Mediate on Open at Bethpage:
‘It’s going to be great, insane’
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – Comes now the folk hero -- a year older, a year’s more patina on him, striding along with the same old unquenchable smile, same snappy patter, and really, truth be known, the most famous loser of modern times. This would be Rocco Mediate, age 46 now. It’s said that nobody ever remembers who finished second, but they do now. From that time and for all time, how can anyone forget how, in the 2008 U.S. Open, that the gods of golf summoned a 45-year-old with an iffy and repaired back and a journeyman’s game to step out of a throng of younger, stronger, more flexible golfers and take the field against the finest, most dangerous player in the world, Tiger Woods. It was almost medieval. It would be the Dragon taking on St. George, but for a more accurate picture, this would be when George was in his swaddling clothes.
Mediate plays golf with a wink, a hiya and a number of yuks. This would be no match for the ferocious Tiger Woods, devourer of golfers. But to the awe of millions of TV viewers, it turned out that the sacrificial lamb had some teeth and fire of his own. Mediate actually tied Woods in regulation play, closing with a 71 to Woods’ 73. (Woods, it should be noted, was playing on that famously damaged left knee.)
The U.S. Golf Association uses the 18-hole playoff, and the script called for Mediate to get eaten alive, and slink off in embarrassment. But lo, he battled away, and drawing millions of TV fans from everywhere, watching to see if he could do the impossible. And he almost did. They were still tied after the 18 holes, and then the playoff went to sudden death, and Woods, who had played on a painful and damaged knee, won on the first extra hole, but with a par.
It’s the 2009 U.S. Open now, at Bethpage Black, the famous muni course on Long Island, where Woods won in 2002, the second of his three U.S. Open victories, to the accompaniment of a New York chorus, which tune might not be to the tastes of all.
Rocco Mediate: Think of Broadway Joe without the cool, Dean Martin without the suave and the song. He’ll play on Broadway, he’ll play at Bethpage.
“It’s great – it’s going to be insane,” Mediate said Tuesday, himself a guy who thinks that the word “shy” must be from a foreign tongue. “They say whatever they feel. And they don’t care who’s listening. That’s what I like about it. They just let you have it.”
(As if Sergio Garcia didn’t know it. Remember 2002, when they counted along with him in Spanish as he was going through that grip-it-and-grip-it-and-grip-it putting routine. “I think we know,” Garcia said Tuesday, “that New York and New Yorkers are very passionate.”)
Mediate rather took the country by storm last year, the very essence of The American Hero, to have gone down in flames, trying to the end. He recalled trying desperately to nap in an airport once, and waking to find himself surrounded by worshipers. In such self-evident situations, his standard response is, “Are you kidding me?”
Mediate from Greensburg, Pa., not far from Pittsburgh and closer still to Latrobe, lair of the great Arnold Palmer, his childhood idol. Like many pro golfers, Mediate has gotten more or less rich through little in the way of accomplishments. He’s won just four times since joining the PGA Tour in 1986, which wasn’t bad considering a back so bad it belonged in an orthopedic hall of fame. But if they paid off on repartee, smiles, good nature, and popularity, he’d own the tour. He’ll own New York if he puts on a show anywhere near last year’s.
“Sure gave me a lot of confidence,” Mediate said. “So there’s a little extra heat on me. I like that feeling. I don’t want to disappoint. Because I know there’s going to be a lot more people watching than there were. The people have been tremendous. I know what it’s going to be like and I’m ready. I love it.
The high point for Mediate clearly came from the deepest tragedy, from the family in Texas who lost their daughter on graduation day. “He was literally in the worst place you could be,” Mediate said. And the dad wrote to him, after watching the highlights of that Open.
“And he said, you showed me how to lose and not be beaten,” Mediate said. “And he picked himself up, got everything OK.”
Mediate said Cindy, his physical therapist, read him the letter as he was coming out of the anesthesia after knee surgery last January.
“And I went, ‘You can’t feel this way about a golf tournament,’ ” he said. “ ‘This isn’t real. It can’t be real.’ ”
Actually, the same might be said about the 2008 U.S. Open and Rocco Mediate. It can’t be real.
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