"I birdied 10, have a three-shot lead, make bogey, then all of a sudden I'm tied?" Woods said.
With Kim unable to make a true run -- he hung at 10 under throughout the back nine, making eight consecutive pars until a bogey at 18 -- Mahan's score cast a shadow on the field, on Woods. Woods paid that mark homage -- "I certainly didn't see that score out there," he said -- but there was a sense, even with Mahan, that Woods would be at least one better.
"He's pretty good," Mahan said.
"He knows what he's doing. He knows how to play this game better than anybody. I thought he would get to probably 13 or 14 [under], actually."
All Mahan could do was watch on television from the clubhouse, where he was joined by Woods' wife, Elin, and the couple's two young children.
They chatted a bit, and when Woods narrowly missed a breaking 12-footer for birdie at 14, Mahan even yelled, "Yes!" -- "in a joking manner," he said.
But with Woods unable to best Mahan's score by the time he got to the 16th green, Mahan headed to the range to get loose for a possible playoff.
And there was more hope, because Woods' chip on the par-five -- "It wasn't that hard," he said -- came up those 20 feet short.
So here was, perhaps more than any other moment, Woods at his best, the guy who wins tournaments others would lose.
He stood over the putt, and a photographer distracted him, part of Woods' life. He stepped away, collected himself, and addressed the ball again. His thought: "Make sure I get it to the hole," he said.
That he did. Therefore, he won, the only reasonable outcome. There was, it would seem, drama. But with Woods, is the drama real?
"You just go about your business," he said, and that business is winning tournaments, not losing them, when his old buddy pressure is riding shotgun.
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Svrluga writes for the Washington Post.
