Within Tiger’s inner circle, the individual who was most supportive to him during his early months as a pro was probably Mark O’Meara. When they were both at Isleworth they played together often. Mark, although 18 years older than Tiger, was still in his prime, as he proved in February at the 1997 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, holding off a final-round 64 by Tiger to win by a stroke over him and David Duval. It was O’Meara’s fifth victory in that event and he followed the next week with a win at the Buick Invitational, his 18th career title.
So O’Meara had game, but he was soon to see it was not close to Tiger’s. A few weeks later, he and Tiger played a casual round together at Isleworth. (Tiger, having won three of his first nine tournaments as a pro, had risen to No. 14 in the world, but O’Meara, fresh off his two consecutive wins, was above him at No. 8.) I happened to phone Tiger that same evening, just to check in with him.
“So I had a pretty interesting round today,” he said. “I shot 59.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I played with Marko. Started with a par on 10, then birdied 11 and 12, eagled 13, and birdied 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 1 – 27 on the back nine and 10-under for my first 10 holes.”
“Holy shit! Then what?”
“Believe it or not, I didn’t birdie either of the par fives – had a 5-iron to three and 3-iron to 7 and made five on both of them. But I made three more birdies on the front so it was 32-27–59 but it could have been a few lower than that.”
This on a par-72 course measuring 7,149 yards and rated 74.4 – one of the toughest in Florida. Amazingly it was the only sub-61 score of Tiger’s life.
But the story gets even better. The next day he and O’Meara go out again and once again start on the back nine. This time Tiger opens with a birdie – and then on the 11th makes a hole-in-one. Years later, O’Meara recalled the moment for an Action Network interview.
“He’s hitting like an 8-iron. I haven’t even gotten out of my cart. It goes right at the pin, one-hops, and goes into the hole. So I go over and take $100 or whatever it was, I can’t remember, and I put it on his cart seat. I didn’t even hit my shot. I said, ‘That was a really nice shot. I quit. I’ll see you later on the driving range when you get done.’
“He’s like, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I quit. You shot 13 under yesterday, you just jarred that, you’re 16 under for your last 20 holes. I quit. I’m outta here.’”
Those two days were April 4 and 5, 1997 – the Friday and Saturday before the most momentous week of Tiger’s young career – the Masters. Had I been a betting man, armed with this inside info, I could not have placed a Masters wager fast enough on my young client.