Free Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open by John Feinstein, Rocco Mediate

a stellar field. Rocco walked onto the driving
     range on Tuesday morning and spent a solid hour just watching other players hit range balls.
    “Watson was there and [Jack] Nicklaus and [Greg] Norman and just about anyone else you could possibly name who played golf
     at the time,” he said. “I went up and down the range watching them hit balls — not just the big names, but everyone. I still
     like to do that to this day, watch other guys hit balls, because I really think I can learn a lot doing that.
    “That day, though, I wasn’t really learning. I was simply in awe. I watched their swings, watched them hit shots, and walked
     straight back into the clubhouse without hitting a ball. I called Rick Smith on the phone and said, ‘We need to get together
     again as soon as possible and
really
get to work, because I have no chance — I mean
no
chance — to keep my card out here this year. There’s just no way I’m good enough to play with these guys.’
    “I wasn’t exaggerating,” he said years later. “And it wasn’t that I lacked confidence. I was just being a realist. I meant
     what I was saying. I could just see that these guys were on a different level than I was. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going
     to try as hard as I possibly could. I just think I had a very clear idea of what I was up against.”
    Much to his surprise and delight he made the cut that first week, cashing a check for $1,512. He didn’t make another cut until
     May. But he didn’t get discouraged, because he wasn’t surprised to find himself struggling. He started to play better during
     the summer and began to see some progress. He made the cut in Canada and found himself paired in the third round with Greg
     Norman, who had just won the British Open two weeks earlier.
    “That was an experience,” he said. “People forget that Greg was Tiger before Tiger, if not in terms of dominance, in terms
     of charisma and aura. Believe me, back then he had it. I was really pleased with the way I played that day. I think I shot
     72. He shot 64 and made it look easy. I’ll never forget, though, how nice he was to me. Encouraged me all day and told me
     he thought I was going in the right direction when we finished. I mean, the guy just completely dusted me and he was telling
     me how impressed he was with my game.”
    By then Rocco’s game and swing had both measurably improved. He had spent long hours on the practice tee with Smith, working
     on making his swing more side to side than straight up and down. “Straight up and down, I could only hit the ball one way,”
     he said. “When I changed my swing I was able to shape my shots. Hit a draw, a fade, choose what I wanted to do.”
    By year’s end, he had made 10 cuts in 27 tournaments, had one top-ten finish — a fifth in Jackson, Mississippi, in an event
     the same week as the British Open, when most of the top players were overseas — and had earned $20,174, which left him 174th
     on the money list. And just as he had predicted at Pebble Beach, he found himself going back to Q-School.
    “It didn’t really bother me, because I had seen it coming right from the beginning,” he said. “Plus, by the end of the year
     I felt I was a much better player than I had been a year earlier. I figured if that player could make it through Q-School,
     this player should breeze. I went in there with lots of confidence. I knew the guys I was up against just weren’t as good
     as the ones I’d been playing against all year. If they had been, they wouldn’t have been at Q-School.”
    The finals that year were on the West Coast, at PGA West in Palm Springs. Rocco was never in trouble the entire week, always
     in the top ten, never really having a nervous moment, even on the last day. “I was in third place going into the last day,”
     he remembered. “I figured out if I shot 80 I was still going to make it, and I knew I wasn’t going to shoot 80.”
    He shot 69 and ended up in third place