Woods Is the Driving Force

"What?" said Shrader, stunned. The tournament was being relegated to the weakest part of the schedule. It was a virtual death sentence. Finchem made the decision public at a news conference later that morning.

Finchem said last week that he kept Booz Allen in the dark to avoid a leak of the Tour's planned schedule changes. But he also was less than generous in his assessment of the tournament's performance.

"All of this happened in the backdrop, candidly, of recognizing that the event in Washington had not performed over the years at the level we want to see a PGA Tour event perform generally, but particularly an event that we want to see perform in the nation's capital," he said. "In the seventh-, eighth-, ninth-largest market in the country, we weren't comfortable with that."

Asked for his response to Finchem's comment, Shrader said: "I felt we tried hard to earn a world-class event here in Washington. I feel that the event we had at Congressional in 2005 was a world-class event that demonstrated given a golf course and a date, we could have a world-class event here in Washington, one that the city and the people deserve. I'm happy Tiger and AT&T have come and I look forward to it being a big success."

Two months later, Booz Allen said it would not renew its sponsorship. On July 6, less than two weeks after Curtis sank his bogey putt, the PGA Tour announced it would drop Washington altogether.

The local golf world was stunned. What few realized, however, was that Woods and the PGA Tour for years had been discussing the creation of a tournament in Woods's name similar to Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Classic and Jack Nicklaus's Memorial. The only missing pieces had been an open date on the PGA Tour's calendar and a host city.

The demise of the Booz Allen Classic made Washington a potential host. Within months, the other piece would fall into place.

On Feb. 8, the longtime backer of The International in suburban Denver pulled the plug on the event after a lengthy and unsuccessful search for a sponsor. The tournament, which in previous years had been contested in August, had been switched to July 5-8 this season.

There was a hole in this year's schedule -- and, whether by design or pure serendipity, Finchem had a plan for filling it.

McLaughlin's phone rang the next morning. Finchem was on the line.

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'It Was Tiger'

McLaughlin arrived at Dulles International Airport from his home in Southern California on a bitterly cold evening in March, two days before Woods's news conference. He had packed a few suitcases and about three weeks of clothes, but he knew he would effectively be living in Washington for the next four months.