods played against a different pro at each hole. Someday soon. Or if Garcia proves as good at impersonating his fellow pros as Peter Jacobsen, maybe sooner.

Regardless, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem stayed tuned because he has plenty at stake. Finchem is about to open negotiations on a new television contract. At the moment, he likes his position.

"If he does this six or eight times a year for the next five years, at some point do people get bored?" Finchem said. "Maybe. That's not the case right now."