Recent standards come to mind. The 1980 U.S. hockey team. North
Carolina State in 1983.
Bob May at the PGA Championship?
May had the credentials. Oklahoma State boy. Good player in Europe,
playing so well it got him an exemption to play here. But not
a single PGA Tour victory.
Little guy. Big underdog. Ken Venturi said before play began Sunday
at Valhalla Golf Club that, if May or one of his no-name brethren
were to keep Tiger Woods from winning back-to-back PGA Championships
and becoming the only man other than Ben Hogan to win three majors
in one year, it might be the biggest upset in the history of the
PGA Championship.
Do you believe in miracles?
Kinda sorta.
The PGA already had one in 1991, when John Daly gripped, ripped
and whipped it.
May is no Daly. May grew up playing golf in Southern California,
where he was the bull's eye of a little kid seven years his junior
named Tiger Woods.
"He
was the man in junior golf when I was starting," Woods said.
But May never grew up. At 5-7, others passed him in stature and
length off the tee. He was good all right, good enough to go to
Oklahoma State and play on a national champion. But he didn't
have any real success as a pro until he went to play in Europe
and came back home this year, at 31.
He came back a different player.
Tougher, maybe.
"If
it's somebody he's never met before or if it's Tiger Woods," said
Denmark's Thomas Bjorn, who played with May in Europe, "he doesn't
really care."
May showed it Sunday. He followed a 72 and two 66s with the kind
of round that would have beaten anyone else on the PGA Tour.
He matched Tiger Woods shot for shot in regulation. On the par-3
14th hole, he hit a drive that made Woods feel like a little kid
again, looking up at his heroes.
Using a 4-iron, May started the ball right and over the water
before drawing it back, the ball landing softly just over a bunker
and spinning down to seven feet.
"That,"
Woods said on the teebox, "was impressive."
Here's what was impressive: The way May held up under the pressure
of a man who, going into Sunday, was 16-1 in PGA Tour events he
led after 54 holes.
May seemed to flinch in the face of Woods' aura only once. At
15, he hit a 7-iron to four feet, a spectacular shot. Woods, off
the green to the left, deep in a swale, appeared in trouble again.
He tried to putt out of the hollow, but he misread it and pushed
the putt wide right, 15 feet under the hole.
May, one-up at the time, appeared to have Woods. Birdie here,
and coax a three-putt from Woods, and May goes into the last three
holes with a three-stroke lead.
But Woods wins with finesse as much as power. He had been on the
putting green Saturday night until almost 9 o'clock, working on
his stroke, and he knew exactly what to do.
"I
knew if I could control all my emotions and nerves and make that
putt," Woods said, "it was going to lengthen that putt for him."
Woods made the par putt.
May yanked his birdie putt left.
"Ballgame
is on now," Woods' caddie, Steve Williams, told his boss as they
walked off the green.
A lot of people would have liked to see May pull off the upset
at that point. And not just his friends and family, which includes
his wife, Brenda, who is due next month with their second child.
Some simply like the underdog. Some don't like to see a black
man win so often. A lot think it's bad for golf if one man wins
so often, sometimes by large margins.
The first reason is acceptable. The second is ludicrous.
The last, indefensible.
Some media and fans say it hurt golf when Woods won the U.S. and
British Opens by a combined 23 strokes. They say it robs the tournaments
of any suspense, the kind of suspense May and Woods gave it Sunday
when they went toe-to-toe all the way down the back nine at Valhalla
in what was surely one of the best duels ever in a PGA Championship.
They each shot 31 on the back: a total of eight birdies, no bogeys
and a lot of guts.
Woods put it away early in the three-hole playoff. He did it by
making a 20-foot birdie putt on the 16th and then holding on,
the first man to win back-to-back PGAs since Denny Shute in 1936-37
and the only one to pull off a hat trick like Hogan's in 1953.
All that history coming down should have been enough. Yes, the
playoff was grand, particularly because May proved to be one golfer
who finally pushed Woods in a major, making him even better.
But, even if he hadn't, even if Woods had won by 10 shots, would
it have been so bad?
Tom Watson doesn't think so. "Tiger is doing something that nobody
else has ever done," he said. "You are seeing a phenomenon here
that the game may never, ever see again."
Cherish it, Watson says. Pull for the little guys if you like.
Just remember that it's only in the presence of greatness when
they seem so small.
