 |
 |
 |
|
ATLANTA -- As it ultimately turned out, Tiger Woods could have taken a knee in the PGA Tour's so-called playoff finale and still won the biggest bonus in sports history.
|
|
| Another first for Tiger Woods: displaying the inaugural FedEx Cup Trophy. (AP) |
Shattering a tournament scoring record for the second time in eight days, Woods ambled around storied East Lake Golf Club in 23 under this week to win the Tour Championship by a record eight strokes and secure the largest cash bonus in sports history, $10 million.
Add it up and Woods received a staggering $11.26 million in actual or deferred pay Sunday, which, even for a guy with his considerable wallet, is enough dinero to get his attention.
As if Woods doesn't have enough career objectives, winning the FedEx gave him another goal to add to his gotta-do list.
"You throw another thing at him, it just makes it even worse for us," cracked Zach Johnson, who finished in a tie for second. "Why give him another thing to try to achieve? It's a carrot, you're right, and he's a very driven man. When you add another element to the drive, what do you do?"
Fight for the table scraps, really.
"The man is a freak," Johnson said, pausing for dramatic effect, "of nature."
It requires a mega-ram calculator to tally the carnage. Woods broke the tourney scoring record by six shots and shot 257, matching the third-lowest score over 72 holes in tour history. In his three FedEx Cup starts, he was a combined 59 under in 12 rounds.
Is the dude operating on another tier? Put it this way: When Johnson walked into the media center after finishing, he playfully raised his hand high overhead and cracked, "Tied for first in the first flight."
The championship flight, obviously, was contested with a field of one, sort of like the FedEx race itself. Saturday, we wrote that the only way Woods could lose the bonus was to fall down dead -- which was technically wrong, as things played out. Even if Woods had gotten disqualified, kidnapped, arrested or whacked in the knee with a Nancy Kerrigan tire iron, he still would have won the deferred $10 million.
None of the four players who had a mathematical chance of passing him this week earned enough points to eclipse what Woods had when he arrived at East Lake. So in addition to skipping the FedEx opener at Westchester, he could have taken a siesta this week, too.
Ric Clarson, one of the FedEx architects, seemed slightly taken aback when that fact was relayed during the final round. "That'll be a hard stat for us to look at, that he still could have won while only playing two," he said.
