Steve Stricker doesn’t mind being lost in the shadows, the low-key Wisconsinite never one to seek the limelight or the spotlight.
Twenty-five years ago, he made his first hole-in-one on the PGA Tour, a 6-iron from 170 yards on the usually rowdy 16th hole in Sunday’s final round of the Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. He even won a car with his stroke of perfection, an off-white Oldsmobile Aurora with a 1997 sticker price of $35,000.
Unfortunately, it was one of those “Bueller, Bueller” moments. Hardly anybody saw it, hardly anybody outside of Stricker’s family remembers it. Even a hunt through Google or any other search engine comes up blank.
All because of Tiger Woods.
The exploding superstar, who was just 21 but had already won three of his record-tying 82 PGA Tour victories heading into the 1997 Phoenix Open, made one of the most famous holes-in-one in the game’s history the day before.
In front of about 15,000 people – or about 14,980 more than saw Stricker’s ace.
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The 15,000 was a large collection of the estimated 120,000 fans that attended the Greatest Show on Turf that Saturday, the wildest day of the wildest week in golf.
The numero uno – a soft 9-iron from 162 yards that bounced into the hole – was captured live on ESPN and has been replayed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube and other social media outlets. And numerous stories featuring words of the shot and scene do come up on search engines.
“Well, that shows you who moves the needle,” Stricker said. “That’s Tiger for you. He raised the roof, but I won the car.”
It was Woods’ second ace as a professional – he made his first in his debut in the 1996 Greater Milwaukee Open. But you’d be hard pressed to find a hole-in-one that produced as loud an aftermath as Woods’ ace. Or as insane a reaction from the fans, who began to make it rain with empty and full beer cups.
“It was loud,” is all that the reserved Mike “Fluff” Cowen said this year on the silver anniversary of his former boss’ ace.
Loud? The sustained detonation reverberated across the golf course and rattled the windows in the clubhouse – more than 500 yards away.
Paired for the first time with Woods was Omar Uresti, who had the honor when the two arrived at the 16th tee. Today’s three-story coliseum enclosing the hole had yet to be built but a massive wall of people was waiting on the hill to the right of the hole that extended to the green and another mass of people were behind the hole.
A large beer tent was at the top of the hill.
Uresti then hit an 8-iron to less than three feet and the gallery exploded.
After the crowd fell silent, and with the McDowell Mountains standing tall as a stunning backdrop, Woods swung away. The ball soared truly toward the flagstick, landed softly, took two bounces and disappeared.
“I think I broke Fluff’s hand,” Woods said years later about his high-five to his caddie. “I missed Omar or was it Rusty? Omar? I missed his. And then old school, back in the day, raised the roof, you know, that was the thing in the day.
“Then on top of that, just smelling and hearing the beer hit behind me on the tee box. To turn around and see all this beer flying was crazy.”
Another crazy thing happened shortly thereafter.
“The more eerie part was when we were playing 17 and 18, everybody didn’t really care,” Woods said. “They were walking in, because they had seen what they wanted to see and 16 was empty.”
A day after Tiger Woods made his ace that will live on YouTube forever more, Stricker made one of only nine hole-in-ones in the tournament since it moved to TPC Scottsdale in 1987.
But you won’t find it on YouTube. Or anywhere, for that matter.
Stricker’s is the forgotten ace from that year, his first hole-in-one on the PGA Tour coming in front of about 10 to 20 people. He had teed off first on the back nine that day, or about the time the fans were waking up.
“Well, that shows you who moves the needle,” Stricker said of Woods’ colossal shade. “That’s Tiger for you. He raised the roof, but I won the car.”
Yes, Stricker did. As the first to make an ace on the hole for the final-round promotion, Stricker won an off-white, Oldsmobile Aurora with a sticker price of $35,000 even back then. Stricker still has the Titleist 1 he hit into the hole.
