Woods Chalks Up a Weekend’s Worth of Magic Numbers

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The New York Sun

With his fourth straight six-underpar 66 and second Buick Open title, Tiger Woods reached 50 PGA Tour wins yesterday. Do you have any idea how good that is?

Think of all the really, really talented players you have heard of who have toiled all their careers, sweating blood to win a just a couple of times.Think of 46-year-old Tom Pernice Jr. for instance. Currently enjoying his 23rd year as a professional, Pernice drives the ball 286 yards and averages 70.2 strokes a round at 7,000+ yard courses that are set up to test the best golfers in the world. Fortytwo-year-old Woody Austin, a pro for 20 years, also hammers it 286 yards off the tee and averages closer to 71. Both are past winners of the Buick Open, and they each have just two tour victories to show for their years of labor. But they could beat any scratch player in the land playing off their knees and with their hands tied behind their backs.

So how good does that make Tiger Woods? The world’s best player reached a season-low 24 under and made a career-high 28 birdies in the tournament to hold off Jim Furyk — who closed with a 64 — for his fourth win of the year. Woods earned $864,000 to push his tourleading total to $5,127,563. With the victory, Woods drew to within one victory of Billy Casper, whose 51 wins place him sixth on the all-time list.

Just two more victories and Woods will not only surpass Casper but join Byron Nelson. He has a little way to go yet to reach Arnold Palmer at 62, Ben Hogan at 64, Jack Nicklaus at 73, and finally Sam Snead at 82, but don’t forget: Woods is only 30. Nicklaus was 33 when he notched up his 50th win. If the 30s really are the most productive years of a professional golfer’s career, as the statistics suggest they are, then Woods might well blow past Snead by the time he reaches 40.

Woods also improved to 21-for-21 when leading by more than one stroke after three rounds in a tournament. He picked up this latest win after his emotional victory in the British Open and before he shoots for his 12th major in two weeks at the PGA Championship, where he hopes to close in on the record he covets: Nicklaus’s 18 pro major championships.

Yesterday’s final round at Warwick Hills, a happy hunting ground for Woods, who is now 137-under par for his last eight appearances at the Grand Blanc, Mich., course, was something of a formality. Leading by two shots after three rounds, Woods virtually ended hopes of a come-from-behind win with three birdies in a row from the third hole.

Furyk, the man Woods is likely to partner in the foursomes and fourballs at September’s Ryder Cup, did draw level after Woods bogeyed the 12th, but the world’s number one player opened the gap again with a tap-in birdie at the 13th. It was a gap that never looked like closing.

At the 18th, a 291-yard drive, straight down the middle, was followed by a 152-yard 9-iron to ten feet and a putt that looked in all the way. It was a fitting end to another brilliant week for Woods who has two wins since missing the cut at the U.S. Open eight weeks ago.

Had the victory not been Woods’s 50th, the biggest story of the day would have been the performances of those players desperately trying to hold on to their Ryder Cup spots or earn enough points to jump into the top 10 in the standings. Vaughn Taylor, who ripped

through the field on Saturday with a nine-birdie, one-eagle, two-bogey 63, closed with a 68 yesterday to finish in a tie for fourth and earn 140 priceless points. From 11th in the table, he rose four spots, leapfrogging JJ Henry into seventh place.Pernice Jr.with his tie for seventh banked 80 points and climbed to 13th where he displaced Lucas Glover who shot a disappointing final round of 72 in the company of Woods.

After two 67s and a 66, Glover would have been looking for another round in the mid-60s to secure a top-ten finish of his own. A three-under 69 was all he needed, in fact, to hold on to a tie for fourth and receive the same 140 points that Taylor won, points that would have vaulted him into eighth place on the Ryder Cup list, one back of Taylor. Like Pernice, he now needs a good showing at either the International or PGA Championship in two weeks’ time if he is to guarantee his spot on the team and not have to rely on a captain’s pick which, given how many rookies have more or less qualified already, he is unlikely to get.

No such concerns for Woods and Furyk, of course. The pair who, along with Vijay Singh (who tied for 11th yesterday), have turned the Buick Open into a three-man exhibition match over the last few years, were in a different class yesterday, and if they can retain that sort of form until the end of September, no one on the European side is going to like their chances against them.


The New York Sun

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