Must-See TW

Tiger Woods is like Robert DeNiro, says Jim Litke, in that everything both of them appear in makes for compelling viewing. Even grinding his way into the weekend on Friday, Woods put on a classic display of his indomitable will.

By Jim Litke, AP Sports Columnist

SPRINGFIELD, N.J. (AP) -- It's a good thing the man isn't superstitious.

Tiger Woods walked onto the first tee Friday in danger of missing the cut in a major for the first time in his professional career. Waiting for him there was Kevin Sutherland, the very same playing partner he had at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship in May, when Woods' record cut streak ended at 142 tournaments.

As bad omens go, however, that was nothing compared to the 40-foot tree limb that sheared off a towering red oak near the fourth green a second after Woods played his third shot from a nearby drop area.

After dumping his tee shot in the pond there, and spinning a wedge shot back toward the flag, the crowd's "o-o-o-o-h'' quickly turned into "o-h-h-h-h'' as the limb came crashing down on two members of a TV crew and a spectator standing alongside them.

One of the crew members was hospitalized with a leg injury, the other two were treated and released. Play resumed in less than 10 minutes, after which Woods calmly rolled in a 10-footer for bogey.

"I feel sorry for the gentleman that got hurt, but hypothetically, if I don't dump it in the water and play goes on at a normal pace, you guys,'' and here Woods paused, grinning broadly at a dozen reporters and twice as many TV cameras, "would have been right underneath that tree.''

"Thanks,'' a reporter said. "I guess we owe you one.''

"I'm not saying anything,'' Woods replied.

And the pack cracked up.

That light moment was in sharp contrast to the five-hour round at the PGA Championship that preceded it. Woods teed off at 5-over after shooting 75 Thursday, a score bettered by 11 club professionals. After a birdie to open the second round, he bogeyed the next three holes and slipped to 7-over before finishing his front nine.

Woods was so far down the leader board at that point it's safe to say just about every other golfer on tour would have been planning to catch a late flight home, then spending the rare weekend off carpooling the kids and racking up brownie points with the wife.

And no other golfer on tour would have commanded anything like the huge galleries that continued to line every fairway Woods walked. By then, anybody else would have been down to family and friends. In that sense, Woods is golf's version of Robert DeNiro -- everything he shows up in is worth watching.

"I grinded my butt off today,'' he said.

And somehow, he made even that compelling.

The wonder of Woods is not how far he hits the ball or all the great shots he pulls off at the biggest moments in the most important tournaments -- impressive as those are. It's his indomitable will, that and the cold-blooded professionalism that strung all those made-cuts together, the same qualities that had Woods coolly calculating all the way around Baltusrol how he could claw his way back into the tournament.

First, though, he had to play his way into the weekend.

"I didn't know what the number was, to be honest,'' Woods said, about making the cut.

But caddie Steve Williams did. Woods was 5-over as they stood on the 18th tee, one shot on the wrong side.

"Stevie told me I needed to make birdie on the last hole,'' Woods recalled. "I said, 'All right, I can do that.'''

If it were that simple, we'd all be professional golfers. All Woods did at the 18th was drive the ball some 350 yards, then slam his 7-iron another 175 onto the front of the green and let it "scoot'' toward the hole. It came to rest 18 feet away and he just missed the putt for eagle.

That such drama was even necessary was a tribute of a different kind. With birdies at 11, 12 and 15, Woods was back at the cut-line of 4-over, and if he had played it safe coming in, chances are he could have cruised in at 3-over or better.

If.

Because of Woods, just about everybody in the game has had to learn to hit the ball farther, forcing course designers and architects, in turn, to stretch their layouts. That's the short version of how No. 17 at Baltusrol came to be a 650-yard par 5, which even for the long-hitting pros makes it usually a three-shot hole.

Woods could have played it that way, cautiously, and left himself a cushion. But he cracked his tee shot 360 yards and decided to take a shot at reaching it in two.

"It was just a smooth 3-wood, not a big ripper or anything. It was only 269 to the front and today I hit two 3-woods that went 315 off the tee. I just had to make sure I got it up in the air,'' Woods said.

He did.

Unfortunately, it came down on the bank just a few yards left of the flag, kicked dead left and wound up against the back collar of a greenside bunker.

Unable to hit the ball at the flag, Woods played a shot back toward the tee instead, scuffed it into the rough, chipped that 15 feet past the hole and wound up two-putting for a bogey that dropped him to 5-over. All that did was heighten the drama and juice the crowd ringing the 18th green.

Another few hundred yards away, looking on from the stone terrace of the clubhouse, was Woods' good buddy, former basketball star Charles Barkley. He was moaning about his own golf game when someone stopped and asked him whether he could believe that Woods had taken the gamble a hole earlier.

"C'mon, man,'' Barkley said, "you know he ain't got a lay-up bone anywhere in his body.''

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.