Defending champion Steve Stricker watches his tee shot on the 17th hole in first round action at the Kemper Open at Avenel Country Club in Potomac, Md., Thursday June 5, 1997. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
Stricker, who doesn’t remember where he was when Woods made his ace, traded the car in for a mini-van knowing he was going to start a family. He later sold the mini-van to James “Earl” Walker, who caddied for Stricker, and, among others, Jeff Sluman and John Huston.
But here’s the kicker: heading into the final round, players were under the assumption that they would win the red helicopter that was prominently placed within eyesight of the course if they were the first to make a hole-in-one that day.
“But after I made the ace, I was told they couldn’t give the helicopter away because it was worth more than the winner would get that year,” Stricker said.
Steve Jones won the Phoenix Open that year and collected $270,000.
The 16th tee box is covered by beer cans and cups thrown by fans celebrating a hole-in-one by Tiger Woods at the 1997 Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. (Photo: The Arizona Republic)
Robert Wrenn’s playing days on the PGA Tour were winding down when he teed off in the 1996 Greater Milwaukee Open. It would be his 301st start on the PGA Tour, a career that began in 1982 and included a win in the 1987 Buick Open.
Well, Tiger Woods was making his professional debut that week in Milwaukee.
“Because of how the locker rooms are set up, my locker was right next to his,” Wrenn said. “I’d been going to play Milwaukee for like, I don’t know, that was my 11th or 12th or 13th year. And they, for whatever reason, couldn’t get my name right. They always spelled it with one “N” on the end instead of two. And I’m looking at his locker and I’m looking at the misspelling on mine. And I’m like, there’s a sign here somewhere.
“It’s time for me to hang this up.”
Wrenn made a smooth transition into broadcasting and less than four months later, was working for ESPN and assigned to follow Woods’ group in the third round of the Phoenix Open.
“I was standing just to the right and a little behind the 16th green. I had already gone to the tee and realized, you know what, there’s so many people here there’s just no way that I can get a call and have them hear me,” said Wrenn, who has been an investment advisor the past 16 years. “I did not know specifically what club that they were going to hit but that was part of the tradeoff for being able to actually set up the shot.
“I was able to pick (the ball) up pretty easily. When the ball was hitting its apex, I knew, boy, this is going to be pretty good. This looks like it’s the right distance and looks like it’s on the right line. I couldn’t tell if it was going to be a little bit off one way or the other, but it looked really good midflight.”
And then the ball hopped into the hole.
“I think I said something stupid. Like, ‘It went in,’” Wrenn said. “I saw a heck of a lot of beer flying in the air. It was nuts. I’m looking back toward the tee and it looked like there must have been several hundred cups of beer that all went flying up in the air at the same time. It was just crazy.
“It looked like Mardi Gras hit Phoenix.”
At the end of the round, Wrenn was told to try to get Woods to the ESPN’s analysis booth to the right of 18 for a post-round interview.
But there was a problem.
“There had to be 10,000 people between the scoring area by the clubhouse and the announcer booth. It was kind of like a Bermuda triangle that we would somehow have to try to safely navigate,” Wrenn said. “Tiger said, ‘Is there any other way to get there other than through this crowd?’ I said no, and he said, ‘If you’re OK with it, I would rather go ahead and do the interview here because I just can’t see that we can get over there.’
“So we did the interview by the scoring area. And he was great. I never had the chance to play with him. But I felt like, in retrospect, it was a tremendous opportunity for me as an announcer to be able to walk with him that one day and enjoy that experience.”
Jeremy Davis was all of 18 when he was working for ESPN during the 1997 Phoenix Open. He had parlayed an internship into working many sports events for the cable sports giant.
On Saturday of the Phoenix Open that year, the present program director for PGA Tour Radio was the cable coiler. His main job was to make sure the cables connected to various devices that provide audio and visuals didn’t get tangled.
Davis and the cameraman picked up Woods’ group on the sixth hole and then Davis found himself kneeling down about 3-5 feet from Woods on the 16th tee.
