The Answer: Ed Fiori AND Y.E. Yang

So now the answer is Ed Fiori AND Y.E. Yang.

The question is: name all the players who have come from behind no a Sunday in a PGA Tour event to beat Tiger Woods.

Until Sunday, Fiori wore that title the way Sir Nick Faldo wear his knighthood. Fiori hung around on tour for a lot of years but nothing he ever did came close to the fall day in 1996 when he beat the then 20-year-old phenom to win what was then known (I think) as The Hardees Classic. In any event it was at Quad Cities, it was Woods’ third tournament as a pro and those who were there say Tiger made an 8 early and went into an angry tailspin and never recovered.

There were, by the way, quite a few media present. I still remember being at the second President’s Cup that weekend and watching guys making plane reservations on Saturday when Woods took the lead. You could see the PGA Tour staffers looking pale because people were leaving their almost-new event to go see the kid perhaps win for the first time.

After The Grip (Fiori’s nickname) won that day, Tiger led tournaments after 54 holes 36 times over the next 13 years. And he never lost once. Until Sunday.

While all the people you might have thought could challenge him were doing disappearing acts all over Hazeltine National Golf Club, there was Yang hanging with him. To be honest, the thought that Tiger might lose never crossed my mind until Yang chipped in for eagle at the 14th hole. Even then the thought was a brief one. We’d all seen this show before, right? Bob May at The PGA in 2000; Rocco Mediate at The Open last year. Every once in a while a not-so-famous player with nothing to lose would not be intimidated by Tiger and it still wouldn’t matter: if the opponent didn’t find a way to lose, Tiger would find a way to win.

Only this time he didn’t. When Yang three-putted 17, I thought he had come out of his trance and would now bogey 18 (or Tiger would birdie it) and Tiger would win in the playoff. I even said to my brother, who had been in the car all afternoon and was almost home, “you’ll be able to watch the playoff.”

Not so much. Yang hit one of those second shots that will be replayed forever, forcing Tiger to fire at the flag—he missed the green-and, amazingly, it was over before Tiger holed out. Did anyone else notice Stevie Williams nowhere in sight during the handshakes? Can’t figure out if he stalked off ala LeBron or if Tiger turned to him as he was lining up the last putt and said, “you’re fired.”

Hey, I can dream can’t I?

In a way this scenario was perfect for golf. CBS’s ratings for Saturday were up—according to CBS—390 percent from last year. Of course that stat is deceiving because it rained last year on Saturday. But I guarantee, with Tiger in the last group, they’re going to be way up for Sunday too. Combine that with an ending that was DIFFERENT than what we’re used to and it was all good.

Except for Tiger. And for The Grip.

This will now go down as The Year That Wasn’t in golf. Kenny Perry didn’t become the oldest man in history to win a major at The Masters. Instead Angel Cabrera won. Phil Mickelson had a chance to finally win the U.S. Open with his wife facing cancer surgery in two weeks. Instead, Lucas Glover won. We all know how historic a Tom Watson win at The British Open would have been. Stewart Cink has the claret jug. And now Y.E. Yang moves into history not only alongside Fiori but next to Jack Fleck, the club pro who stunned Ben Hogan to win a playoff at the 1955 U.S. Open.

Yang is clearly a smart man. When someone asked if he would like to go head-to-head with Tiger again he shook his head and said (through an interpreter). “No. No rematch, no-redo. I will take this one. It’s enough.”

Reminded me of the last round scene in Rocky 1 when Apollo Creed says, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” and Rocky answers, “Don’t want one.”

There will be a lot made of Tiger not winning a major in 2009. Certainly it makes the year disappointing for him, even though he’ll probably roar through the FedEx Cup playoff events and end up with seven or eight wins and another Player-of-the-Year Award.

But anyone who reads anything more into this than the fact that he’s occasionally human is being ridiculous. He is still the co-most-dominant athlete in the world (Michael Phelps) and this simply delays the inevitable slightly, that being him passing Nicklaus’s all-time record of 18 for professional major wins.

Let me also say this: People think I’m hard on Tiger and, sometimes I am. During one of our very few one-on-one talks years ago I told him that I tend to be harder on people I think are smart because they should know better and I put him at the top of that category. He handled a very tough day well yesterday. I didn’t see a club slam (lots of angry muttering, but who could blame him?) and he was gracious in defeat—and let’s remember he’s NEVER been through a loss like this one.

So good for him.

And good for Yang. He doesn’t want a rematch.

I don’t blame him.

Best Two Athletes in Action Over Weekend, Who Has Had Bigger Impact? Greg Norman’s Comments About Marriage

There was a lot to watch this weekend. Arguably the two greatest athletes of this generation were both competing: Tiger Woods was easing his way to another win at the last Buick Open (General Motors is shutting it down after 51 years for reasons that are pretty obvious) and Michael Phelps, after a bad start, was back to being his dominant self the last couple days at The World Swimming Championships.

