“He Changed the Game”: Rivals Recall Tiger Woods’ Historic U.S. Open Blowout

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Twenty-six years later, players from the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach still remember Tiger Woods’ victory as an event that changed golf.

Ernie Els, the runner-up, smiled when asked about that tournament. He remembered his own performance—Els finished ahead of 154 players in the field—but understood that history chiefly remembered the name above his on the enormous manual scoreboard along 17 Mile Drive: Woods.

“I had that question for about 20 years of my life,” Els said Friday in Pebble Beach. “Playing with a guy the way Tiger played that whole week, but especially on that Sunday, I don’t believe he really missed a shot.”

Woods won by 15 shots, the largest margin in major-championship history. Among the players competing in both that U.S. Open and this week’s PURE Insurance Championship, a 54-hole PGA Tour Champions event, were also Rocco Mediate, Stuart Appleby and Justin Leonard.

“I knew way before that happened that he was going to do it,” said Mediate, who finished T32 that week. “What he did did not surprise people that have a brain.”

In Mediate’s memory, playing against Woods at the peak of his powers was like playing Red Rover against a rhinoceros.

“He had everything. Mentally he was ridiculous, but physically he was also ridiculous. The shots he played, none of them surprised me—because they couldn’t be played, and he played them a lot. Crazy stuff.”

Stuart Appleby, who missed the cut, especially remembered that Woods did not let up even after building an eight-shot lead.

“I’ll never know how he did it,” Appleby said. “It was like he conquered it, and yet he just kept making pars. He didn’t let off the gas when he was up by eight. It was miraculous.”

Justin Leonard, who finished T16, admitted that after that week he felt inferior as a player.

“When it gets firm, the greens get really firm, and the rough is as deep as it is, it can make you feel pretty human. Tiger wasn’t that way many weeks, but certainly not that week,” Leonard said.

No one had a better view of the action than Els, who played all 18 final-round holes alongside Woods while the leader already had a huge advantage and continued pushing.

“The intensity he walked on the first tee with, I’ll never forget,” Els said. “He kept that up all the way through 18 holes, even winning by 12, 15, whatever it was.”

Els remembers his own performance and takes pride in how he played. But he remembers something else more vividly: the feeling that he had witnessed a change that would alter his profession forever.

“I knew the game changed especially that day,” Els said. “He obviously won some big events before that, but that was kind of a really serious changing of the guard in sports. Lucky to have been around to see that from up close.”

Based on GOLF.com reporting by James Colgan.