Could he remember when they first met?
Tiger has always raised eyebrows with his ability to reel off the achievements of even the most unlikely souls who have popped up on one of his leader-boards and, in answering the Westwood question, it was only a matter of seconds before he came up with a confident cry of “Walker Cup, 1995.”
Not too many would risk contradicting someone with his all-embracing knowledge of the game but, on this score, your correspondent was pretty certain Tiger was wrong. Yes, Lee had won an England cap, but he had never done enough in either the English championship or the Amateur to catch the eye of the Walker Cup selectors.
The matter was only settled when Lee was summoned from across the room. The Englishman was quick to say that Tiger’s was an entirely understandable mistake... There was a Martin Foster who, like him, comes from the northern English town of Worksop – and he was the one who had played in the match in ’95.
Moving on from the Walker Cup meeting that never happened, Tiger said he had vivid memories of how he and his old friend, Mark O’Meara, had lost to Lee and Nick Faldo on the second morning of the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama. “And after that,” he continued, “I remember reading about Lee’s efforts in Japan. I think he won two Taiheiyo Masters in a row and a couple of other titles over there.” He was spot on.
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