By Francis Ochoa

OF THE MANY THINGS written about the Arnold Palmer Invitational, one anecdote nearly went unnoticed. A wire report told the story of the last few moments before Tiger Woods fired the title-clinching 15-foot putt on the 18th green.

As woods lined up the putt, a lone figure from the crowd coughed out: “Playoff.”

That was really all Woods needed to hear.

“Maybe he missed the Arnold Palmer Invitational the two times Woods made a 25-foot birdie putt on the last hole to win. Perhaps it was his first time to see the world’s No. 1 player, and he wasn’t aware that Woods has been making big putts like this since he was a
Teenager,” the wire report went.
It really didn’t matter what the man’s motives were. Tiger launched the putt and went on to win his 66th PGA Tour title.

Tiger Woods, three tournaments into his comeback from a knee injury, is officially back. Oh sure, he got booted out of his first tournament—match play format. And in the second at Doral, he was so far out the leaderboard that the eventual winner, Phil Mickelson, said he missed having Tiger lurking near the top and having to fend off the world’s greatest golfer.
Normally, Tiger would’ve read the Phil quote in the papers and responded with a snarl: “Be careful what you wish for.”

Instead, Woods managed an all-too-friendly “Me too! Me too!”

Well, Tiger returned to the top. Sadly, at the Arnold Palmer tournament, Phil wasn’t there to revive the feeling of going against Woods in the championship flight.

In Mickelson’s place was Sean O’Hair, who led by five shots at the start of the final round. Any of those five strokes would have come in handy for O’Hair in the last hole, with darkness slowly overcoming the Bay Hill golf course in Orlando, Florida.

But there were none available. After a dramatic par putt on 14 and a 25-footer in the next hole, Woods had gobbled up all those five strokes and O’Hair was officially toast.

“It feels good to be back in contention, to feel the rush,”Woods said. “It’s been a while, but God, it felt good.”

Woods thus grabbed the navy blue jacket awarded to winners of the event after almost a repeat performance from last year, when he won the same title by coming back from a deficit and needing to sink a birdie in the final hole to clinch the trophy.

The putt, which left O’Hair in awe, got added to the list ofdramatic moments that Woods had provided for the game of golf. The last of those dramatic moments came in the US Open last year when Woods, operating on one good knee, sank two clutch putts—one to force a playoff and one to win the tournament—to deflate Rocco Mediate.

“It’s just a little bit disappointing that I couldn’t close it,” O’Hair said.

“I’m trying to compete against Tiger,” he added. “It’s not like it’s ’The Tiger Show’ and I’m just out there to watch him. And I think that’s the one thing the media thinks about the guys out here, and it’s not about that.

“We’re trying to win golf tournaments,” he said. “And he just happens to be that good.”
Now everybody’s thinking: What’s next. As if you didn’t know.

“As I look back at my three tournaments I’ve played this year, I’ve gotten better at each one,” Woods said. “And that was the whole idea, to keep progressing to Augusta.”

This time, Woods will be playing for bigger stakes. Anyone dare bet against the guy in The Masters?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Cover Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.