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Tiger Woods remembers the crowd noise. It wasn’t the roar elicited by a clutch birdie or eagle putt; he knows that noise all too well. No, this was something else, and it was hard to place. “All of a sudden it gets really loud behind us,â€� Woods says of the 72nd hole of last year’s TOUR Championship at East Lake, where he was about to win for the 80th time to break a five-year victory drought. “And I look back and there are people coming under the ropes and the cops are trying to organize people so they don’t rush us.â€� Roger Maltbie, NBC’s on-course reporter who always follows the final pairing, was up ahead, on the lower of the hole’s two levels. That’s where the longer hitters’ drives end up, and when he looked back up the hill at Woods and Rory McIlroy, people were already in the fairway behind them. “I happen to be standing next to a police officer,â€� Maltbie says. “And he says, ‘Oh, man, what are we gonna do now?’ I gave him the quote that Dave Marr used to say years ago, which was, ‘Once a dog gets out from under the porch, it’s real hard to get him to go back under there.’â€� The moment was one part history in the making, Woods getting his long-awaited 80th, and one part Pamplona. Call it the Running of the Fans. Or, as Woods would later put it, “All hell broke loose.â€� Here’s an eyewitness account from those who experienced the delirium at the ground level. Woods took a three-stroke lead over McIlroy and Justin Rose into Sunday. Needing to make something happen, McIlroy (74, T7) and Rose (73, T4) struggled. Still, a Tiger win was not a foregone conclusion. Billy Horschel had shot 66 to get to 9 under, and Woods bogeyed 15 after his tee shot cleared the water by inches, and 16, too. His lead was cut to just two strokes, and he looked shaky on 17, too, but made a par-saving putt from just inside 4 feet. McILROY: “I told him he was doing his best not to win, but when he hit his tee shot up 18, and he striped it, I said, ‘OK, the tournament is pretty much done at this point.’ It was cool, we were walking down and I said, ‘Geez, that’s the first one you didn’t squeeze out there today. You turned it over.’ (Laughs) I was like, ‘Oh, you finally hit one! Good for you!’ And we’re walking down and the Tiger chant started, right? They hadn’t broken the ropes at this point. But I said to him, ‘This reminds me of Jack in 1980 at Baltusrol.’ Like, ‘Jack is back, Jack is back.’ And he said something like, ‘Yeah, but I’m not wearing yellow pants,’ or something like that.â€� JOE LaCAVA, Woods’ caddie: “Once he piped a drive on 18, I kind of knew he had it, which was kind of a nice feeling as we’re coming down the hill there.â€� RICKIE FOWLER: “We were up in family dining, and after Tiger was making his way toward the green, that’s when we were walking down to scoring. J.T. (Justin Thomas) was with us, and Zach (Johnson), I think.â€� Rose birdied 18 to win the FedExCup. Woods needed only to bogey 18 to win his 80th TOUR trophy, which became a no-brainer as his second shot reached the greenside bunker. That’s when the drip, drip, drip of fans coming under the ropes became a tidal wave. WOODS: “It gives me chills almost every single time I see it. At the time, it didn’t seem like that because I didn’t really look back. I only looked back a couple of times over my right shoulder.â€� LaCAVA: “Probably 50 yards after he hit his second shot I could sense the people coming into the fairway behind me. I looked at one of the cops, and he said, ‘What do you think?’ He was just looking more for approval of what Tiger might think about it. These people are so jacked up; they want to be part of history. I said, ‘Let ’em go. Why not?’ Not that it was my call. I thought it would be like charging the field after a big college football or basketball win. But I didn’t realize how many people were already out there on the fairway.â€� FOWLER: “As soon as we got down to scoring that’s when we saw the crowd coming in.â€� MALTBIE: “After the second shots were played, the people on top of the hill started to follow behind Tiger, and when the fans down by the green saw that, they said, ‘The heck with this, I’m going under the ropes, too.’â€� DANIEL LATERZA, Assistant G.M. East Lake: “I was outside the door to the locker room and all the sudden the players started coming out – Tommy Fleetwood, Paul Casey. They had their phones up as well, taking pictures like everyone else. They’d never seen anything like it. As soon as everybody was rushing up the fairway, we were all, ‘OK, what are they going to do to stop it?’