Tiger Looks Human

CHASKA, Minn. Ordinarily, when Tiger Woods has the lead in a major championship, he doesn't let it get cut in half. Four strokes reduced to two, that small bit of slippage was what passed for hope at the PGA Championship. It said a lot about what Woods has done to golf that his pursuers were grateful for single numerals.

They'll be clinging to the slim possibility represented by those numbers overnight, and hoping for help from the weather, too, because statistically speaking it would seem only an intervention from the sky could prevent Woods from claiming his 15th major title. They all know how heavily the aggregate of Woods's career weighs against them: Fourteen times Woods has had the lead of a major after 54 holes, and he's won every one. So when Woods missed a birdie putt on the 18th hole Saturday at Hazeltine, to stand at 8 under par with Padraig Harrington and Y.E. Yang just two strokes back, Harrington greeted the miss like he'd found a $100 bill. "I'm trying not to smile," he said.

It isn't often that Woods backs up in a major: Only twice when he led at the halfway point did he fail to build on it. Which was why his strangely static, even defensive performance on Saturday left a faint suggestion that for once he might be caught in the final round with a trophy at stake. Leading by four at the start of the day, and with Hazeltine playing soft and the scoreboard lighting up with red numbers, Woods might have gone double digits below par. Instead he all but stood stock-still. He turned in what he described as a "clean" though conservative 71 that felt stagnant, even a tad deflating.

"I just felt that with my lead, I erred on the side of caution most of the time," he said. "If I did have a good look at it, I took aim right at it. Otherwise I was just dumping the ball on the green and two-putting."

Hazeltine is the longest course in major championship history, at 7,674 yards, but it's oddly undistinguished and tends not to create much action for long stretches. It has forgiving width, the fairways so broad you could practically land planes on them. Set in the midst of pastureland, the players aim at water towers, and start walking. All that separates one hole from another are some gunmetal lakes. It's such a long, unremarkable-looking course, in fact, that after the first round both Harrington and Woods had trouble recalling which holes they birdied, or how. "Wow, I'll be struggling to remember that," Harrington said.

It offers so few hazards that for at a time Woods's third round had a thoroughly uneventful feel. While he held his ground at even par, his gallery moved like a silent landslide across the course under a dull gray sky that seemed inseparable from the barbecue smoke drifting from concessions stands.

But then the roars started drifting toward Woods from up ahead, where Harrington was shooting his 69, and Yang and Ernie Els were reeling off six birdies apiece. The greens were so soft they seemed sticky, inviting aggressive swings, and at one point 22 players were under par for the day. None of them was Woods. When he wasn't being careful, he was frustrated by a swing that was a shade off. He pantomimed, his hands flew up in the air, he flopped his clubs on the ground, and closed his eyes as if he had a sudden pain in his temple.

Finally, he arrived at a hole that offered a shift of momentum, the 14th, a drivable par-4 of 352 yards begging to be taken advantage of. Woods stepped up to the 14th tee and launched his ball to the green, where it bounded over the putting surface and came to rest in some long rough. Woods jetted his chip shot all the way back across to the opposite collar, where it nestled awkwardly against a second cut of grass. But Woods then struck a shot that transformed his day into a memorable one: Using his wedge, he bladed the ball and holed it out for birdie. He punched his fist so hard it looked like he was trying to puncture the air.

If Woods's conservative play wasn't always fun for the spectator, it was explicable. He has won so often now, he's become almost mechanical about the process, and he understands better than anyone how not to waste strokes or take pointless risks on the penultimate days when a tournament can't be won, but certainly could be lost.

"Definitely you understand how to do it, and it's just a matter of replicating it again," he said. But like the rest of us, at the end of the day he seemed to crave a little excitement, too. He was looking forward to Sunday, and the real climax, "the rush and the thrill of it."

"You know, if you're in that position, you're not playing poorly," he said. "It's fun to go out there and test what you have, and other guys are throwing it at you, and hopefully I can throw it back at them. It's fun. As I say, that's the rush of it, is to try and go out there and try and deal with it and execute."