Tiger Woods celebrates after making a hole-in-one during the Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale on Jan. 25, 1997. (Photo: Craig Jones/Allsport)
“When Tiger putted out at 15, the crowd at 16 just went insane,” Davis said. “It was like the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. You could hear people yelling, ‘Here he comes, here he comes.’ We then get to the tee and now it’s the new loudest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. And then, when Omar hit that shot, the place just erupted. It was incredible. Everybody was screaming.”
After things quieted down, Woods stepped to the tee.
“Tiger kind of settles in and it gets really quiet,” Davis said. “And back then the ‘I am Tiger Woods,’ Nike commercials were all over the place. Well, Steve Jones was winning the tournament by like 12 shots or something at that point and it gets really quiet. Tiger settles in and some guy goes, ‘I am Steve Jones.’ And Tiger backs off just cracking up. It was pretty funny to watch him laugh.”
Things quieted down again and then Woods hit his shot.
“When the ball is in the air, the place is just going crazy,” Davis said. “And then it goes in and the noise was just unimaginable. People were throwing full beer cans, I mean, drinks everywhere, people jumping on each other. It was just like nothing I’d ever seen before at a golf tournament. It was pretty, pretty intense, for sure.
“We had actually lost our driver with so many people. He was responsible for the tripod. So I was also carrying the tripod. Tiger makes the hole in one and the camera guy starts walking with him down the tee, but I have to run back and get the tripod. Well, all these people are throwing beer at me and I got soaked.
“I ran back to the camera guy and we walked up to the green behind Tiger. When he threw the ball into the crowd, you can see there’s just a massive avalanche of people sliding down the hill on top of each other trying to get the ball and it was pretty amazing.
“It was like a Beatles moment for Tiger for 30 minutes.”
Tiger Woods smiles as he stands on the 16th tee box during the third round of the Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale on January 25, 1997. (Photo: Craig Jones/Getty Images)
Omar Uresti was playing with Woods for the first time that Saturday in Phoenix. But the two had met on a ferry in New York during the 1995 U.S. Open at Shinnecock; Woods was forced to withdraw with a wrist injury.
But Uresti knew all about Woods heading into that day.
“My brother, Rusty, was my caddie and he told me I shouldn’t watch Tiger swing. He went at it so hard that it could get you out of your rhythm and you could lose your tempo,” Uresti said. “And I never watched him take a full swing all day. I would cross my arms and I would turn my back and just kind of look at the ground and listen for him to hit and then start walking and find the ball in the air.
“It was good day. I had to put a little extra focus in just because of the gallery. He was attracting a lot of fans, which was great, but a lot of the fans didn’t have a lot of golf knowledge. So you have to focus a little harder.”
Of course, the highlight of the day came at the 16th.
Uresti had the tee and hit a smooth little 8-iron to just inside 3 feet and the crowd erupted into a sustained rumble.
“And of course, I thought to myself, and believe me, I didn’t say it out loud. I just thought to myself, ‘Let’s see you hit it closer than that,’” Uresti said. “So he gets up and he hits. I had my back to him. And as soon as he hit, I started walking and took about 10 steps and I look up and I see the ball go bounce, bounce in the hole.
“I just thought to myself, only Tiger, you know, could have done that to me.”
Did Uresti regret not watching?
“I saw enough of it,” Uresti said. “It was fantastic.”
Uresti went to high-five Woods but the two missed the first exchange. They connected on the second try.
About two minutes later, Uresti lined up his putt while his brother had a little conversation with Woods.
“It’s funny because my brother actually has a picture that one of the photographers gave him of Tiger kind of leaning on his shoulder,” Uresti said. “And Tiger said to my brother, ‘A total of three is going to be tough to beat on this hole.’ And Tiger said I was gonna knock my putt right in the back.
“It went in on the left center of the hole and Tiger says to me brother, ‘I told you he’d make it,’ and they were laughing.”
On the 18th, Uresti had 180 into the green after a good drive and hit a 5-iron to 25 feet. Woods had 130 into the green and hit a pitching wedge to 10 feet.
