First foray to Australia proved an eye-opener for Tiger Woods

All these years later, Peter McWhinney concedes he got it wrong. Horribly wrong.

Tiger Woods in action at The Australian GC during the 1996 Australian Open.

All these years later, Peter McWhinney concedes he got it wrong. Horribly wrong. McWhinney, the garrulous 63-year-old who now devotes much of his spare time to playing seniors cricket, laughs as he recalls spending two days in the company of Tiger Woods at the Australian Open 23 years ago.

Woods was in the nascent stages of his professional career in 1996. He had relinquished his amateur status a matter of months earlier, heralding his switch to the pro ranks with two words: “Hello world.”

The world leaned forward in anticipation. Woods arrived in Sydney later that year armed with two PGA Tour wins and a slew of fat endorsement deals.

Sponsors were queuing to get in on the ground floor with the most-hyped athlete in sports history. He quickly became one of the wealthiest sportsmen on the planet after inking deals worth more than $US60 million.

Woods responded to the news by opining that while he may be swimming in money, his pockets were running dry. A credit card with a $US25,000 limit was organised and Woods was on his way, Australia among the chosen destinations.

He was armed with an admiration for Australian golf courses and — according to a recently released book on his well-documented rise and fall — a warning about one of our favourite sons.

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“I don’t happen to have a lot of respect for Greg Norman as a person, because Greg will take advantage of you to keep his name in the paper,” lawyer and family friend John Merchant told Tiger.

“He’s on the downside, and you’re on the up.”

Their paths would cross on Woods’s arrival in Sydney in 1996. Norman would prove to be his nemesis, although the weather and Woods’s own ego proved as much his undoing as he took his first formative steps in Australian golf.

McWhinney was along for the ride. He had a bird’s eye view of a man who could ultimately be remembered as the greatest player in the game’s history. He wasn’t impressed. At least, he wasn’t initially.

Money well spent

Colin Phillips is an iconic figure in Australian golf. For decades, he was both an irresistible force and an immovable object.

Phillips, who passed away earlier this year, was responsible for luring Woods to Australia for what seemed an exorbitant amount at the time, but later turned out to be a bargain.

It may have been the best money Phillips ever spent. Then the head of the Australian Golf Union, Phillips bounced into the office one day and asked his colleagues how much they would pay to have Woods grace the Open.

One of those present suggested $50,000. The other pushed the envelope and countered that $200,000 would be closer to the mark.

A chuffed Phillips responded: “Between the two of you, you are right – I paid $250,000.”

Later, it was revealed the figure was closer to $300,000. Regardless, history would suggest it was money well spent.

Woods jetted into Sydney armed with little of the baggage that would follow him in later life. He could still walk the streets of Sydney in relative anonymity. He was young – only 20.

He was hellbent on taking advantage of his ability to blend in with the crowd. This was Woods before fame, fortune and infidelity became his bedfellows.

He had no majors on his resume. He had won twice on the PGA Tour, but the jury was still out in the eyes of many. He was already a dedicated gym junkie — he was given his own key to the weights room when he attended Stanford University – but he was still lean and yet to fully fill out.

Woods wandered onto The Australian Golf Club on the Monday before the tournament with little fanfare. Word began to spread and a crowd slowly filtered onto the course to catch a glimpse of golf’s latest wunderkind.

The next day, record crowds turned out for the pro-am. Woods developed a thirst over those 18 holes.

Before the tournament he had been warned about Norman, but that didn’t mean he was averse to spending time with Australian golfers.

He and Lucas Parsons knew each other through swing coach Butch Harmon and when Woods was looking to unwind at the end of a long day, Parsons took him on a trip to Sugar Reef nightclub in King’s Cross.

“I did a bit of work with Butch Harmon back then so I kind of got to know him through Butch,” Parsons recalled. “His handler in Australia was my manager, Angus Hawley. We were young. I was 26, he was 20. He had spent the last eight weeks not being able to go anywhere in the States.

“On the Tuesday night, we had the Australian Open dinner and he (Hawley) said: ‘Tiger wants to go out, what do you reckon?’

“We had a few drinks, a bit of a late one and I think it was just him letting his hair down. No one had any idea who he was. No one.

“He was loving it. We had a good night out. He got home rather late — we all got home rather late. Tiger, I always thought, he enjoyed being one of the boys. He enjoyed someone who didn’t take him too seriously.

“Having Stevie (Williams) on the bag for so many years, he always enjoyed a bit of crap. He turned up at the casino wearing this beret backwards.

“I said, ‘nice hat mate’. He said, ‘what do you mean?’. Fluff (Cowan), his original caddie, said, ‘You’re in Australia, they give you shit’. “He turns around and said, ‘Lose some weight’. I said, ‘Good timing mate’. He liked a bit of shit. I think that is what he has with the young guys now.

“He has a good relationship with the young guys – they give it to him a bit. It keeps him eager. He likes that locker-room camaraderie. I think he enjoys that.”

Taken to school

Woods may have enjoyed the banter, but he didn’t take kindly to the course. Drawn to play the opening two rounds alongside Peter Senior and McWhinney, he arrived at The Australian to be greeted by cyclonic conditions.

Woods proceeded to spray the ball all over the course as he opened the tournament with an unseemly 79. McWhinney, for one, was less than impressed.

“He didn’t get screwed by the draw, but if you played in the morning on the first day it was horrendous,” McWhinney said. “He was 10-over after 12. A big fat boy (McWhinney) and a little fat boy (Senior) were schooling him.”

