Woods falls victim to his own prediction
Tiger Reflects on Match Play Loss
MARANA, Ariz. -- He said it himself, a prescient, gentle indicator of what was yet to come. "I've never played a match play event where all six rounds I've played great golf," Tiger Woods admitted on Thursday. "You're going to have one or two rounds where you're not going to play well. You've just got to get through those matches."
And then he eyed the awaiting throng and provided a reminder that nothing is certain, not even for the world's top player, a man with 12 major championship titles: "Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't."
This time he didn't. Didn't play well, didn't get through his third-round match against Nick O'Hern on Friday at the Accenture Match Play Championship with a victory.
"It was a struggle," Woods said just minutes after losing on the second extra hole. "I just didn't have control of my golf swing. I had a two-way miss going today. I hit it right because I was hitting it left, and it's one of those things where if you can hit it right or left you can play for it, but I had a combo thing going today."
Relentless consistency: 50 percent; willingness to change: 50 percent.
Flexible: 70 percent; unbending: 30 percent.
Stick-to-itiveness: 90 percent; intuitiveness: 10 percent.
Woods needed each of these virtues just to get back into the match at all. On No. 4, he became one of very few to find water in the desert, rinsing his tee shot to make double-bogey. On 5, his pedestrian par was bested by O'Hern's birdie. On 6, he made double after getting up close and personal with a cactus. He liked it so much he did it again on 7, conceding after hitting desert-to-desert with his second shot.
If you're scoring at home, that's four holes played, four holes lost by Woods. But his resurgence in the match was just a matter of time.
"I knew it was going to happen," O'Hern said. "Tiger is No. 1 in the world for a reason, and he's not going to play poor golf for any extended period of time."
He was right. Next came what the Accenture program refers to as "outstanding strategic instincts driven by unrelenting executional diligence." Woods won the eighth hole with a birdie. And the 11th. And the 12th. By the time they stepped off the 15th green, the match was all square and the momentum was all Tiger's.
"The good thing was I just told myself I've been in this situation before," O'Hern said, "and I know how to handle it."
Ah, yes. There's that one little detail we've yet to reveal. Two years ago in this event, the Australian left-hander defeated Woods, 3 and 1, and still had the positive memories to prove it.
So while Woods continued to play Army golf, O'Hern kept splitting fairways, hitting greens and, once in a while, holing putts. His brand of play is the opposite of bomb-and-gouge; call it float-and-punch.
Whatever it was, it worked. O'Hern got up-and-down for birdie on 17 and Woods didn't. Advantage: O'Hern. He goes 1-up. On 18, Tiger pummeled his drive 342 yards, leaving only 98 yards to the pin on the par-4 closing hole. He made birdie to beat O'Hern's par and it was a whole new ballgame entering extra holes. Advantage: Woods.
On the first extra hole, Woods found himself in position to make birdie. His ball just four feet from the hole, even O'Hern knew it was time to get the travel bag out of the courtesy car. "My caddie gave me another ball and said, 'OK, next hole.' I said, 'Mate, he doesn't miss these.'"
He doesn't. But he did. The golf gods ensured the match would continue, as the putt skipped off a ball mark and slid to the right of the hole.
O'Hern came to the second hole with new life and made the most of it. After hitting his second shot into a greenside bunker, he got up-and-down after watching Woods make bogey, cinching it with a terrific par save to win the match.
"To beat him once was an amazing thrill, and I'm sure he wanted to even the score today," said O'Hern, who will face Henrik Stenson in the quarterfinals. "I just knew if I played well and I played solidly I could do it again."
O'Hern is now the first player to defeat Woods on multiple occasions in match play since he turned professional 11 years ago.
As for Tiger, he'll take very little consolation knowing he was right. You can't play six rounds of great golf. You're going to have days you don't play well.
Friday was one of those days for Woods. Had we listened to him, we might have known it was coming.
Jason Sobel is ESPN.com's golf editor. He can be reached at Jason.Sobel@espn3.com
