Tiger By The Tail?

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to attend the last "Major" on the PGA 2006 calendar, the PGA Championship. I was very excited, as I had previously attended a Nationwide Tour Event and the Walker Cup last year, and had a great time. One of the guys, JB Homes, that was awesome at the Walker Cup last year, turned pro and actually won his first outing on the PGA tour this year too, and so he was a nice segway into the big boys.

I set off for the Park and Ride at the Wyndham Hotel, near the Medinah Country Club, aiming to arrive around noon. As I drove down the expressway, it was nice to note that I was driving past the general public parking directions and following signs to the VIP parking. We took the shuttle to the club, where I was told an interesting fact. Apparently they have three courses at the club, or at least they did until they tarmac'd over the 6th fairway of one of them to make the shuttle bus stops. Apparently they normally use a local school for their major event parking but as school started last week, this was not possible. The club and school already had a pretty robust reciprocal agreement with free memberships for the teachers and school board, access to their function rooms for homecoming, graduation, etc, but when the school refused to push the start of the term back by a week, this was all revoked. It seems a little short sighted of the school.

Tiger came into the day in joint lead with a local favourite, Luke Donald, who is actually English but is educated locally and has lived here a good portion of his life. Tiger wore his customary red shirt for the final day, and so did Luke, which I think Tiger took as a sleight and as Tiger always does, he got his head down and went at it. He putted well, drove well, his bunker and iron play were different class. We only saw him on a few holes, choosing not to follow the other 10s of thousands following him, and watched some of the others, jumping ahead of him a few holes and then waiting for him to come through. Each shot I saw him play was awesome!

We did also have the bonus of seeing his beautiful wife Elin Nordegren a couple of times too. Refreshingly she was wandering around amongst the crowds, with minimal security presence and a couple of her girlfriends. I think it is great that she can feel so relaxed without people crowding around her.




At one point Tiger was 19 under, from his start of 14, although ultimately he dropped back to 18 under to win by 5 shots over his nearest rival. That is his 12th major, 6 short of Jack Nicklaus' record of 18. His record in this situation where he leads or co-leads going into the final day is 12-0. The quote that struck home for me yesterday was this

"Tiger's only competitors now, are the record books!"