McWhinney and Senior had known each other for years. They enjoyed taking the piss out of each other. Few were as good at it as McWhinney, although he derived perhaps his greatest pleasure from poking fun at himself.

“There was so much hype about him,” Senior said. “It was funny that Macca and I got paired with him — I thought they might have put him with a couple of more high-profile guys at the time.

“The first round I can remember pretty easy. He hit his driver everywhere. He was trying to hit it as hard as he could.

“We were sitting in the scorer’s tent and Tiger signed his scorecard and walked out. I said to Macca, ‘What do you think?’ He said: ‘I think there is too much hype, I don’t think he is as good as everybody makes out.’

“The next day we tee off in the afternoon and it is blowing 40m/h. He shoots 70. It was a clinical day of hitting. He hit some of the best iron shots you have ever seen.

“I think he was about the only guy who broke par that day. After we marked our cards I said, ‘What do think now Macca?’ He said, ‘Shit this guy is going to be really good, isn’t he?’”

McWhinney recalls: “He hit a couple of shots that were just like, ‘Oh Jesus’. I remember once saying to Pete that this bloke isn’t impressing me that much.

“Then he whacked two into the wind on the 14th at The Australian and Pete said, ‘Did that impress you?’. “I just went, ‘Did you just see that?’ How far he hit it was amazing.”

As solid and as far as Woods hit it in the second round, he still reached the halfway mark of the tournament 11 shots behind a rampant Norman.

His opening round had cost him any chance of contending, particularly when Norman – then the world No 1 — took advantage of friendlier conditions to open an insurmountable lead over the field.

Norman had played a practice round with former US President Bill Clinton in the lead-up to the tournament and he was producing a presidential performance.

There would be no mowing down the two-time major winner.

Different league

Having spent the opening two rounds alongside two veterans, Woods found himself playing the third round with a couple of blokes at the other end of the spectrum — Ken Druce and Terry Pilkadaris, the latter still an amateur.

“I didn’t know until Saturday morning I was playing with him because they had delays all week for bad weather,” said Pilkadaris, still playing and contending in Asia.

“They put the draw up and I see my name there with Kenny Druce and Tiger. I was shaking. I was trying to tie up my shoe laces and just thinking this is going to be a circus. My coach at the time, Ross Metherell, was caddying for me.

“He said first thing you have to do is when you get to the driving range, introduce myself. I saw him on the range and said, ‘I am with you today’.

“That broke the ice a bit. Standing on the 10th tee – our first hole – at The Australian, it is five people deep, blowing 30 or 40km/h.

“I am just thinking don’t stuff this up. I remember my second shot and I hit a two-iron — I absolutely flushed it

“The hairs on my arm were standing up. I had goose bumps. I was about 15 feet from the hole. Tiger is 50 metres past me and he hits a nine-iron inside me.

“I have the putt and the putter has wobbled all over the place. I hit it off the toe and it has lipped out.

“You hear the crowd go wooahh. Then Tiger has rolled it in. He walked up to me and said, ‘Thanks for the line’.

“The crowds were just nuts. As soon as he hit a shot, everyone was off and running. He was asking me about what I had done and what I was planning to do.

“He talked me into going to college in America after that. He said, ‘Why don’t you go over to the States and have a look, you’ll enjoy it’. I went over for a year and went to Columbus State (University) in Georgia.

“It was amazing. His golf was unbelievable. It was a whole different league.”

Druce, now a golf conditioning specialist and coach, lapped it up.

“We talked about what he did in his spare time, we talked about girls as you do,” Druce said.

“He was quite pleasant. He didn’t ask too much about me but was happy to answer questions about himself.

“There were cameras everywhere, people running to the next tee. I was happy to have a front-row seat to see someone hit it so long and so hard. It was good fun, that’s for sure.”

Woods fired a respectable 71 in the third round before closing with a 70 as he finished in a share of fifth with Peter O’Malley, Grant Waite and Paul McGinley.

He ended the opening round 12 shots behind Norman and that is where he stayed as the Australian turned the tournament into a procession.

Woods later bemoaned the conditions that greeted him in Sydney.

“I could not get anything positive going,” Woods said. “Physically and mentally, I made a lot of mistakes and when you do that, you usually don’t win. I spent most of the time in bed, trying to get better (from a cold).

“It was just a tough week. When the sun finally came out today, I thought I was back in America.”

Woods was only just beginning his professional journey but he left an indelible mark on the tournament and his playing partners.

“There was that old line I said – all you have to do is put one tiger onto the southern side of Sydney Harbour and you have another zoo,” McWhinney said.

“There were thousands there – girls walking around in high heels who had no idea about the game, phones going off.

“There were three guys dressed in tiger outfits.”

Having sampled Australia for the first time, Woods wasted no time jetting back to America to conduct an interview with GQ magazine.

The next stop on his world tour was an audience with the Thai Prime Minister before he returned to Melbourne to play the 1997 Australian Masters.

He finished that tournament out of the running as well – in a share of eighth behind Peter Lonard.

Woods was ready to conquer the world, but victory in Australia had eluded him. After his disappointment at the Open, Norman has some words of solace

“He got a shock when he shot 79,” Norman said.

“Perhaps he will appreciate why Australians play so well when they leave home. The first time you play here, you get a deep appreciation of how difficult they can be. But after the first round he came back with a creditable performance. He should find it easier next time.”

More than a decade later, Norman’s words proved portentous.