â€� It soon became apparent that there was no stopping it, just as there is no unscrambling an omelet and no stuffing the genie back in the bottle. Although it was a happy throng, everyone thrilled to see Woods about the enter the winner’s circle again, it was also a very large throng. WOODS: “After the second shots that we hit down there, there’s a natural bottleneck at the lake there, and once we hit that part, everyone just busted loose behind us and all hell broke loose.â€� ALLISON FILLMORE, TOUR Championship Executive Director: “I was standing there with our social media person and I saw this massive crowd coming toward me; all of a sudden I started to get really nervous. I’m not in control of the situation. I was completely losing my mind.â€� JACK LABADIA, student and standard-bearer: “The police were holding people back; I got pushed back five or six times by the same police officer, and then he saw that I was holding the sign and let me through. He was just trying his best to protect Tiger.â€� CAMERON McLEOD, second standard-bearer: “You could just hear everybody running. It was crazy. They were like 10 yards behind me, and the police started escorting everyone up to the green. Turning around and looking at just thousands of people cheering – that was pretty real.â€� McILROY: “I don’t want to be in the way; I want him to have this moment. So, we’re having a nice chat or whatever, and the line breaks. I’m sort of like, well, there’s security coming for us, but they’re only going at one person; they’re not coming for me. (Laughs) So I’m like, right, well, I need to get out of here. I ran ahead and tried to get away from it because it was unbelievable.â€� LABADIA: “I started picking up the pace, but I’d walked 17 holes, and these guys were hungry, so I got passed by a lot of people, and that’s how I ended up behind the police officers. A couple years before that I remember getting autographs, standing in the front of the line, and the crowd that mobbed him there, I felt claustrophobic and like I was getting pushed. The situation on 18 felt a lot different because the energy felt very positive. It was people pushing, but it was to see him win. I was caught up in the whole energy of it; it was a really cool feeling.â€� LaCAVA: “We were walking up the skinniest part of the fairway, next to the lake, and Tiger turned around and said, ‘You don’t realize what’s going on behind you. You’re about to get run over. You better get your ass up here.’ There were people passing me at that point because they’re trying to get to the green to get the best view.â€� Ian Lindsey, Manager of Tournament Operations, was with members of his team and preparing for the closing ceremony. Crucially, they had rope, which was going to be used for the writers and photographers. Now it needed to be used for something else, and fast. Lindsey screamed to mobilize his team to form a line, and as he held one end of the rope, a marshal held the other, and they stopped the advancing fans some 50 yards short of the green. Woods and McIlroy, plus their caddies, standard-bearers and walking scorers, were allowed through. LINDSEY: “I ran straight to where Tiger and Rory were coming out. My main concern was Tiger getting closed in by fans. Thankfully, he moved a little quick and got out of there just in time. All of our operations leadership, all of our security guys, police, APD, all of them were out there, kind of just pacing back and forth and we were – my adrenaline was pumping pretty high. I look over, and we just had everyone, everyone in the line, everyone was taking pictures.â€� FILLMORE: “I was so amazed that as quickly as the group came forward, they were so respectful when that line came up, and everyone stopped. I was very happy to see that.â€� McILROY: “It took him and Joe a while, especially Joe, to get through the crowd and get to the 18th green. I was there for a couple minutes before they actually got there.â€� LaCAVA: “It’s a little different going through all those people with a bag on your shoulder. I think Tiger enjoyed it, he had a little smirk on his face. He and Rory each had a local cop, so I think they felt pretty secure, and I went past them to get ahead of the crowd.â€� WOODS: “I got on the green, I looked, and I’m like, Holy cow, there’s a lot of people out there.â€� Woods splashed out of the bunker to about 8 feet, but missed his birdie putt. It didn’t matter. When he tapped in for par, he had won by two, and the crowd erupted. Bobby Jones IV, grandson of the great Bobby Jones, was in the clubhouse grill with his wife, Mimi. JONES: “Now bear in mind this building is a very thick, solid brick building. The roar was so loud that this building actually vibrated, you could actually see water kind of move just a little bit on top of the glasses. And to be present for such an event … I can actually say something that people probably on the course couldn’t: I could actually feel the roar.