It’s interesting because when the TV networks act as if Tiger’s the only guy on the golf course I roll my eyes. I mean if CBS had shown his swing in slo-mo one more time on Sunday I think I would have put out a contract on Peter Kostis. Maybe it’s because, as much as I respect Tiger’s remarkable ability and competitiveness, deep down I find him hard to like. I get tired of the club-slamming and the looks at the sky as if God is out to get him when a putt doesn’t go in. I get tired of the media lining up to pay homage to him at all times.

I don’t honestly think he’s a bad guy and, no doubt, I’m influenced if I’m being honest with myself by the fact that Tiger doesn’t like ME. Early on in his career he got angry at some things I wrote and said about his father—my theory being that Tiger became Tiger in spite of his dad not because of him. I’ve told him in the past I respect anyone who stands up for their dad but that doesn’t change the way I feel.

So, when we see each other the hellos are cordial and it pretty much ends at that.

I certainly don’t know Phelps well, but I had the chance to sit down with him and his mom and his coach several years ago and I just LIKED him. Unlike Tiger, who is as smart as anyone I’ve ever met, Phelps is just a nice kid who, even though his mom is an educator, has gotten most of his education with his head under water. He screwed up with the bong episode—his allegedly smart agents screwed up worse—but I still just like him.

And, just as Tiger takes your breath away when he plays golf, Phelps takes your breath away when he swims.

It’s ridiculous to say I identify with Phelps because saying he and I are both swimmers is like saying Tiger and I are both golfers. It’s silly. But having been a butterflyer—even a mediocre one—since high school I DO relate to some of the things he goes through when he’s in the water. The messed up goggles in the 200 fly at the Olympics have happened to everyone who swims. Coming up short or long on a turn is a malady that everyone deals with at some point. Even though it doesn’t show I KNOW he’s feeling overwhelming pain in his shoulders the last few meters of a 200 fly.

So, when NBC becomes at least as Phelps-centric as CBS (or the other networks) are golf-centric, I love it. I guess that’s the way most golf fans feel about Tiger—they can’t get enough. I can’t get enough Phelps. Of course I love to watch the other swimmers too—guys like Aaron Peirsol and Ryan Lochte don’t get nearly enough credit because Phelps is SO good.

At the end of the meet, Rowdy Gaines said this about Phelps: “He has had a bigger impact on his sport than any athlete in history.”

That’s quite a statement. But you know what? If it’s not true, it’s damn close. Jackie Robinson changed baseball and our country forever. Arnold Palmer made golf a sport people cared about and, contrary to what people think today, was the most IMPORTANT golfer who ever lived.

But Phelps has brought people to swimming, changed it from an absolute niche sport into a network TV sport. Walk down the street and ask someone like my sister, who never quite understood why the Redskins didn’t draft Michael Jordan, to name athletes and she’ll come up with two: Woods and Phelps. That says a lot. She’d probably name her 10-year-old son Ethan third.

I would be remiss today if I didn’t bring up one other guy I watched this weekend: Greg Norman. In his own way, Norman is as predictable as Woods or Phelps. Put the latter two under pressure and you are likely to see something spectacular.

Same is true of Norman: except in reverse. There he was on Sunday during the final round of the U.S. Senior Open with ANOTHER chance to win a major—albeit a senior major, but still—and there he was going backwards. Fred Funk outscored him on Sunday by EIGHT shots as Norman slipped from a tie for second, one shot back to a tie for fourth NINE shots back.

This after recently saying during a TV interview that he probably would have won more than two major championships if he had married earlier in his life to Chris Evert rather than Laura Andrassy.

Let’s put aside for a moment that Andrassy is the mother of his two kids who had to be THRILLED to hear him say that. Let’s even concede that Evert was one of the great competitors ever. In fact, when she divorced John Lloyd, her first husband, there were whispers that one of the factors was that he took losing (he was a top 100 ranked tennis player) as well as he did. Lloyd was, in fact, one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. I still remember him losing in the first round of the 1981 U.S. Open to Jimmy Connors by something like 6-0, 6-0, 6-2 (Connors, who was once engaged to Evert tried his level best to humiliate him love, love and love) and standing in front of his locker wrapped in a towel talking to Pete Alfano (then of Newday) and I for about 45 minutes.

All of that aside, Evert can’t hit shots for Norman, can she? She was married to him last year when he shot 77 in the last round at the British Open to go from two shots ahead of Padraig Harrington to six behind. She was married to him two weeks ago when he led the Senior British going into the last round and finished sixth. And she was married to him Sunday when he hit two of the first 10 fairways and looked scared to death until the tournament was safely out of reach.

