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Golf

Tiger Wins in Typical Fashion at Bay Hill

Posted Mar 29, 2009 8:00PM By Ryan Wilson (RSS feed)

Filed Under: PGA

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It was at the 1999 Bay Hill Invitational that Tiger Woods and Steve Williams first worked together. Woods wound up cashing a 56th-place check that week ($5,625 -- woo hoo!), and it would be his worst finish at Arnold Palmer's event.
Arnold Palmer Invitational: View Final Leaderboard | PGA Tour Schedule
Ten years later, he's won the tournament six times, with three victories coming on 72nd-hole birdies. The most recent example took place at approximately 7:45 PM ET Sunday, when Tiger rolled in a 15-footer to outlast upstart Sean O'Hair, who began the day with a five-shot lead.

But as we've come to learn, when you're in the last group with Tiger, no lead is safe. And while we continue to stare, jaws agape, at Woods' Sunday performance, it's worth remembering what got him into the final threesome. In Round 3, he had spectacular bogey saves on the 16th and 18th holes (as spectacular as bogey saves can be, anyway), and without those two seemingly meaningless strokes, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to play alongside O'Hair.

Instead, Woods would've begun the final round seven shots back, O'Hair could've continued to play his fairways-and-greens game without the pressure that comes with being a bit player in the circus that includes larger-than-imaginable galleries, the unyielding media glare and, of course, Tiger.

Perhaps predictably, Woods does what we've come to expect when a tournament is on the line: minimize mistakes, make crucial putts, and let his nearest opponent self-destruct. And that's basically what happened Sunday. O'Hair, who played flawlessly for the first 54 holes of the week, struggled most of the day on Sunday, but it wasn't until the 15th hole that Woods finally pulled even at 5-under.

After trading bogeys on consecutive holes, both players headed to the 18th tied at 4-under. O'Hair's middle iron from the fairway found the back of the green, while Woods' ball came to rest some five yards left of the pin. It was at this point that everybody -- even O'Hair, I'd imagine -- knew how this was going to play out.

Somewhere, Bart Bryant must've shook his head knowingly, with the full understanding of what was about to happen next. Predictably, it did. And yet, we continue to be amazed.

That's the difference between Tiger and the rest of us. Well, that and his Swedish supermodel wife.

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Tags: Arnold+Palmer, ArnoldPalmer, Bart+Bryant, BartBryant, Sean+OHair, SeanOhair, Steve+Williams, SteveWilliams, Tiger+Woods, TigerWoods

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