KAPALUA, Maui — For once, the roar whooshing across the golf course was not Tiger Woods. It didn't stop anyone from talking about him.
The PGA Tour's 2002 season is blowing in with the Mercedes Championships this week in the gusty West Maui mountains. It is coming, strangely and strongly, from the south.
In simple golf terms, that Kona wind turns Kapalua's Plantation Course upside down. The long holes, designed to play downwind with the usual trades, are suddenly dead into it. The short holes are a mysterious number of clubs shorter.
In yesterday's Pro-Am, it was enough to knock a strong man — or any amateur — to his knees. It is only expected to get weirder. The wind is predicted to shift to the north for today's first round, then flip again tomorrow, and Saturday, and Sunday, all at about 15-20 mph.
"The hard thing about this golf course is that the fairways are so wide, you feel guilty for missing," Woods said. "But then when the wind crops up like this, all of a sudden they narrow up quite a bit.
"Here, you just understand that the wind is going to blow and you're going to have to hit some really funky shots and some funky numbers. ... I don't think there's any other tournament we play in that's like this."
The wind is Kapalua's enduring harm, and Woods is creating an enduring golf legacy. He originated the term "Tiger Slam" last year, winning The Masters to hold all four major championships at once. By the end of the season he had won five times, captured his third consecutive Player of the Year honor and extended his record for successive weeks as the world's top-ranked golfer to 116.
He is barely 26.
Yet the offseason's relentless debate revolved around others closing the "Tiger Gap." It resumed yesterday with the velocity of the Kona winds mostly because Woods didn't win another major after the Masters, didn't finish in the Top 10 every time he grew a goatee and didn't overwhelm everyone as he had in 2000.
Still, as Spaniard Sergio Garcia put it, when Woods is around a tournament gets "a little extra spicy taste on it." At 21 — he turns 22 Wednesday — Garcia believes he is closing "the gap" after becoming the first player born in the 1980's to win on tour. "The gap is a lot closer, I think," Garcia said. "You saw it last year. Of course, he's not playing as well as he played in 2000 or '99. But to play at that level your whole life you've got to be unbelievable.
"More than anything, I consider myself a challenger because I'm younger than him. I haven't done the things he's done, but give me four years."
Garcia smiled as he said that. But Hal Sutton, 43, was completely serious soon after when he said Woods has "overwhelmed most people's expectations" in his 5 1/2 years on tour.
"I know for a fact," Sutton acknowledged, "that I was overwhelmed by his ability."
Woods has won this tournament, which brings together the champions of the previous year, twice since 1997. His worst finish is eighth, last year when Jim Furyk won. There was talk of the "Tiger Gap" closing then. Garcia thinks it might always be just that — talk.
"I think in 2010 you'll still be asking that question," he said yesterday.
And then he smiled again.
