‘Greatest golf ever played’: Witnesses to Tiger Woods’ streak of four major wins look back on an improbable run

Imagine.

Tiger Woods, at the pinnacle of his powers, started hearing and reading that he was, get this, in a slump in the first quarter of 2001. Really? He had won 10 tournaments worldwide in 2000, including a record-obliterating U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. He became the youngest to complete the career Grand Slam in another record-setting romp in the Open Championship on the Old Course in St. Andrews, then won a third consecutive major when he out-dueled Bob May in a playoff at Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky to win the PGA Championship.

He was 25, the world No. 1 by serious distance, had five major triumphs on his resume, and he was the proud owner of 24 PGA Tour titles heading into 2001.

“No offense to Jack Nicklaus or anyone else but I don’t think anybody has played as well as Tiger played in that particular time,” said swing instructor Butch Harmon, who worked with Woods from 1993 to 2004, a stretch in which he won three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles, 40 PGA Tour titles and eight majors.

“He didn’t have any weaknesses,” Harmon continued. “And I don’t think we can say that about anyone else who has ever played the game. Tiger was the best at every part of the game. He was the best driver, he was the best at controlling his trajectory, he was the best at controlling distance. His short game was the best, he putted under pressure better than anyone. He was the best iron player.

“In my 77 years on this planet and being around golf nearly my entire life, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Woods was so good back then that he made major champion and 12-time PGA Tour winner Paul Azinger pick his spots on the range.

“He was extraordinary back then,” Azinger said. “It was just something to behold. Early on in his career when he came out and I was hitting balls next to him on the range, I would just pack up my gear and move. His stuff just sounded so much better and I was losing confidence when I watched his 9-iron leave. And my ball left nice, don’t get me wrong.

“My friends at home would complain that all we see is Tiger Woods, all they show is Tiger Woods. Well, I’d tell them if they had any idea how his ball sounded like and how the flight looked like, that’s all you would ever want to see. You’d never want to watch anything else. It was just different level stuff.”

But as the golf world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Tiger Slam this year, it must be noted that in the early part of 2001, as Woods played his way toward the Masters where he’d try to win an unprecedented fourth consecutive professional major, he had not won in – check notes – six tournaments and the word “slump” was suddenly in the conservation.

“It annoyed him a little bit that there was some talk of a slump, especially considering he had just won the last three majors the year before,” said Rob McNamara, a longtime vice president of Woods’ foundation who also is a regular playing partner for Woods and provides a second set of eyes to monitor his swing. “It just didn’t add up. A slump? Come on. But it gave him a little chip on his shoulder, a little edge.”

Woods was a tad irritated, too, as he got an earful from reporters during the countdown to the Masters. A day after the 2000 PGA Championship, Woods’ team began a series of phone calls with sponsors, the PGA Tour and CBS concerning his quest for a fourth consecutive major. Woods wasn’t involved in the initial meetings but joined the dialogue about a month after he won the Wanamaker Trophy.

“He was being asked about the Masters every week he was out there but it never really bothered him,” Harmon said. “Mentally, he and Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan were the strongest players. Sure, he didn’t like all the questions because, really, what could he say? But it fueled the fire even more.”

And then there was the hype, the buzz, the laser beam of attention for eight months that was a bit grating even for a man who lived in the white-hot spotlight. And deep down, Woods realized he’d likely never get another chance to win four majors in succession, to go where no man had gone before, and the weight of knowing that just added another hefty log of expectation on his shoulders.

“He knew,” McNamara said, “that it was a once in a lifetime chance.”

Fuel for the fire

Back to the slump.

Woods won five of his last nine starts in 2000 – including the Johnnie Walker Classic to close the year – but started 2001 with a tie for eighth in the Mercedes Championship. He then tied for fifth in the Phoenix Open, tied for 13th in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, then finished fourth in the Buick Invitational.

Whispers of a slump began to take hold and then, after a tie for 13th in the Nissan Open in Los Angeles and a tie for second in the Dubai Desert Classic, the volume meter spiked despite Woods being a cumulative 75 under in those six starts.

On the eve of his next start in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Woods was greeted with questions concerning his “drought” of six winless events, one reporter in particular asking if he was bugged by people wondering what was wrong with him.

“Well, it’s annoying because of the fact that if you think that way, then you really don’t understand the game of golf,” Woods said.

Fueled by the chatter and headlines, Woods lit the match as he defended his 2000 title at Arnie’s annual Bay Hill gathering. He hit a 5-iron to 15 feet on the 72^nd hole and then buried the putt to topple Phil Mickelson by one shot. With rounds of 71-67-66-69 to finish at 15 under, Woods was back in the winner’s circle.

