The Top 10 Games of 2008 (Pt. 4)

Also see: Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3

4) U.S. Open Golf Championship, Torrey Pines, June 12-16

Tiger Woods made the 2008 U.S. Open special for obvious reasons. He played the noble wounded hero trudging along, refusing to give in to his human limitations. While Kirk Gibson famously hit a game-winning home run on a bad knee and a bad ankle, he only needed to stand in against Dennis Eckersley for one at-bat and make one solid swing. Now imagine if Gibson, on those same two bad legs, had started every game and turned in the series MVP performance. Then imagine that the team needed every last dinger, base hit, and diving catch just to force extra innings in the seventh game before Gibson's Dodgers finally prevail. Oh, last but not least, Gibson would have to be forced to sit out all of the 1989 season with said injuries, questioning all the while if he had just ended or ruined the remainder of his career.

In the U.S. Open, you have no teammates to pick up the slack when your knees fall apart.

Rocco Mediate made the 2008 U.S. Open special for reasons some may forget. That is unfortunate. The middle-aged, slight, humble, and humorous Mediate played an unlikely foil to Woods' massive stature and athletic prowess. Although he was not the first unlikely Tiger challenger of his kind (see Bob May, 2000 PGA Championship, and Chris DiMarco, 2005 Masters), he quickly became a beloved figure among media and fans alike for his self-deprecating humor, class, and appreciation of the moment. For all Mediate's anonymity and underdog role, he battled Tiger to the bitter end and never faded or backed down. Golf lovers nationwide watched and waited for Mediate to falter, as we knew he would have to at some point. Ultimately, he did, but not on the first 72 holes of the Open, and not on the next 18 either. Not until hole 91.

The 2008 U.S. Open went along as expected for the first two rounds. Tiger struggled mightily and was four strokes back of the lead on day one. By the second day, he had caught up and was now one stroke back at –2. Tied for second place with none other than Rocco Mediate. By the third day, Lee Westwood threw his hat into the ring and essentially made it a three-man race. That Saturday was when the magic began to happen.

Despite his pains, Tiger unleashed a hellish wrath of mind-boggling shots on the back nine to take a share of the lead with Westwood. Mediate lurked a mere stroke behind Tiger's 33 strokes on that Saturday second half and that was unequaled by any man within reach. The most memorable of these involved Tiger banking in a chip shot that would have gone well long had it not hit perfectly off the flagstick on the first bounce and settled into the hole. Woods seemed almost embarrassed at his own greatness as he took his hat off, scratched his head, and gave the camera a bashful and bemused grin. For the great ones it seems, lady luck is always an available lifeline.

This left Woods at 3 under par going into the final Sunday, with Westwood at –2 and Mediate at –1. For the latter two golfers, this meant in order to win the Open, they would have to make history. No one had ever come from behind to beat Tiger Woods going into the final Sunday.

As the day was set up, Rocco would play his 18 in an earlier pairing with Woods and Westwood being partnered off in the nightcap. Rocco would shoot a hard-earned 71, par for the course, to finish at 1 under. From there, he would have to sweat it out in the clubhouse, watching the theatrics on television to see if he had won his first major championship at the age of 45.

As Woods and Westwood got off to shaky starts, it became clearer that this was to be a three-man photo finish. A multi-faceted battled had ensued as they went against the score Mediate had posted, as well as each other in real-time.

The most agonizing thing for anyone following Woods throughout the tournament was his tee shots. Often, he would swing and then grimace before making the painstaking walk down the fairway towards his ball.

Sure enough, going into the par-5 18, both men needed at least a birdie to keep their hopes alive and force a tie. No easy task as the course had only allowed each two birdies all day. Both men would hit their tee shots into a bunker, and sure enough, both men would escape that bunker needing long putts to tie. Westwood's 20-footer never had a chance as his weekend came to an agonizing end. Woods had a shorter 12-foot putt that left Rocco looking on from the clubhouse not in fear, but in awe. The underdog who stood to lose so much seemed to be savoring the drama of the moment as much as any other spectator at home.