â€� Those who were there to witness history began to absorb what had just happened, a process that continues to this day with the aid of cell phone photos and videos. MALTBIE: “There’s old footage of that happening in The Open Championship, but I’ve never seen anything like that in America before. To call it a euphoric crowd would be an understatement.â€� LaCAVA: “You see the old photos of maybe Arnold and Jack with the crowd around, but for people to go under the ropes, I’ve never seen anything like that. We all know the backstory of people thinking Tiger wasn’t going to win again. I think that played into it. I think the crowd was probably bigger than it normally would have been. People wanted to be there to witness it. I didn’t appreciate the full effect of what was going on until I got to the clubhouse and Adam Hayes, who caddies for Jon Rahm, showed me pictures.â€� LINDSEY: “About 10 minutes in, or maybe five minutes after Tiger hits that last putt, we were just praying that they weren’t gonna try to push any further.â€� LABADIA: “Afterward, since there was such a large crowd, they pulled us into the little scoring tent with Tiger. We were kind of too scared to talk to him; it wasn’t really our place. He was talking to his caddie, but he was definitely pretty happy in there. He signed his card, and he signed our standard-bearer placard that had his name on it, and a couple balls. I’ve got that in my room; I’ll show it to my grandkids. A lot of my friends saw me on TV, it was cool.â€� McLEOD: “He gave me a ball and then signed a few things for me. He signed my hat, and his name from the score thing that we kept. We have it framed up in my room.â€� FOWLER: “I think part of being the TOUR Championship, the venue, end of the year, I don’t think you would see that happen at a normal TOUR event. Obviously, there was a great fan turnout, and when you have everyone who’s there all on one fairway, it makes it look massive. It was almost a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see and have that happen.â€� LINDSEY: “I’ve worked a lot of golf tournaments and that was – never seen anything like that. I went to school in Florida and it reminded me of an SEC football game.â€� McILROY: “I didn’t fully appreciate it because I was pissed off at how I played, but even as he’s tapping in to win and I’m looking back up 18, to see the people, it was unbelievable. It was nice that I was the one to play with him when it happened. We’ve had a great relationship for a long time now, and I know what he’s been through. For it just to manifest like that, and to see the amount of good will. Everyone was so happy for him. People need external things to make themselves happy and remind themselves of the good old days or whatever, and that’s what it was like; Tiger was winning a golf tournament, and it was the good old days. It was just an unbelievable atmosphere. It was really cool to be a part of it.â€� WOODS: “I really didn’t have it in drive; I just had it in neutral all day. … The rush and the commotion … I’ve experienced things of that nature, but not that energy.â€�

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Midnight may have been a metaphor of sorts but judging from the raucous celebration after the United States scored a crushing 19-9 victory over Europe in the Ryder Cup, the conversation could easily have happened in real time. Over the next 24 hours, the team that Steve Stricker had created to take back the gold chalice would disband and go their separate ways. But at least one person in the United States’ team room was already looking ahead even as the champagne flowed. “We just got done with it on Sunday, and the guys said, ‘Are you going home? What are you doing?’” Davis Love III recalled. “And I go, ‘No, I’m going to Presidents Cup.’ Midnight it starts Presidents Cup year. So that’s the way our guys look at it. “They get to do it every year, they shift gears, but we are trying to build Team USA golf year-round.” True to his word, Love, who will captain the U.S. Team when it takes on the Internationals at Quail Hollow Club next year left Wisconsin and headed to Charlotte, North Carolina, for three days of Presidents Cup kickoff festivities. The biennial event will be held Sept. 19-25, 2022. Love was joined by International Captain Trevor Immelman in stops at venues downtown, as well as two evening events at Quail Hollow, a course that will be familiar to both teams after hosting the Wells Fargo Championship every year but once since. The one year it didn’t? Well, that was in 2017 when the United States’ Justin Thomas won the PGA Championship there. The two captains had a police escort as they drove their team golf carts to the NASCAR Hall of Fame where Jimmie Johnson, an 83-time winner, was a surprise tour guide, and Spectrum Center, where NBA legend Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets play. At the HOF, Love and Immelman received fire-retardant suits with their names on the back, then tried their luck – very unsuccessfully – in the race simulator. “I know what my Halloween costume is now,” Immelman said. Love and Immelman also visited Bank of America Stadium and had a corn-hole chipping contest with a pair of retired Carolina Panthers, five-time Pro Bowl tight end Wesley Walls and linebacker Thomas Davis, who was the Walter Payton Man of the Year in 2014. Later they appeared almost in miniature as they looked at a gigantic mural painted on two sides of the Duke Energy Center which features, among other things, their faces and the logo of the Presidents Cup. “I got to my room yesterday, opened the curtains and I saw Davis’ head,” Immelman said, laughing. “I had to shut it straightaway. I was like, what is this? He’s already playing mind games over here.” For Love, this will mark the third time he has served as captain of a U.S. team, each time on home soil. He is 1-1 as a Ryder Cup skipper, losing in 2012 to Europe’s “Miracle at Medinah” and returning four years later to lead a victorious U.S. side at Hazeltine. Love earned the rare shot at Ryder Cup redemption thanks to the task force that was formed amidst the fallout from the Americans’ loss two years earlier in Scotland. Being given a second chance was testament to his popularity with the players. The 57-year-old Charlotte native and World Golf Hall of Famer also has been an assistant on three Presidents Cup and two Ryder Cup teams, including the one that trounced the Europeans last weekend at Whistling Straits. Love calls the most recent U.S. Team, which included eight of the top 10 players in the world and likely will form the nucleus of his team at Quail Hollow – and many more American squads to come, “really, really confident.” The average age of the Americans was 29.1, with Dustin Johnson, at 37, the old man of the team. “These guys just think they’re going to win every time they go play,” Love said. “You’ve probably been around Patrick Cantlay a little bit; he’s a very confident young man. And so is Dustin. And so is (Collin) Morikawa. He’s very quiet, but he’s a quiet 50-year-old. He’s just so steady and so good.” Love credited the experience gained in junior golf, as well as exceptional coaching and training, with the poise and determination he saw on offer last week. He said he was surprised by how many people the players had on their personal support teams. “Even though it was the pandemic, I saw more coaches at a Ryder Cup than I’ve ever seen,” Love noted. “We didn’t have that in 1993. Nobody had a coach with him. Nobody had a trainer with them. Nobody even knew what a bodywork person was. We had eight or nine people at the hotel or at the club taking care of guys. So, it’s a different generation.” To Stricker’s credit, Love said, he noticed that shift and made accommodations for it. Formal dinners and rah-rah speeches were kept to a minimum – “Maybe it makes them nervous,” Love reasoned — so the players could keep to a more normal schedule. Forget the epic ping-pong battles of yore. These guys wanted to rest so they could be at their best the next day. “I mean, literally one night there was only X-Man (Xander Schauffle) and Brooks (Koepka) still up,” Love noted. “One night it was Brooks who was the only one up, working out. “And Dustin, Sunday morning, now he’s down there at 6:30 and he’s bopping around and he goes, ‘Hey, I was in bed at nine o’clock.’ People wouldn’t believe that — if you would see Dustin Johnson, the celebrity, you would think, oh, it’s party, party, party, party, party. He does … on Sunday.” In a word, Love was impressed by the discipline he saw on the team. He remembers Cantlay coming to him and telling him he’d finished practicing and working out, but he needed to get his bodywork – a form of therapy that helps realign and reposition the body – done. That meant he’d be 45 minutes late for dinner. “That’s how disciplined they are,” Love said. Cantlay also needed three or four hours to warm up and prepare for a match. That meant 7:05 a.m. tee times were a non-starter. “It’s just different, and Steve just had it dialed in,” Love said. “Freddie and I are just sitting