Your Game 16. No matter how much he has changed his game, no matter what kind of prize is at stake, one thing about Tiger Woods never seems to change. Put him under the gun, especially on the 17th hole, and he finds a way to win. No, but this business of big putts on the 17th hole is getting routine. Woods won the first of three straight U.S. Amateur titles by making a birdie on the famed island green on the TPC at Sawgrass in 1994.
Woods knelt and fired off four pumps of the fist when it crept in, sensing how critical it was.
It's just that the ball seems to go in. Right now, everything is going Woods's way. At 23, he becomes the youngest player to win five times in one season since Jack Nicklaus won the Sahara Invitational in 1963 at the exact same age. He is also the first player since Nick Price in 1994 to win five times in a year. The victory, no matter how ugly it got down the stretch, also lends credibility again to comparisons to Nicklaus.