Tiger's putt rolled into the back lip of the cup and turned for a gasp-filled moment before settling in to tie the Open. A vintage Tiger fist-pumping celebration ensued. "Unbelievable" was Rocco's immediate reaction. "I knew he'd make it."

Monday's match-play showdown between number 1 and number 158 was packed with yet more drama. Tiger managed a three-stroke lead after the 10th hole before fading, while Rocco strung together birdies on 13, 14 and 15. Sure enough going into 18, Mediate had another one-stroke lead, another chance to close out the legend.

Tiger's tee and approach shots on the par-5 were perfect, soaring over the water and onto the green in two to make up the one-strike difference. Still, Mediate found himself on the green with a 20-foot putt for all the marbles. With destiny on his putter, Mediate missed the hole wide by a solid foot, swinging the door wide open for a tiger. Woods was now left with a four-foot birdie putt to force a sudden-death playoff. Putting his usual exuberance aside, Woods calmly sank the putt and moved along in a business-as-usual fashion. The two equals would go to hole seven hoping to break this unending stalemate. It was there, on the 91st hole of this breathtaking tourney that Rocco finally cracked.

Hitting his tee shot into the bunker and his second into the crowd, Rocco got a free drop and chipped it onto the green some 20 feet away. Tiger would reach the green in two and get close with a putt for his third. He would tap in for par, leaving all the pressure this time on Mediate to stay alive. Mediate's Cinderella story would roll on by the cup just an inch to the right. The gimpy and weakened Tiger Woods had not only won his 14th major, but did so in a fashion that exceeded even our god-like expectations for him.

In the days that followed, our appreciation for this victory deepened as the severity of Woods' knee injury was revealed. Tiger may very well have sacrificed a full year's worth of golf to win this one tournament, which has now considered by many as the greatest in U.S. Open history.

And yet, one would be hard pressed to disagree that it was still well worth it.

Final score: Tiger Woods –1, Rocco Mediate –1, Lee Westwood E
Final score, 18-hole playoff on Monday: Tiger Woods (71) E, Rocco Mediate (71) E
Final score, sudden death playoff hole: Tiger Woods (4) E, Rocco Mediate (5) +1

3) Olympic Swimming, 4x100 Men's Freestyle Relay Final, August 11

Few things are less fathomable than what Michael Phelps has managed to accomplish in the Beijing Summer Olympic Games of 2008.

No, I'm not talking about his eight gold medals in eight races, surpassing the legendary Mark Spitz. I'm not talking about his now-legendary drive, focus, work ethic, and conditioning.

What boggles my mind is simply how Michael Phelps was so good, that for he managed, from half a world away no less, to make swimming the national pastime for six mesmerizing days and nights.

Everyone watched. Everyone talked about it. Everyone loved it. This quest by Phelps for the eight holy grails mutated and grew into something much bigger than us all. It appealed to the sports fan that appreciates excellence and greatness, as well as the non-sports fan that loves the Olympics for its great human-interest stories. Over the course of those six days, Phelps attempted to pitch a perfect game underwater and go eight-for-eight.

What made this quest so intriguing was that in a few cases, he would need a little help from his friends. Three of the eight races were four-man relays, and the second race was a relay in which despite Phelps' presence, the French were heavily favored to win. They were even a little cocky. Alain Bernard, the man swimming the final leg for France callously boasted, "The Americans? We're going to smash them. That's what we came here for." Perhaps of more value was the view of NBC analyst Rowdy Gaines, who claimed that, "I put this (race) down on paper a million times and I just see the French winning it every single time."

In short, the American team of Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones, and Jason Lezak, would need their most perfect string of laps to have any chance to compete with the French.

