Woods: 2000 US PGA: Even the great players live dangerously, but it is in those backs-to-the-wall, cornered-like-a-cat moments that their survival instincts are strongest.
It's true, and if anyone should doubt it, then Tiger Woods - and his ability to dig himself out of a hole - was living proof of the old aphorism in the way he survived the 17th hole in the US PGA play-off with Bob May in 2000, when he conjured up a shot under pressure that enabled him to take his third major of they year.
All afternoon, Woods had been in the unusual position of playing catch-up. The uphill 17th hole at Valhalla Golf Club is 422 yards long and, like all holes there, demands a drive on the fairway. Failing to find the fairway can prove to be extremely costly, and Woods, more than most, was aware of the rewards for finding the short grass and the penalties for missing it.
When he played it as his penultimate hole of the championship, his 71st, Woods had blasted a 335-yards drive over the bunker on the left to the centre of the fairway and then hit a sand wedge to just two feet that gave him a birdie and a share of the lead with May.
However, it was in the play-off, and another visit to the 17th, that Woods was forced to produce one of those wonder shots that only the truly great ones can call upon in the time of need.
Woods had just birdied the first play-off hole, the 16th, and stood up on the 17th tee-box with a precious one-shot advantage over May. The perfect drive that Woods had produced off the same tee less than an hour previously failed to materialise on this occasion, and he pushed his tee shot far right and down an embankment. His ball came to rest in trampled rough, near a cart path. It was the worst possible place to be, with his route to the green seemingly blocked by trees.
To reach the green over 100 yards ahead, he had only one option. The aerial route was out of the question, so Woods would need to go under the trees ahead and, even then, to most observers, it didn't look as if he could pull it off.
Woods, though, saw a gap in the trees that no one else could. With the galleries edging ever closer to get a better look at the shot that faced Woods, the player kept his focus, visualised in his own mind what was required and, only when he was ready, looked for the club he wanted.
Woods eventually turned to his caddie, Steve Williams, and asked for an eight iron. Playing one of his power-punch shots and using the cart path in front of him as a sort of launching pad, he drilled the ball low. It pitched some way ahead of him on the tarmac path, and shot forward onto the front of the green before running over the back.
"I don't know where the ball carried because I couldn't see that far up, but it didn't hold the green," recalled Woods. Having produced that remarkable shot, he conjured up another from a difficult spot behind the green and secured a most unlikely par. He went on to claim his fifth major, and the third of that year.
At the end of the series, readers can vote for the Five Greatest Golf Shots Ever - the reader whose selections correspond with the shots selected by our Irish Times panel will enter a draw to win a custom fit Titleist 975J driver.
Greatest Shots: Number 12 ... Tiger
