2000 Open: Inevitable Fulfillment

It’s easy now, two decades down the line, to believe the inevitability of Tiger Woods.

All the great and grand things said about him and projected onto his record, most of them have come to pass. The 82 PGA Tour wins. The 15 major championships.

It was still unfolding in July 2000 when Woods showed up at the Old Course in St. Andrews, having yet to win a Claret Jug, still thin beneath his oversized shirts, his 24-year old face still more like a kid’s than a grown man’s.

The sense of inevitability that became as familiar as Woods’ stinger or his Sunday red came with him to the Old Course in the first summer of a new millennium. One month earlier, Woods had destroyed Pebble Beach and the competition, winning the U.S. Open by an extraordinary 15 strokes.
Woods developed an appreciation of history as a youngster and coming to St. Andrews with its old-world romance was the perfect setting for what would be a monumental step in his career.
The U.S. Open at Pebble Beach was the start of Woods’ Tiger Slam and his...