The hope was that the great Phelps would provide an early lead and create a solid cushion, yet he quickly fell behind the powerful Eamon Sullivan of Australia on the opening leg of the race. While Phelps gained ground on Sullivan down the stretch, the Aussies held the lead by three-tenths after one turn.

Weber-Gale was next in the pool for this, his first-ever Olympic swim. Certainly this did not show as Gale made up ground on Australia's Andrew Lauterstein and edged him out for the lead on the turn. By the time Garrett had touched in to end his leg, he had carved a small lead for the U.S. over Australia and France.

The third leg was to be trouble for the Americans, with the slower Cullen Jones in the pool. To no one's surprise, Jones proceeded to swim the slowest leg for the U.S. at 47.65, while Frederick Bousquet of France swam their fastest leg at 46.63. Of course, a full second's difference in swimming means the world, and France had it at their fingertips going into the final leg.

Jones had held down second place with no one else challenging for silver, but the American viewers got a hopeless feeling watching Bousquet pull further and further away near the end of the leg. By the time the much-maligned 33-year-old Jason Lezak entered the pool against the speedster Bernard for France, Lezak was nearly a full body length behind.

Bernard had relished the chance to talk trash and now the world could see why. As Lezak hopelessly chased in pursuit of the Frenchman, Bernard touched the far wall on the turn, ahead of world record pace by over four seconds. Play-by-play man Dan Hicks remarked, "The world record is absolutely going to be shattered here." His next assumption came in saying the Americans should hang on and win the silver medal. More than half a body length behind with one length of the pool left in the race against a world record holder in Bernard, it seemed to be an impossible deficit. Yet just a moment later Lezak began to close the gap.

Suspense built. What had been a rout became a heated one-on-one race down to the end, the two swimmers side-by-side in lanes four and five. Lezak later claimed he felt an unusual late burst of energy. He also took advantage of Bernard's mistake of swimming too close to the barrier, where Lezak could ride the Frenchman's wake and use it to speed him up.

All this culminated in a watershed Olympic moment as America crossed its fingers hoping Phelps' gold-medal hunt was still alive. Hicks cried out almost hysterically, "Here comes Lezak! Unbelievable at the end! He's done it!"

In what has been called one of the greatest relay splits of all-time, Jason Lezak, formerly an over-the-hill everyman of sorts, caught down the great Alain Bernard by eight one-hundredths of a second. Lezak finished his leg at 46.06, the fastest time of any of the 32 swimmers in the relay by more than half a second.

Lezak's heroic lap triggered a wild, raucous celebration on the U.S. platform (not to mention the NBC broadcast booth, where any illusion of neutrality had been shattered along with the world record), and millions more just like it across the country. The United States, they were indeed, at this moment.

For Michael, it would be the second gold of many to come, as he would famously complete his quest for eight. Lezak would even provide another solid assist, finishing off the race for the eighth and final medal in the medley relay.

Often overlooked amidst the drama and suspense was that five of the eight countries broke the previous world record. From start to finish, it was possibly both the highest quality and the most memorable race in the history of Olympic swimming, complete with epic side-stories, trash-talking, and subplots galore, all on the world's greatest imaginable stage.

While it is also notable that Phelps won his seventh gold medal by vanquishing Serbia's Milorad Cavic by one-hundredth of a second in the 100 meter butterfly, it lacked the same memorable dynamic as the relay and certainly did not have the same spine-tingling one-on-one chase scene that concluded Lezak's swim into history.

Michael Phelps most definitely became a legend in those Beijing games, but there will always be a special place in the American heart for Olympic hero Jason Lezak. Michael simply couldn't have done it without him.

Final score: USA 3:08.24 (Gold), France 3:08.32 (Silver), Australia 3:09.91 (Bronze)

Other Olympics Honorable Mentions

• Men's Basketball Gold Medal Game, USA 118, Spain 107, Incredible quality of play for both sides, much closer than final score indicates

Coming soon: The No. 2 and No. 1 games of 2008