A week later at the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, Woods won the PGA Tour’s flagship event for the first time. After opening 72-69, he had his better-than-most moment on the 17^th green during a round of 66 and then polished off his one-stroke victory Monday over Vijay Singh in the weather-delayed tournament.

“Some of the writers – and I know who they are – had suggested and said I was in a slump,” Woods said. “Obviously, they don’t really understand the game that well, because if you look at the way I was playing, I wasn’t playing that bad. It wasn’t like I was missing cuts every week. I was right there with a chance to win in virtually every tournament I teed up in, and I think that’s pretty good.

“It is a game that’s very fickle. You can try as hard as you want, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out.”

On to Augusta

When Woods arrived at Augusta National, he was primed, ready and definitely not in a slump.

“When we got there his game was at a perfect level,” Harmon said. “He prepared the beginning of the year for that tournament. When we were at the Players in March on the range, he’s going, ‘Let’s hit some shots I have to hit at Augusta.’ He was hitting the drive he needed on 13, certain irons he needed into greens.

“He was ready.”

McNamara said Woods put blinders on that week.

“It was probably the most serious I had ever seen him at a tournament,” he said. “He was laser focused.”

Woods began with a 70 and then followed with a 66 to reach the first page of the leaderboard. A third-round 68 put him atop the famous white scoreboards by one shot. His playing competitor in the final group on the final day was none other than Phil Mickelson, who was still in search of his first major.

“The atmosphere, the roars, the excitement, it was off the charts,” said Jim “Bones” Mackay, Mickelson’s longtime caddie. “Everyone wanted to see Tiger.

“And why not? His swing was beautiful, and it looked like nothing could go wrong. And if something happened, like the wind came up or whatever and he did miss a green, you’re talking about a guy who had the best short game in the world and he’s the best putter in the world and the best pressure putter in the game.

“He was just incredibly difficult to beat. It was frustrating.”

Woods started the final 18 with a bogey but rebounded with birdies on Nos. 2, 7 and 8. Mickelson held a share of the lead on four of the first five holes but made bogey on six and never got another share of the lead.

“I can honestly say that Phil’s front nine was the best nine holes of golf I’ve ever seen from everyone,” said Steve Williams, who was on Woods’ bag for 13 of his 15 major wins. “Exact precision. He placed his ball in the exact spot it needed to be. He made the putts he could make.

“It was incredible for me to see Tiger hang with him. But he was grinding, grinding, grinding. Phil didn’t maintain it on the back nine, which was probably impossible to do. And then Tiger flipped the switch on the back nine.”

David Duval, also in search of his first major, started the final round three shots behind but made birdies on seven of his first 10 holes. He held a share of the lead on three occasions on the back nine but a bogey on the 16th – where he missed an 8-footer – and pars on the 17th and 18th – he missed a six-footer for birdie on the final hole – left him short by two and in solo second.

“It was incredibly difficult to beat Tiger back then,” said Duval, who finished runner-up for the second time in four years and was in the top 6 in the other two Masters. “As a competitor, you had to play flawless golf. We all hit bad golf shots and we all made mistakes, including Tiger, but back then you knew his were going to be very few and far between. You had to be spot on competing against him.

“You were playing against arguably the greatest player who ever was. He was unbelievable. His mental game was as good as anybody’s ever; his physical game was as good as anybody’s ever. And he undoubtedly during that time played the best golf that was ever played.

“That was my fourth straight year I could have won the Masters and I didn’t win any of them, so it’s tough to remember details from back then. I remember I didn’t capitalize and missed some putts on 17 and 18 and you just can’t give a guy like Tiger Woods a chance to bury you. Whenever he had a chance, he buried you.”

Mickelson’s undoing came on the 16th when he left his tee shot on the wrong shelf and missed an 8-footer for par. He made pars on the final two holes and finished three behind.

“The 16th was the killer for me,” Mickelson said 20 years later. “I had pulled within one shot, had the honors, and pulled the 7-iron. I didn’t give myself a chance to put more pressure on him.

“It was really frickin’ hard to play Tiger back then. I’ve said the greatest golf in the history of the game that has ever been played was the 2000 U.S. Open. Back then, he hit it so far and so straight and he was such a clutch putter, you felt like you had to play perfect golf to beat him. And perfect golf was not my forte. My forte was to try and make a bunch of birdies and be aggressive.

“I don’t remember the specifics of the round but I do remember coming to the last hole and I was two back and I knew he could fly the tree (on the right) and he’d have 60 yards or something to the hole and it was like, ‘How is the guy going to bogey with a sand wedge going in?’

“I remember feeling distraught on the 18th tee. That round, as long as he hit it and as straight as he hit it, you just couldn’t see him making any mistakes to open the door and that’s tough to deal with.”

