Tiger Woods and Ernie Els go back a long way. Indeed, Els was already a Major Champion and one of the best players in the world when Tiger appeared on the scene in the mid-1990s.
There's always been a great deal of respect between the two stars and Els has revealed exclusively to GM how a conversation at the 1996 Open Championship led to the start of arguably the greatest ever professional golfing career.
Els also speaks about Tiger's career as a whole, what makes him such a special player and going up against the American in the 2003 Presidents Cup, "the most pressure Tiger ever felt in his career." Read on...
You've spent a lot of time with Tiger over the years, tell us a story about a memorable moment with him…
Yeah Tiger, we go back a long time, and I've played a lot of golf with Tiger over the years. I remember even back to when he was an amateur in the mid-1990s. He won the U.S. Amateur like three times and he played in a lot of those big Majors in 1996. We had a lot of good times together and played a lot early on while he was still at Stanford.
We as pros could see that this guy was going to be an absolute superstar and he just wanted to reconfirm that through me. At the 1996 Open Championship at Royal Lytham, I was having a beer in the locker room, which was right behind the 18th green, after the prize-giving. He sat next to me, and no he didn't have a beer too, he was too young. And he asked me what I thought about his game and whether I thought he was ready to turn pro. I said "absolutely" and now I joke that I regret saying that (laughs). He's always been a good friend and one of the greatest competitors ever in the game.
You saw it first-hand, what made Tiger so good?
Tiger was the greatest closer you've ever seen in this game. He was very dominant in the early 2000s. In 2000 he did great work with Butch Harmon. His swing was just right on. He was hitting the ball unbelievably well, but he really started getting his confidence with the putter. He knew those greens so well at Pebble Beach. He was just phenomenal. His dominance was just so impressive. He just never wavered. His ability to just stick with a gameplan and have his mind and body do exactly what he wanted to do was just phenomenal. We could see a shot and pull it off most of the time, but under pressure I don't think I've ever seen a man hit shots the way that he did coming down the stretch in the last three or four holes. He would hit a phenomenal shot, he would hit the most impressive shot struck all week long and he somehow could do that in the last three holes many, many times.
Look at all those wins he had at Bay Hill when he made a putt down the hill there on the last hole, it was just incredible that he could summon it when he needed to. If you look at (Firestone in 2000) he hit that final approach shot to a foot in the dark. The shot at the Canadian Open he hit out of the bunker was ridiculous. These types of shots just stand out and he did it over and over again and it was the ability to absolutely control what you can control but absolutely believe that you can pull a shot off, and he did it at will.
The putts he made again and again when it mattered were just incredible. I think the only guy that could come close to him in making all those pressure putts was Jack Nicklaus. If you look at their careers of making putts in the clutch, they would be very even because I know that Jack made his fair share in the last few holes. But Tiger just did it over and over again and that's why he won 82 times on Tour and 15 Majors.
When you faced him in the 2003 Presidents Cup, in that winner-take-all play-off, how do you look back on that now?
Yeah, it was crazy pressure, for me especially being at home in South Africa and for Tiger also. Nobody wants to be the reason that your team lost. Being out there in a play-off was a huge honor to play for your team and your flag. It was brilliant in that regard but our play was not great. We just kept making big putts and grinding out pars when it was getting dark. Then eventually Tiger made that amazing putt from left to right that died into the hole. If I thought he was going to miss one that day, I thought it was going to be that one. But Tiger being Tiger, he ended up making that putt. After that, I made that putt on top of him which was huge. After that it got too dark to continue and they made the right choice. To have that honor to play me versus Tiger was brilliant and something we will never forget. I remember Tiger saying that it was the most pressure he ever felt in his career, so it meant a lot to everybody.
