The Will of Woods

I was wrong. It's no big deal to win the U.S. Open on a knee that's still sore from the arthroscopic surgery you had eight weeks earlier.

On the other hand, winning the U.S. Open on said post-surgical knee, which, post-victory, is revealed to be the least troublesome part of a trifecta including two stress fractures and a torn ligament is a pretty good weekend's work. This guy Tiger, every time you think you've seen his best effort, he knocks you over again. Remember in The Usual Suspects when Verbal Kint relates the story of how Keyser Söze had come home to find his child killed by the Hungarian mobsters? And the horrible lesson he teaches them? "He'd show them what 'will' was." That's Tiger.

The other image this brought up was the scene in Lawrence of Arabia, where Peter O'Toole lights a match and holds it until it burns out against his fingers. His line was, "The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts."

Twenty-one miles back and forth over the rolling hills of Torrey Pines with a broken leg.

Keep that image someplace in the back of your mind, and pull it out when things start to cloud over.