Woods never lost at least a share of the lead, with key moments unfolding on the 11th, where he hit a 4-iron to a foot for birdie, a two-putt birdie on the 13th, and overcoming a 3-foot miss for birdie on the 15th. Leading Duval by one and Mickelson by two, Woods capped his virtuoso performance with a huge drive on 18 that set up a sand wedge from 75 yards and a birdie from 18 feet.

After victory was secured, Woods buried his face in his cap and shed a few tears.

“I finally had no other shots to play. That was it. It was done,” Woods said that day. “It was such a weird feeling. Then I started thinking, I had just won the Masters. Then I started losing it a little bit.”

His post-round interview with the media was interrupted by President George H. W. Bush, who offered his congratulations.

In his landmark victory, Woods made 23 birdies and led the field in greens in regulation (82 percent) and driving distance (305.5-yard average). He earned a clean sweep of the majors in 294 days and was 65-under par in the four championships, winning by a combined 26 shots. And he had won five of the last six majors played.

“To win four consecutive majors, if you look at my career, I don’t think I have ever accomplished anything this great,’” Woods said. “It’s hard to believe, really, because there’s so many things that go into winning a major championship. You’ve got to have some luck. You have to get some breaks. You have to have everything go right. To have it go right four straight times, some of the golf gods are looking on me the right way.

“I have a better appreciation for winning a major championship,” Woods said. “To win four of them in succession, it’s hard to believe.”

Woods finished in a tie for 12^th in his bid for a fifth consecutive major in the U.S. Open two months later at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But in a 36-tournament stretch on the PGA Tour starting with the 1999 PGA Championship and ending with the 2001 Masters, Woods won 17 times.

“It’s fair to say no golfer has performed at that level for that stretch of time,” Williams said. “As great a player Tiger has been for his entire career, this was Tiger at his all-time best. The U.S. Open at Pebble and the Open Championship at St. Andrews were as close to perfection for the greatest player of the modern era.

“I think the Tiger Slam is his single greatest achievement in golf. No player has ever been under greater scrutiny as Tiger was during the 2001 Masters, and to pull it off was simply incredible.”

As good as it gets

While Woods has delivered other memorable masterpieces and stretches of golf – the 1997 Masters, 2008 U.S. Open, 2019 Masters – those who had front-row seats to his brilliance during his journey to four consecutive majors say it was the best golf he ever teed up and remains vivid in their memories 20 years later.

“He was unimaginably good,” said Brandel Chamblee, Golf Channel analyst and former PGA Tour player who won the 1998 Greater Vancouver Open. “You could never conceive of a player like Tiger in that time. There had never been a player who was the best at so many areas of the game. You could find problems in everybody’s game, but Tiger was the longest and straightest driver in the game in that period, he was by far the best iron player, he was a Seve-esque scrambler, and he was the best putter anybody had ever seen. And then he was mentally the strongest player the game’s ever had.

“I make comparisons all the time to literature but no one could conceive of a character in literature more troubled and brilliant than Hamlet, and Tiger was that brilliant and untroubled. He was Hamlet. You can’t even imagine the guy. Well, there’s the guy, the greatest character in literature, more real than actual human beings. And that was Tiger.”

Azinger tied for 15^th in the 2001 Masters, nine strokes back, and can still picture the genius that was Woods back then.

“He made the extraordinary shot, made the extraordinary chip, made the extraordinary putt. He won playoffs. He won back-nine duels. He did what he had to do. He was the most opportunistically successful player in the history of golf. I’m not trying to blow smoke. He was just something to see.”

Mackay said you had to be there to truly appreciate the wonder of Woods.

“I would almost say that people who missed that era that think they know about it probably don’t know about it. You can certainly read about it,” Mackay said. “But to see it in person and whether you were trying to beat him in the same group or trying to beat him from three groups ahead, to go through all of that was just amazing. There was so much going on.

“You almost had to make decisions on occasion because you know the world had to come to an end for this guy to make a bogey. He was Tiger. You’re thinking sometimes that he can’t even do something and then he does it.

“I’m so grateful I got to see it.”

As for the name of the sweep? Grand Slam? Tiger Slam? Some insist it can’t be called the Grand Slam because if didn’t occur in the same calendar year. Others don’t care.

“I don’t know how you don’t call that a Grand Slam,” Duval said 20 years later. “If you’re in possession of all four of them and have won them in succession, it’s a Grand Slam. I just think those people that say it wasn’t a Grand Slam, that’s just them trying to take away whatever little bit they can away from Tiger.”

Harmon has always had a direct answer when he’s been asked.

“I just say there has never been a human being who walked on the planet Earth who has ever done what Tiger did by winning four consecutive majors,” Harmon said. “So you can call it whatever the hell you want.

“But it was the greatest golf ever played.”