I didn’t miss a single fairway in the final round and Steve knew that the harder I hit it that driver the straighter it went. I got up there and swung it as hard as I could and it just sailed straight down the middle and was one of the longest drives I hit that week. I remember when we got to the 18 th tee he pulled out the driver and said to me ‘Hit this thing as hard as you can’. The great thing was that I had a world-class caddie on my bag, Steve Duplantis – who is sadly no longer with us – and he knew what I was like when I was under extreme pressure.
I pared the par-three 17 th and had that two-shot cushion going down the last. I holed a 40-foot putt for birdie on 16, and standing on the tee at 17, I still had a two-stroke lead, and it was all still in my own hands. I thought the only way I was going to lose this was if I screwed something up, so I kind of gave myself a talking to and just got on with it. I remember after making birdie at 13, the walk from the green to the 14 th tee was about 50 yards, but it felt like about 150, as all these thoughts started entering my head. Of course, I heard the cheers around the course, and, at first, I thought they were for Fred, as he had some story going that week, but I soon realised that they for Tiger, but I just tried to staye calm and go about my business. And I was like, ‘Wow, I really have a chance to win this thing’. I didn’t see another leaderboard until 13, when I saw I had a six-shot lead with five to go. I couldn’t control what they were doing and they couldn’t control what I was doing, so it seemed like a waste of mental energy to think about those things.Īll I knew was that I was leading by one after nine, having been three behind Justin at the start. I was playing so well, and so focused on what I was doing, that I was literally oblivious to what was going on around me.
I’ve told this story many times, but I literally didn’t pay any attention to what Tiger was doing, or what anyone else was doing. Rich Beem holds on tightly to the PGA Championship trophy following his victory in 2002Īt what point did you think you could win? And what was it like seeing Tiger charge up the leaderboard? I also felt that I knew the golf course at Hazeltine as well as anybody, but when you go to a major, they’re different animals. It wasn’t pretty to look at, but it did wonders for my putting stats. It had a centre shaft with a big, bulbous weight behind it. I had switched to a new putter, a STX Sync Tour, at the beginning of the season and it seemed to transform my putting. I was hitting the ball extremely well, driving it long and straight, and my putting, which had kind of been my Achilles Heel throughout my career up to that point, had finally come good and I was feeling pretty confident about my game. It was probably the best it had been during my entire career. I had absolutely zero expectations, given that it was only my fourth ever major, but my form coming into that tournament was extraordinary. You’d won a PGA Tour event, The International, just two weeks earlier, and had a couple of other top-five finishes already that season, so you were hardly a no-hoper – ranked 73 in the world – but what were your expectations for that week at Hazeltine? Let’s scroll back two decades, to the moment you arrived at the 2002 PGA Championship.
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