Ten years later, Els tries to even score with Tiger

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.

The memories aren’t pleasant, and Ernie Els has had to live with them for the better part of a decade. Maybe that’s why he seems so intent on making new ones this week at Pebble Beach.

It was here 10 years ago that Tiger Woods kicked sand in his face and made him the poster child for a generation of cowed players. It was here in 2000 where Els took his whipping and then had to go before the media to tell everyone how great Woods was.

“Wasn’t easy for me,” Els said the other day. “Wasn’t one of my nicest moments.”

Paired with Woods in the final round then, Els found himself in a place he couldn’t escape. Put in the same pairing for the first two rounds of this year’s Open by some clever USGA officials, he now finds himself in a place he doesn’t want to leave.

Two rounds in this Open won’t erase what happened then. There are too many scars, too many reminders still.

But a 3-under-par 68 on Friday couldn’t help but ease some of the sting, especially with Woods shooting a so-so 72. On top of that, Els is in contention going into the weekend, tied for second, two shots off the lead.

“Some years I’ve felt really calm because I’m playing well,” Els said. “And for some reason this year I’m feeling good again.”

Making a few putts will usually make any golfer feel that way, and Els made more than his share in a second round played in benign conditions under gray skies. Making them in front of Woods had to make him feel even better, considering he finished 15 shots behind him the last time the Open was played at Pebble.

Els never waved a white towel in that final round, though he might have been tempted. He sounded as though he had given up on the idea of ever beating Woods.

“It seems like we’re not playing in the same ballpark right now,” he said after that round. “When he’s on, you don’t have much of a chance.”

The comments would come to haunt Els, even though he and Miguel Angel Jimenez finished closer to Woods than anyone else in the field in 2000. Like it or not, he became a symbol of the players who mostly gave up over the years when Woods walked to the first tee with his A game.

It didn’t help that over the years Els finished second to Woods more times than any other player, getting beaten by him in tournaments from Dubai to Dublin, Ohio. Didn’t seem to matter that he had won two Open titles while still young, because he wasn’t going to win one with Woods in the field.

Els is 40 now, and though he has a British Open title to show for his past 10 years, he would be hard put to refute the argument that he has spent most of the decade underachieving. At a time when players begin taking stock of their careers and figuring out what their legacy might be, he has to deal with the reality his won’t be as great as it once seemed likely to be.

“The expectations are there,” Els said after Friday’s round. “And I probably fell victim to that a little bit because I had many — numerous — chances of winning majors, which I didn’t. I’ve won three, and I look back at it now — I’m pleased to have done that.”

He would be even more pleased to win a fourth here, and not just because he would have his name on the Open trophy for the first time since 1997. For Els it would be the validation of a career that seemed to have no ceiling when he won his first U.S. Open three years before that.

“It’s amazing when I think I was 24 when I won this event at Oakmont,” he said. “I must have been out of my head to think I could have won at 24.”

That was the age Woods was when he beat Els in 2000 to begin a decade of dominance that golf might never see again. In the final round of that tournament, Woods never said a word to Els as he finished off the biggest win in a major with a final round as impeccable as it was impersonal.

On Friday they chatted between shots, two veterans searching for wins for starkly different reasons.

This might be Els’ only chance for redemption, his only way to even the score.

One weekend of golf to erase 10 years of bad memories.

Tim Dahlberg is a Las Vegas-based national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org.