Uresti two-putted and Woods made his putt.
“He shot 67 and I shot 68. I wish I birdied 18 for the tie,” Uresti said. “The hole-in-one is a crazy memory. But it’s a really good memory to know for one day, at least, I was able to hang with Tiger.”
Christine Schmenk, 12 of Scottsdale, wears a message for Tigers Woods during the 1997 Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. (Photo: The Arizona Republic)
He called the Miracle on Ice. Was the first to get to Jimmy Valvano as he was jumping up and down on the court after North Carolina State won the title. Was the voice of the America’s Cup when Dennis Conner was victorious.
Did World Series games, the NBA Finals, Monday Night Football, college football, horse racing and was the voice of the PGA Tour Champions.
And award-winning sportscaster Jim Kelly was on air for ESPN for Tiger’s ace.
But he didn’t say much when the earth started the shake.
“There are moments in sports. When the U.S. hockey team beat the Russians in 1980 at Lake Placid, I was doing CBS Radio on that game. And Al Michaels, with the iconic call, ‘Do you believe in miracles? Yes.’ That came into my mind when Tiger made the hole-in-one,” Kelly said. “As the ball goes into the hole, it’s like, don’t say a word, there is nothing that I can add to the pictures and the sound.
“Anything I would say would be stupid and superfluous and meaningless. Let the pictures and the sound cover it until they can’t anymore. Nobody in the truck said anything. You just instinctively either know you don’t say anything, or you don’t know you shouldn’t say anything.”
So Kelly stayed silent in the booth between the 17th green and 18th hole.
“It was instant bedlam. I mean instant pandemonium. The roar was so loud it actually rattled the windows at the clubhouse, and the clubhouse was 500 to 700 yards away from the 16th,” he said “You see the beer spray up in the air. And Tiger said he could smell the beer as the cups were caught in the wind.
“It was deafening and then Tiger gives the fist-pumps to the sky and it gets louder. He walks up to the green and then tosses the ball into the crowd, which was kind of a brave move. Because if you look at the crowd shot, I mean, people are diving over each other trying to get it.”
Sportscater Jim Kelly and Arnold Palmer. (Courtesy photo)
The ace wasn’t the first memorable moment with Woods for Kelly. He called Woods’ first PGA Tour title in the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational.
“I remember the MC out on 18. When we throw it down for the presentation, Jack Sheehan, I think he’s like, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, how about a round of applause for the richest college dropout in America?’” Kelly said. “And Tiger did not miss a beat. He said, ‘I think Bill Gates has got me.’ A classic. What a response, right?”
Tiger Woods and Notah Begay III at Sahalee Country Club, in Sammamish, Washington, in 2002 for the NEC Invitational World Golf Championships. (Photo: Mike Nelson/AFP via Getty Images)
Notah Begay and Tiger Woods have been like brothers since they first met in junior golf; they would later be teammates at Stanford and play against each other on the PGA Tour.
After Woods turned pro in 1996, Begay graduated but had no professional playing status in 1997 when the Phoenix Open rolled around.
“I was living in Scottsdale at the time just trying to find a place to play,” Begay said. “So I went out to watch with some friends, but he’s a tough guy to follow because of so many people, so we watched him a couple of holes and then we went to 18. Then I heard the roar out at 16. Even with us being so far away, it was as loud as any roar that I’ve ever heard in golf.
“We didn’t know what happened because there wasn’t any streaming or anything like that. And then word of the hole-in-one circulated to us.”
Begay stayed behind the 18th green as Woods played his final two holes.
“Growing up with Tiger and spending so much time with him and Earl (Woods’ father), I knew that Earl’s nickname for Tiger was Sam. And only people that really knew Tiger well called him that,” Begay said. “He was walking from the 18th green to the scoring tent and I’m standing there with like 20,000 other people who are all yelling, ‘Tiger, Tiger, Tiger.’ He walks by me and I yell ‘Sam,’ and he stops in his tracks. And he looks over and he sees me, and he gets a big smile on his face.
