The 2008 U.S. Open is a moment that is forever ingrained in golf lore. For Tiger Woods, it became arguably the most iconic win of his legendary golf career, while it became a what-could-have-been for Rocco Mediate.
Playing on a leg with two stress fractures in his tibia and on a knee that was just removed from arthroscopic surgery, Woods gritted his teeth and marched to a 54-hole lead at Torrey Pines. But he opened his final round with a double bogey on the first and a bogey on the second to fall behind Mediate. Woods birdied nine and 11 to jump back on top, but bogeys at 13 and 15 dropped him a shot behind Mediate, who posted a 1-under-par score for the tournament. Woods parred 16 and 17 and needed a bride at the par-5 18th to force a playoff.
Woods hooked his tee shot into the fairway bunker and then hit a poor layup that left him 96 yards from the front of the green in the right rough. Mediate, who was watching in the scoring tent, knew Woods would give himself a putt but believed it would be difficult for Woods to stop the ball close to the pin coming out of the rough.
Woods took a mighty lash with a 60-degree wedge, and the ball landed just past pin high and spun back, giving him 12 feet for birdie. Woods drained it to force an 18-hole playoff on the following Monday, which he won on the first extra hole.
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Mediate joined GOLF’s Subpar Podcast to discuss his PGA Tour career, advice he got from Arnold Palmer and his iconic duel with Woods at Torrey Pines. Mediate expected Woods to make the 12-footer on the 72nd hole, but it was the approach shot out of the rough that he had to ask the 15-time major winner about when they crossed paths later.
“Tiger makes the putt, which, I wasn’t surprised,” Mediate told hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. “But a year later, I asked him — I haven’t talked to him but twice since then. I said, ‘Alright, tell me about the shot on 18.’ I said, ‘You got to tell me. You can’t stop that ball.’ He kind of looked down, and he went, ‘It was in an old divot.’ I went, ‘Of course it was!’ It spun! It’s Kikuyu. So it was in an old divot, and he could get the club on it. Now, if it wasn’t, he may have been able to figure out a way to bump it on there. This is the greatest player of all time.
“But when you see the shot, it hit, and I saw it land, and I’m like uh-oh. Then it grabbed, and I’m like, what was that all about? How’d that do that? Then the rest, of course, he’s going to make it.”
You can listen to the complete Subpar podcast here, or watch the YouTube video below.
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