Maybe.
This is 2,400 miles and golfing light-years from Torrey Pines and 2008. No playoff to win, no magic to create. Just 11 more holes on a muddy golf course, seven shots off the lead. If he makes a few putts, maybe he can finish fifth.
The championship? He can't do it.
Can he?
It's impossible.
Isn't it?
But then, this weary U.S. Open long ago threw away the script, and not just because Mother Nature turned on a fire hydrant over Bethpage Black.
Woods was 15 shots back in the daylight Sunday. Nine shots when the final round began late in the early evening. When darkness fell, he was seven. The only golfers in the world ahead of him by more than two are named Ricky Barnes and Lucas Glover.
He can do it.
It's not impossible.
After all the rain, all the mud, all the weather updates on television — I thought the tournament leader Saturday was Al Roker — would this be a blast of sunny summer or what?
Woods has never come back in the last round to win a major. Never rallied from more than five back to win anything on the PGA Tour.
Last Father's Day, he played the U.S. Open on a broken leg and torn ACL.
Those were cake compared with playing with a bad putter this Father's Day.
But now he has a chance, just like Phil Mickelson does. Either guy wins, everyone at Bethpage forgets how wet they've been.
It has been an oddball event, from the first dark cloud. Consider this series of moments coming through the television Sunday afternoon.
There's Tiger Woods, in grass high enough to hide a golf cart.
There's Tiger Woods having another birdie putt treat the cup as if they're the same ends of a magnet.
There's Ricky Barnes, going 11-under par.
"It's one of those … where you've got to get some help," Woods would say of his situation after the third round was done, and he was barely in Barnes' area code, nine shots behind. "Obviously, it's not totally in my control."
Not in his control? He'd probably rather lick a squeegee than say that. He must have wanted an airsickness bag when he looked at the leaderboard and saw 11 third-round scores under par, but not his.
"I have hit the ball well enough to do it, but just haven't made the putts," he said. "I've been lipping it out, burning the edges, and just haven't got it right yet."
This was like the groggy boxer who slumps on his stool and keeps mumbling, "He never laid a glove on me."
But now he is even par. His last shot at dusk was a birdie putt that went in. If Barnes folds Monday, if Glover wavers….
This climate-challenged tournament has flowed along like Manhattan traffic. Stopping … starting … stopping.
"Gearing up, gearing down, gearing up, gearing down," Woods said. "We can't even remember what day we were playing. It all blurs together."
Late Saturday, a few fans on No. 10 even heckled Woods, for standing under an umbrella. "They had a little bit to sip I think," said Woods, who laughed along. "They had plenty of time in that rain delay, and I think they took full advantage of it."
No heckling Sunday. Just cheers.
The true champions of the week would be the exhausted groundskeepers. They have been at DEFCON 1 for days, desperately trying to keep Bethpage from becoming the sixth Great Lake.
But a golfer has to officially win it.
Consider the difference, so far, of one year.
No. 18, Sunday afternoon, 2008 U.S. Open: Beneath a blue California sky, Woods rolls in a 12-foot birdie, and pumps his fists as all golf roars. He's forced a playoff.
No. 18, Sunday afternoon, 2009 U.S. Open: Beneath Long Island overcast, he taps in for a par and briefly nods to an appreciative but not particularly thunderous audience. He's 11 strokes behind.
There haven't been many mighty roars for Tiger Woods at Bethpage.
Not yet, anyway.