“He comes over and he hugs me, and we talk for about two minutes just catching up and then all of a sudden, you know, he’s got to go sign a scorecard.”
Begay said the two rarely talked about the ace in the following years, but Begay said Woods will never forget the beer shower. In 2000, Begay made an ace in front of Woods on the ninth hole during the Par 3 Contest ahead of the Masters.
“The roar wasn’t as big as Tiger’s at Phoenix,” Begay said with a laugh.
Begay won four PGA Tour titles and is now an analyst for Golf Channel, so he’s been around Woods a lot when the 15-time major winner created brilliance.
“He just has a way of finding these moments to do stuff that just kind of exhilarated the average golf fan,” Begay said. “Golf’s historically been pretty calm, and you know, maybe to a certain extent, a boring sport to watch. But man, he’s been a huge part in creating the shifts that we see now, in terms of golf being so much more entertaining for the masses.”
Bill Huffman has been known as Mr. Golf for years in the Phoenix area, working for the Arizona Republic from 1982-1999 and currently as the host of the popular Backspin the Radio Show.
He and a few fellow scribes were walking right up to the 16th tee on the left side when Woods was on the tee the Saturday in 1997.
“The beer tent was up on the hill on the right side of the hole. I could see Tiger perfectly. There was no one on the left side,” Huffman said. “And Tiger makes the hole-in-one and the hillside exploded. And there’s like 1,000 beer cups in the air. It was like the craziest scene you’ve ever seen in your life.
The 16th hole. You gotta go! #forgettaboutphil #wmphoenixopen pic.twitter.com/U7lHkJWXvg
— Bill Huffman (@AZGolfwriter) January 30, 2020
“I mean, honestly, the beer cups were flying. The beer was flying. And Tiger was pumping it up. He was given the pump-up-the-volume sign. The roars didn’t stop until after he got off the green.”
Huffman, who said he never tires of recalling the ace, said he and the other reporters started scrambling. Huffman would later file two stories that day.
“It was amazing,” he said. “When he made the hole-in-one, my first question was, ‘Did we have a photographer out there?’ Thankfully, we did.”
Tiger Woods signs autographs during the 1997 Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. (Photo: The Arizona Republic)
Robert Garrigus, who played junior golf against Woods, was playing golf for the Fighting Artichokes of Scottsdale Community College in 1997. The team was volunteering at the Phoenix Open that year, working the driving range, but many got off early that Saturday to go to the 16th hole to see Woods.
“The beers were flowing, and it was a raucous scene when Tiger got to the tee,” said Garrigus, who was 20 at the time and about 25 feet from the tee box. “And then one of the best parts of it was when Omar Uresti got up in front of Tiger and hit his shot to about three feet and we all started screaming, ‘O-Mar, O-Mar.’
“We were all belligerent anyways. The whole crowd was.”
And then Woods had the tee.
“We all looked at each other and said how amazing would it be if he hit it closer. We’d go absolutely ballistic. And as soon as he hit it, everybody was screaming ‘Get in the hole,’ as loud as they possibly could,” Garrigus said. “And when the ball bounced and the roar came up that he had made it, you could feel it. It wasn’t just that you could hear it. You could actually feel the ground shaking.
“It was one of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever experienced.
Garrigus said he may or may not have been the first to launch his beer cup toward the tee but suddenly, the air was full of beer cups – empty or not.
“It was out of control,” he said. “It was so much fun to see the ace. It was special.”
Garrigus turned pro that summer. He won the 2010 Children’s Miracle Network Classic, tied for third in the 2011 U.S. Open and has cashed for nearly $15 million on the PGA Tour. And he’s spoken to Woods on many occasions after the ace.
“He told me after Omar hit it close, he had to stuff it inside of him. And of course he did,” Garrigus said. “Tiger transcended our game. I always thank him when I see him for the millions of dollars that I’m playing for every week and all the nice cars I’ve driven and all the nice watches I’ve bought.
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