Comebacks? Tiger Woods? Here’s one for the books and a few more:
On February 20, 2008, Woods walked to the 14th tee of the Gallery Golf Club’s south course in a world of trouble. On the opening day of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championships, Woods trailed J.B. Holmes.
Holmes led by three holes with five to play. The tournament’s organizing committee, the Tucson Conquistadores, had shaped five days of marketing and sales around Woods’ overwhelming presence.
“I was almost afraid to look at the TV screen,” said tournament director Michael Garten. “No Tiger, no tournament. That’s the way it felt.”
Here’s a comeback for the ages:
Woods birdied No. 14 with a 20-foot birdie putt.
Woods birdied No. 15 with an 18-foot birdie putt.
Woods birdied No. 16 with a 15-foot birdie putt.
Woods eagled No. 17 with a 35-foot eagle putt.
Holmes walked from the 18th green toward the media center as if stunned. He stopped, looked back at the 18th green where thousands of fans were abuzz.
“What just happened?” he asked.
Four days later Woods routed Stewart Cink 8 and 7 to win the championship, the most lopsided championship match in WGC-Match Play history.
my top three pro
sports comebacks
- 1. Ted Williams missed the 1943, 1944 and 1945 baseball seasons while serving as a fighter pilot in World War II. At 28, Williams returned in 1946 and hit 38 home runs with a .342 batting average. He was the American League MVP as the Boston Red Sox won a still-standing franchise record 104 games in the regular season to reach the World Series.
- 2. John Riggins appeared to be done as a Washington Redskins tailback after the 1979 season. He had, after all, carried 1,676 times and was 31 years old. That’s a lifetime and then some for an NFL running back.
But Riggins returned in 1981 with his infamous “I’m bored, I’m broke and I’m back,” line. In 1983, at 34, he carried an unthinkable 375 times for 1,347 yards, both career highs, with 24 TDs to lead the NFL. A few months earlier, he was the Super Bow MVP, rushing a punishing 38 times for 166 yards, including a celebrated 43-yard late-game touchdown to clinch a Super Bowl victory over Miami.
- 3. Muhammed Ali was forced to miss 3½ years of boxing, 1967-70, punished for being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war. He was 20-0 when he last boxed in 1967, in the prime of his career.
When a judge finally ruled Ali clear to box in 1970, he was 28. Past his prime? Who didn’t think that?
Ali quickly won nine fights and then stepped into the ring for the “Fight of the Century” against the formidable and undefeated 26-0 Joe Frazier.
My college roommate and I each bought $130 tickets to the fight, shown on closed-circuit TV at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. In 1971, $130 was a fortune for a college kid. But the fight had such appeal we didn’t give it a second thought.
As we walked into the Salt Palace, overflowing with more than 12,000 boxing fans, my roommate said “it’s already worth the $130 and it’s two hours until the fight begins.”
my top four Tucson sports comebacks
- 1. George Genung was Arizona’s leading basketball scorer in 1944 with 13.6 points per game. He was the UA’s leading pitcher/hitter in the ’43 baseball season, an All-Border Conference selection.
A month after the ’44 basketball season, Genung, an ROTC student, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army and assigned to Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. By December, Genung was at the horrific Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s final offensive, in the Ardennes forest.
“We were always in harm’s way,” he told me in a 1997 interview. “I never thought I’d get home alive.”
By April 1945, Genung’s unit was among the first to reach the Nazi death camps. His unit reached the Elbe River and met Russian forces advancing to Berlin. In 1997, Genung opened an old trunk in his house near Prince Road and showed me a SS Trooper’s German uniform, one that had “Adolf Hitler” stitched across both armbands. He had taken it from a German prisoner, along with a mint-condition saber that had the words “GERMANY FOREVER” in script lettering.
Once he returned to Tucson, Genung rejoined the UA basketball team, averaging 10.4 points per game as team captain. He was also captain of the ’46 UA baseball team and hit .327 as a sixth-year senior in 1947.
By 1948, Genung was named the first-ever basketball coach at Amphitheater High School. He retired in 1982. A few years later Amphi named its gymnasium after Genung.
- 2. Amanda Beard was 14 in 1996 when she won a gold medal and two silver medals at the Atlanta Olympics. She soon left swimming to enjoy life as a teenager in Orange County, California.
When Arizona swimming coach Frank Busch began to recruit the 17-year-old Beard three years later she was no longer an elite prospect. She suffered from bulimia.
Busch took a chance anyway.
“Amanda had grown from 5-feet and 90 pounds to 5-8 and 120 pounds,” Busch told me. “Her body changed so much that she had to basically start over, learning a new technique in swimming.”
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Beard was the final qualifier for the women’s 200 breaststroke finals. She swam in Lane 8. No other swimmer that year won a medal in Lane 8.
But Beard’s frantic finish was so good that she won the bronze medal.
“She was mediocre for a few years,” said Busch, “but she was tough enough to stick it out and find a way to get back on top.”
A year later, as an Arizona sophomore, Beard won the NCAA championship in the 200 breaststroke. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Beard, then the world-record holder, won two gold medals.
- 3. Sean Elliott became a legend in San Antonio when he swished a 3-pointer at the buzzer in the 1999 “Memorial Day Miracle,” a playoff victory over Portland.
Two months later, suffering from renal failure in one of his kidneys, Elliott underwent a kidney transplant in San Antonio. His brother, Tucsonan Noel Elliott, donated a kidney to save Sean’s life.
Seven months later, March 2000, Elliott returned to the Spurs’ lineup. I sat on press row in San Antonio that night and when Elliott was inserted into the game there wasn’t a dry eye in the arena. It was an overwhelming feeling of happiness.
Six weeks later, in the season’s opening playoff game, against Phoenix, Elliott scored 15 points against the Suns.
Elliott played just one more NBA season, 2000-01, when he was 32 years old. He averaged 24 minutes and eight points per game.
“I wasn’t sure a day like this was possible,” he said that night.
