Essential Tiger Will Be Back

By RON AGOSTINI
ragostini@modbee.com

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When Tiger Woods returns to the fairways sometime next year, he will answer the most-asked question today in sport: Will he still be Tiger Woods?

I'll answer with another question: Has anything in his career, especially last week at Torrey Pines, inspired a "no?"

Uh, no.

Woods lives for the "I'll show you" in golf, and he can't wait to rehab his weakened left knee and continue his dominance.

His father Earl instilled all that want-to in him. It's Tiger's template, the most dynamic the game ever has seen.

If you doubt him, you fuel his desire. He's not arguably the most recognized man in the world by accident. Beating you, rather than just winning, remains at the top of his list, even after a decade on golf's throne.

As Rocco Mediate said after he lost the U.S. Open playoff last week, "He's not normal."

Remember, Woods won his third Open last week, a 91-hole, 21-mile marathon, on a broken leg -- a double stress fracture of his tibia diagnosed two weeks before the tournament. He also had a torn ACL in his left knee, the knee that for three decades has absorbed the most radical torque and repetitive stress the game has known.

Woods winced in pain nearly every time he tried to unleash a drive. He often used his club as a cane for support. Winning the Open should have been off the agenda. Heck, teeing off in the first round shouldn't have been considered. He had surgery on the knee in April and, since then, had not played an 18-hole round.

But this Open, conducted only an hour's drive from his childhood home in Cypress, held maximum importance. He defied his doctor, reportedly telling him, "I'm playing the U.S. Open, and I'm going to win."

Like Mediate said, Woods is not normal. In this era of fraud personalities and stars forged more via marketing than by product, Woods is the real thing.

Pundits like yours truly believed he risked long-term injury by forcing it. We could still be right. In Woods, though, we witness a performer whose fame and fortune have not softened his basic instinct: He's a gifted athlete manically driven to compete and to win, whose hunger is almost tangible.

Gifted. Driven. Hungry. Tough trio.

His goal is to surpass Jack Nicklaus' 18 major victories. Woods just won his 14th. Nothing short of amputation will stop him.

Remember, he's already rebuilt his swing twice, the first after his landmark 12-stroke win in the 1997 Masters, the second after his "Tiger Slam" in 2000 and 2001. He measures himself by his standards, not yours.

Unlike Nicklaus, who was pushed constantly by Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd, Johnny Miller and others, Woods goes at it almost alone.

Nicklaus' peers weren't afraid to beat him. Alas, the contenders of Woods' era meekly bow and collect fourth-place money. Davis Love III, David Duval, Sergio Garcia, Phil Mickelson and the rest have failed Woods.

Check out the handful of players who've stood up to him, at least for one week: Rich Beem, Ed Fiore, Billy Mayfair, Bob May and, last week, Mediate. None of them were first-tier players, but they recognized that deferring to Woods without a fight guarantees a loss.

Which brings us to this point: Woods could use a more mentally tough cast of rivals in the second half of his career. Woods turns 33 in December and his knee, from now on, will be a concern. If he's truly challenged, all the better.

Regardless, we always can depend on Woods. He's the best putter and the best reader of greens who ever lived. But even more critical is his ability to will events, even when he's not in top form. We first saw it in the 1996 U.S. Amateur finals when he trailed Steve Scott 5-down, then holed a 35-foot putt to tie the match on the 17th green before winning it in sudden death.

His latest magic at the Open -- the incoming 30 on Friday, the two eagles and holed pitch in the final six holes Saturday, and the 12-foot putt he couldn't afford to miss Sunday -- only reminded us that he's been doing this since he was a teenager. When it was over, he called it "the greatest achievement of my career," the first signal to how difficult it was for him.

I suspect he'll lose his will to shape events around him before he loses the control in his knee. Until then, this new father is not even thinking about saying goodbye. He faces about six months, perhaps longer, of rehab post-surgery. Athletes usually need about a year to bounce back from an ACL, much less a stress fracture.

He may not surface until next April at Augusta for the Masters. Only one thing is a mortal lock.

He'll still be Tiger Woods.

Bee sports columnist Ron Agostini can be reached at ragostini@modbee.com or 578-2302.