A showdown on the South Course: Tiger Woods first victory at Torrey Pines

One of the game’s most historic runs was just beginning. A once-promising career, beset by injuries, was coming to an abrupt end.

Those storylines collided 20 years ago at Torrey Pines’ South Course. The end result was Tiger Woods’ first win at a course that has come to define his career. He needed all 72 holes, including an eagle at the last, to dispatch Billy Ray Brown, who had just one top-10 over the previous five seasons.

Woods has authored some of the most dominant performances in the game’s history, but he also has been taken to the wire by a random cast of characters. Players like Rocco Mediate, Bob May and Steve Scott.

Brown, the son of an NFL tackle, was the challenger this time. But Woods used his unparalleled power to dispatch him, flying his tee shot over Brown’s ball and leaving himself just a mid-iron into the green on Torrey Pines’ famous finishing hole.

For a player who learned the game on the public tracks around his hometown of Cypress, it’s fitting that a Southern California muni has played such a large role in his career. He attended his first PGA TOUR event at Torrey Pines – he remembers watching the SoCal pros who would later become his peers, like John Cook and Mark O’Meara – and won there as a junior golfer.

Ten percent of Woods’ 80 PGA TOUR wins have come at Torrey Pines. This week, at the Farmers Insurance Open, he can pull within one of Sam Snead’s mark for most PGA TOUR wins.

From 1998-2008, Woods won seven of 12 tournaments at Torrey Pines and never finished outside the top 10. He won five titles there in a four-year span, including his most recent major championship, that memorable 91-hole showdown with Mediate.

Woods’ first victim at Torrey Pines has an interesting perspective on his success there. It’s about more than his deep ties to the course. Because of its oceanside locale, players can face a variety of conditions over the course of one round. Even though every hole is within a mile of the ocean, the air is heavier on the holes that are closer to the water, Brown said. That provides another variable to consider when calculating distances. It plays into the hands of Woods, who may be the best iron player in the game’s history.

“He knew exactly how far he was going to hit those shots, and that is a crucial, crucial part of playing Torrey well,” Brown said. “And he is very good at formatting a gameplan on the tee depending on where the hole location is. You have to do that at Torrey.”

If Brown sounds like an analyst, that’s because it’s the way he made a living after his playing career ended prematurely. His television career started the same year that he faced Woods, after one last wrist injury was too much to overcome.

Brown was only 35, but he played just 15 TOUR events after 1999. His last start was in 2002. He only made two cuts, and never finished better than 70th, after facing Woods.

“It helped me with closure,” Brown recalled. “That was my last shot and I got beat by the World No. 1.

“If I didn’t have that, I don’t know if I would have tried to hang on.”

He’d won an NCAA individual title (and played on three championship-winning teams) for the historic Houston program and finished just a shot out of the playoff that Hale Irwin won at the 1990 U.S. Open. Brown won in each of the next two seasons, but persistent wrist injuries sapped his skill and his desire. By 1994, his wrist was bone-on-bone and he was battling the driver yips.

His only top-10 from 1994 to 1998 was a win at the Deposit Guaranty Classic in 1997, played the same week that Justin Leonard won The Open Championship. Brown broke down in the post-round interview as he reflected on the road back from surgery. It was his third and final win on the PGA TOUR.

"I had no confidence and don't know how many people I bombarded in galleries,” Brown said after the win. “I got to the point where I didn't even want to go to the first tee."

When the 1999 season started, there were questions about the state of Woods’ game, as well. He’d won just once in the past 18 months while undergoing swing changes with Butch Harmon.

“I told everybody it’s just a matter of time before everything clicks in,” Woods said back then. “I’ve been so close, for so many rounds now, a few months, actually, and nothing ever jelled.”

It did after Woods sneaked into the weekend at Torrey Pines. He was nine shots back at the tournament’s halfway point. He played Saturday’s final six holes in 5 under, including an eagle at his 15th hole after his second shot bounced off a sprinkler head and onto the green.

A course-record 62 on the South Course – before it was toughened in preparation for the 2008 U.S. Open – gave Woods a one-shot lead over Brown entering the final round.

“It was Tiger’s tournament to lose,” Brown said afterward. “All I could do was go free-wheel, and he’s the guy who had pressure on him. And you see how he responded to the pressure.”

Woods shot 65 on Sunday, but he was still tied with Brown when they reached the final hole.

What happened next reminded Brown of when he first met Woods as a teen-aged amateur.

Brown was the defending champion and Woods was still in high school when they played in the pro-am for the 1993 AT&T Byron Nelson. Woods wasn’t going to play the forward tees with the other amateurs, though. He had a tournament to prepare for.

“The first hole at Las Colinas is really just a 2-iron or 3-iron and a wedge. It’s a dogleg right,” Brown said. “What does he do? He pulls driver out. I’m thinking, ‘This kid is playing with the defending champion, he’s not even out on TOUR yet, and he’s already forced my hand.’

“That’s what he did all along. He forced your hand.”

Brown had the honor on the 18th tee. Jim Nantz and Ken Venturi gushed over his tee shot, which he squeezed into the fairway, just right of a sand trap.

Woods and Brown, who stood 6-foot-3, were separated by just a few yards all day. Woods displayed a different gear on the final hole, though.

“He hit a tee shot that made a different sound than it had made all day,” Brown said. Woods’ ball flew the bunker and went some 40 yards past Brown’s ball. “He reaches into his bag and pulls out any shot that he needs at any time.”

Brown tried to hit 3-iron off a downslope. He fatted it.

Woods, who watched Andy Bean hit 1-iron into the 18th green when he first watched the pros play at Torrey Pines, had just a 7-iron into the green.

“I almost lost the ball. It was that high,” Brown recalled recently. “I walked past him and he just gave me a grin like, ‘You like that, don’t you old man?’”

After Brown missed his birdie attempt, Woods poured in his 15-footer for eagle. Woods’ score of 22-under 266 tied the tournament record.

The victory was the first of eight wins for Woods in 1999. He won nine times in 2000, including three majors. The following year saw the completion of the Tiger Slam and Woods’ first PLAYERS title. All told, Woods won 32 times from 1999-2003, including half of his 14 majors, before undergoing another overhaul of his swing.

For Brown, the end was near. He shot 20 under par at Torrey Pines but was 97 over par in his other 16 starts that season.

Wrist injuries had plagued him since hitting a tree root the week after he won the 1992 Byron Nelson. He rushed his comeback so he could play the TOUR Championship at the same course where he won the NCAA Championship, Pinehurst No. 2. The frustration about that decision can still be heard in his voice.

“I wanted to play so bad,” he said. “Stupid. It was stupid. I was under strict orders from people saying, ‘You’re not ready to go.’ I can’t blame anyone but myself.”

Brown made the last cut of his career just four starts after facing Woods. He could make just one swing on that Saturday in the third round of the Bellsouth Classic.

“I hit a tee shot on the first tee and that was it,” he said. “I went in and packed my stuff, got on the plane and went home.

“I knew that was it.”

One last showdown was solace for his career’s unfortunate turn.