back, holy cow, we’re old. They do it differently than we did. “So, we have to adapt to give them what they need to get ready.” Often, team meetings, if you will, were held in a room upstairs at the Whistling Straits clubhouse while they waited for the traffic to thin. Stricker would tell the players who was practicing together and what format to play. Grab dinner in the team room and you could go to bed. “I remember (Tom) Watson coming in late one night when we were playing Pass the Pigs and Jenga and all the games that somebody brought in ‘93 and he goes, ‘You guys have to go to bed. You have to play golf tomorrow,’” Love laughed. “This is the opposite with these guys like, where is everybody? We had this big, gorgeous team room and I’d walk in and go, where is everybody? “And we knew they weren’t anywhere else because you couldn’t go anywhere else. They weren’t allowed to go. … One night, they had a family thing of people that were in the bubble. And they got to go to the little restaurant, right beside the parking garage, The Horse & Plow and say hi to their parents. And that was it, the only thing they were allowed to do. “It was a weird Ryder Cup for the veterans like us. Where’s the pomp and circumstance? But it was also weird that they were always ready to go — and they played unbelievable.” Love said he knew after the U.S. won the first session, 3-1, that the Americans would retake the Ryder Cup. It wasn’t at all like three years ago in Paris when the U.S. took the opening Four-balls by a similar margin but didn’t win a Foursomes match in the afternoon. “We had issues,” Love said of Paris. “We were jumbling pairings in afternoon. We didn’t know what we were going to do for Saturday. You know, Phil and Tiger weren’t playing good, and Patrick was not playing great. We didn’t know what was going on. “This team — all you had to do is shoot them to their tee times and they were going to roll.” Love said there will be debriefings in the coming months, as has been the case with every U.S. Team event since the task force was formed, to zero in on what worked and what didn’t. He plans to work on strengthening his relationships with some of the younger Americans – there were six rookies, for example, on this year’s team. “I got to know Patrick Cantlay so well, and I got to know X-Man a lot better,” Love said. “Morikawa, I don’t know. It’s a hard egg to crack in one week. He’s still a young, shy kid, even though he’s a major champion. So, I’ve got some work to do on getting to know guys, but Brooks and the Dustin and those guys — they’re tired of me.” The International Team, on the other hand, is at a crossroads similar to where the U.S. found itself after the 2013 Ryder Cup. It’s only win in the competition came in 1998, although the two teams famously tied in 2003 in Immelman’s native South African. Ernie Els captained the 2019 team at Royal Melbourne and the match was competitive, with the U.S. winning by just two points thanks to a comeback in Singles. He created a shield for a logo and a sense of identity for a team that draws its members from countries across the globe outside of Europe. “They’re catching up and that’s a problem,” Love said. “I’m going to remind our guys and say, ‘Hey, look what they did in Australia.’ Now they’re going to be kind of an easier place for them to play. And they’re going to have three years of preparation. “They’re not just sitting back going I hope we win. They’re planning on how they can win. … Obviously on paper, it’s pretty even. We have a slight advantage right now on paper, but you can see in the Ryder Cup, we always have a huge advantage in Ryder Cup and we lose it a lot. “So, it can happen very easily.” Love actually was serving on the PGA TOUR’s Policy Board in 1993 when former PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem proposed the matches to be played in opposite years from the Ryder Cup. Within a year, the event became reality. “Luckily it grew,” said Love, who played in the first six Presidents Cups and owns a 16-8-4 record overall. “Next thing you know, we’re in Canada and Korea and South Africa and Australia, and it’s become one of our favorite events. “Obviously we’re kind of partial to it because we win it a lot more than the Ryder Cup, but it’s incredible how much it’s grown since 1993, and it’s become a favorite of our fans and of our players, and it’s a big goal for our players to make these teams. “I’m just glad that I saw the start of it, and now I’m — hopefully this ends my Presidents Cup career. I’ve been at it a long time. … But what an honor to see it come this far since 1993.”

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