It's the 1996 U.S Amateur. Does Dahmen Tattle on Tiger? An Investigation...

“With Woods about to make a monumental mistake, Scott uttered seven words that would have made the games Scottish ancestors proud: “Hey Tiger, did you move that back?” P. 115, Tiger Woods. Benedict & Keteyian (By the way, how bout bonus points for the attempted APA or MLA proper citation attempt in a blog? Pretty sweet...)

There are a few things I need to explain before I get into this post, albeit comes at a perfect time. The excerpt above is from the new book Tiger Woods, which highlights the early career of the greatest golfer of all time and takes the reader through his historic rise to fame and notorious fall from grace to which he's trying to redeem at the current time. I will say I've only reached the part of the book where he officially turns pro in 1996, which allowed me to freshen up on the infamous U.S Amateur down at Pumpkin Ridge vs. Steve Scott. Now Scott was the perfect competition for Tiger, especially since he had him on the ropes after the first 18 holes of the match. Imagine being Scott though? Watching Tiger walk to the first tee alongside only Phil Knight, Butch Harmon and Wally Uihlein? What a joke.

Fast forward, as the story goes, the two reach the 16th hole at Pumpkin Ridge with Scott up two. As he settled in to putt, Scott quickly informed Tiger he thought he had mis-marked his ball like the quote from above. At almost an instant, Tiger stood up and remarked his ball before sinking the birdie to move within one and eventually win the match. No acknowledgement from Tiger to Scott, no compliments, no handshake, no nothing. Oh Cat. 

We move ahead to July 1, 2018. The hot pairing surrounding TPC Potomac wasn't Tiger-Burgoon, or Blair-Armour, or even Cejka-DJDFUNK. Nope, it's Joel Dahmen-Sung Kang who moved the controversial needle post final round. As it story goes, Kang apparently hit his ball into a hazard and gave himself a complimentary drop much to the hawkeyes of Dahmen. Joel took to Twitter and dropped a hard 'C' all over our asses against Kang to no avail of the PGA Tour. Yada, yada, yada Dahmen signed the card apparently because he had no choice and went on to finish in whatever place.

Now the real question is asked, again perfect timing due to my slow reading habits: Had Dahmen been Tiger's opponent in 1996 (which is funny because the two were paired together this past Saturday no less), would Joel had spoken up like Steve Scott to help out the machine in the making? Or would he have known to keep quiet and essentially wrap the championship on technicality and go on to become the greatest golfer who ever lived? Well that would obviously be impossible because Dahmen is only 31, but just think about it.

In 1996 Tiger was on a damn mission. In the final tournament prior to turning professional, with the likes of the CEO of Nike and Titleist quite literally in his back pocket and one of the best instructors of all time in his bag, what a way to completely ruin the moment by waiting a millisecond after Tiger attempted his putt to alert an official of the ball misplacement and claim the title for himself. Now I don't know that much about Joel Dahmen, and I only know about Steve Scott because of the book (he also married his caddie which would be a sick idea for a golf movie) but what a controversy we'd have in 1996 and beyond if Scott called Tiger on that marking. In retrospect, it may not have mattered especially since Tiger won the 1994 and 1995 U.S Amateurs. Maybe he'd return to school in an attempt to win his third U.S Amateur in four years? Maybe he'd stay and win a second-straight individual championship? Or maybe he'd be in the same exact position we find him 22 years later. It's fun to speculate. I would've most certainly taken him down, but then again I was never much of a tattle tale.