For Tour professionals who had the good fortune to play alongside Tiger Woods during his heyday, the opportunity was a double-edged sword: a blessing because it gave them a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the best player of their generation, and a burden because of that same reason.
In that group of lucky unfortunates was Geoff Ogilvy. In 2008, the 46-year-old Australian achieved a career-high ranking of No. 3, during the year when Woods had the longest reign at the top of the rankings (281 weeks as the World No. 1 from 2005 to 2010).
You couldn’t possibly defeat him. On this week’s Subpar edition, Ogilvy remarked of Woods, “No one was gonna beat him.” “He was unique.”
He claimed to be a genius at finishing the 72 holes ahead of time. “I mean, it was just like any other Thursday or Friday; you would be talking, and he was really laid back. He would be a little more serious on Saturday, and you couldn’t talk to him on Sunday. He would not even look them in the eye.
“It was almost like he was meditating,” Ogilvy went on. He was simply moving extremely slowly and deliberately, and he managed to cross the finish line ahead of everyone else by some mysterious means. Simply put, he was superior than everyone else at it.