I’ve always gotten along with Norman. He’s bright and—maybe because he’s so experienced—he deals with awful defeats with remarkable grace. Years ago, after “A Good Walk Spoiled,” came out he thought I had been quoted in a People Magazine piece about the book’s success as saying he had the biggest ego on the tour. He called me—furious—screaming, “I gave you all that time (which he had) for the book and you say that about me?”

“Greg,” I answered. “Have you got the story there?”

“Damn right I do.”

“Look closely. The line about your ego ISN’T in quotes. I didn’t say it—the guy who wrote the story said it.”

There was a pause. “Oh my god, you’re right,” he said “I’m really sorry. I see it now, you didn’t say it did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I’m sorry for doubting you,” he said. Then there was a pause. “Okay then,” he said finally. “What’s the phone number for this guy at People?”

Phelps Trapped by Technology and Marketing; Other Notable Tidbits from Yesterday’s Headlines

I’ve written often in the past about how amazed I am by Michael Phelps. Of course that’s a little bit like saying I’m amazed by the earth, the moon and the stars because one doesn’t have to know anything about swimming to know that Phelps is the greatest swimmer of all time.

And yet, as an old swimmer, even though I never came within light years of Phelps, I always felt that if it was possible, Phelps didn’t get the credit he deserved. He was always measured against Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics and if he had ‘only,’ won seven golds or, God Forbid six, in Beijing, most people would still have believed that Spitz was the best.

Which isn’t even close to true. Spitz did two things: he swam butterfly and sprint freestyle. He was absolutely fabulous at both—unbeatable in the 100 and the 200 in both strokes. Phelps can do just about anything you ask him to do in a swimming pool. He can sprint and he can swim distances—he’s never tried the 1,500 but I would bet serious money if he ever trained for it he’d blow everyone away. He’s the greatest butterflyer who ever lived and he’s one of the three best backstrokers in history. He’s even made himself a very good breastroker which is why he’s so unbeatable in the individual medley, the event that definitively proves a swimmer’s versatility.

Now, unfortunately, Phelps is trapped by both technology and marketing. You probably read in today’s papers—or online—about Phelps getting hammered by a previously unheralded German in the 200 freestyle. Much of the story is about the fact that the German, like a lot of swimmers, is wearing a suit that has already been declared illegal by the international swimming federation—except that the suit hasn’t been banned just yet because FINA (the initials for the federation since French is the officials language of international sport) doesn’t want to upset the manufacturer’s too much by banning their suits right this instant.

This reminds me a lot of the ongoing battle between the U.S. Golf Association and the golf manufacturers over equipment. On the one hand, the USGA doesn’t want to see great golf courses completely obliterated by how far players can now hit the ball. On the other hand, it doesn’t want to upset its key business partners to much.

Phelps can’t wear the latest and greatest suit because it is made by Arena and he’s under contract to Speedo. Personally, if I were Speedo, I’d tell him to wear whatever he wants if that’s what it takes to win on a short term basis. Everyone knows they’ve fallen a step behind in the suit wars for the moment whether Phelps is wearing their stuff or not.

In my opinion, Phelps hasn’t gotten a lot of help from the non-swimming people around him. It’s fortunate that most of his career has been shaped by his mom (Debbie) and his coach (Bob Bowman). But he was badly let down by his so-called management team at Octagon during bong-gate last fall when they decided the best way to handle the photo of him taking a hit from a bong at a party was to try to bribe the British tabloid that had the photo. Now, the Speedo people, who could look both smart and magnanimous by telling Phelps to wear the fastest suit allowed—regardless of label—have gone underground.

To be fair, Phelps isn’t the swimmer this summer he was last summer. His time in the 100 free leading off the winning U.S. relay Sunday (by the way, do the French surrender at EVERYTHING, including relays?) was slower than his split in Beijing. His 200 free on Tuesday night was more than a ½ second slower than his world record swim at the Olympics. All of that’s understandable. He took off six months from training and decided (mistakenly) to try to re-invent his freestyle stroke.

Again, this reminds me of golf: Padraig Harrington wins two straight majors and decides he needs to change his swing. Tiger Woods is almost constantly trying to reinvent his swing.

In the long run, Phelps is going to be fine. FINA will eventually figure out what to do about the supersonic suits—the key in the end is that everyone is using the same equipment one way or the other—and Phelps will be swimming in a level pool in London in 2012, which, as he pointed out, is the only meet he’s really pointing to at this point in his life.

One other note that has nothing to do with the suit controversy: After finishing third in the relay on Sunday, the French ducked out on the post-race press conference. Gee, what a surprise.

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