No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 933: Vijay Singh Deep Dive

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

On this edition of the NLU Special Projects series, we relive Vijay Singh's dominant 2004 season which might be the most underappreciated in modern golf history. We also look back at Singh's unlikely ascension from the island of Fiji, through various tours in far flung locations around the globe to ultimately challenge, and briefly overtake, Tiger Woods as the best golfer on the planet. If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining The Nest: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at nolayingup.com/join Support Our Partners: Rhoback NLU Pro Shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. Johnny, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Better than most! Expect anything different? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sal here going to be turning the reins over shortly to Kevin Van Valkenburg for a deep dive into VJ Singh's 2004 season, a little bit about his career on top of that as well.

But on the heels of Scottie Scheffler's season that we just saw this past year, we thought it'd be fun to revisit one of the great underrated seasons really of all time maybe or of recent golf history. We'll dive into all that. Kevin put a lot of time into these. We've had a lot of fun bringing you some of these narrative pods. We're hoping to do more of these in 2025 as well. Mr. Kevin Van Valkenburg, take us away. Welcome to the show. When Scottie Schaeffler shot a final round 67 at Eastlake this year in the Tour Championship, he earned more than just the $25 million you get for taking home the FedEx Cup. He also inspired the kind of hyperbole

that we had not seen since, well, Tiger Woods was prowling the fairways in his prime. ESPN called it unequivocally one of golf's greatest seasons. The Associated Press declared it was the greatest year since Tiger Woods's 2006 season. The New York Times wondered if it was a top five season of all time. Adam Scott said that his eight wins was up there with any of Wood's best seasons. Even Rory McIlroy said we'd look back one day and view it as one of the greatest individual seasons anyone has had for a long time. Shuffler's season was remarkable. I was grateful to be there to witness a bunch

of it. Shuffler has, to be clear, a a bunch of it. Schaeffler has, to be clear, a real chance to go down as one of the all-time greats. But some of the praise for what happened in 2024 solidified a theory that's been bouncing around in my brain for a few years. Has any season of golf ever been as underappreciated as Vijay Singh's 2004 run? It's only been 20 years, but we barely talk about it. It was mostly a footnote in the debate over Scheffler's dominance. Everyone jumped right to Tiger's 2000 season

or his 2006 season when trying to draw comparisons. Even though Singh, at the unthinkable age of 41 years old, won nine times in 2004. Nine times. Nine times? Nine times. That's twice more than Scheffler won this year depending I suppose on how you view the Olympic gold medal he captured in France. Officially Scheffler won seven times but his Olympic triumph where he birdied five of the last six holes and shot 62 to win, that was objectively sick so

let's count it whether it's considered an official victory or not. Still, no matter how we're counting, Vijay clipped Scotty by a win. 20 years later, it is still one of the most jaw-dropping seasons in the history of golf. I know what some of you are thinking, the modern game is deeper than ever and it's harder to dominate now than it was two decades ago. That might be true, but let's not forget that Vijay ended a 264 week reign by Tiger Woods as the number one player in the world. At a time when it felt like every great player in the Woods era was waving the white towel of surrender when he climbed the leaderboard, Vijay was stubborn enough, driven enough,

and talented enough to push back. The podcasting generation of golf media may have forgotten how great Vijay was that season, but his peers certainly haven't. Earlier this year, I sent Solly out on a mission to quiz a few of Vijay's contemporaries, like Jim Furek and David Duvall, at the Furek & Friends on the Champions Tour. They remember it, in the immortal words of Taylor Swift, all too well. I guess Scotty was eight this year? Is that counting the Olympics for Scotty? Okay, so yeah, I remember Vijay winning nine. That's impressive. I don't know how you do it. Deval's career, by contrast, offers a great window into just how unlikely Singh's sustained greatness was.

From 1997 to 2001, they were two of the best players in the world. Deval won 13 times on the PGA Tour and Singh nine. But Deval was done by age 30, his career derailed by injuries and slumps. Vijay just kept chugging along and had more wins after he turned 40, 22, than Greg Norman, Davis Love III, Tom Watson and Ernie Els had in their entire careers. That season is as good as any season there's ever been pretty much. I mean, he removed Byron Nelson in that, but compares to some of Tigers and Scotties this

year. It was insane. It was insane. In this episode of NLU Special Projects, we wanted to take a trip down memory lane and revisit 2004. To shine a spotlight on a season unlike any, before it or since. Vijay not only dominated golf at an age when he should have been in decline, he also did it when everyone seemed to be rooting against him. Vijay was, to put it gently, a prickly figure. He didn't like the media, he didn't endear himself to

players or caddies, he feuded with the PGA Tour. He was famously dismissive of the greatest female golfer of all time. And fans at every turn rooted against him. He has been, for many years, distrustful of reporters and uninterested in reliving his best days. But if we were going to do an entire podcast about his greatest season, Solly and I figured we had to at least give him a chance to tell us about what made us special. So I sent Solly on a reluctant mission. Go tiptoe into the lion's den, VJ's practice session, and ask some questions. All right I've now followed VJ from the range to the putting green. I'll see if

we can get him to get him to chat. chat. See if he's in a chatty mood. Hey VJ, my name is Chris Solomon. I do the No Laying Up podcast. We're actually doing a podcast on your 2004 season. Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions about it? Do you remember anything specific about that year, about your swing? Everything felt very easy. You know, I mean, when you're swinging well and scoring well and everything is kind of going your way and you're winning, you know, you don't really think about much.

You know, it's all on autopilot and you feel good and your confidence is high and everything just flows when you're in that situation like that. How would you describe your, every one of your colleagues I've asked about that season talks about one thing, that's your work ethic. How would you describe your work ethic? Well, it's always been pretty, you know, how can I say, intense, you know.

All my life I worked hard, not only on on my golf game but also on my physique. So as good of a season I had, it just kind of inspired me even further to work harder. So you get the adrenaline going and you want to do better and better and you know there was no you know there was no limitation of how much I should work so you know it's not that when you're playing well you you just let it flow and don't work as hard I always thought the other way around you know the better you play the harder you work you know. How the hell did Vijay do it? It's a fascinating story. And one we'll attempt to unpack right after the break. This episode is of course brought to you by our friends at Roeback.

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belt loops make it ideal for the course or just your go-to everyday pant if you wanted to. You can style it with a Roeback hoodie, a hybrid jacket or crew. You are set to go. If you haven't already, load up on some Roeback for yourself or for others. Use code NLU at roeback.com. Progenitor is 20% off your first order through the end of this week. That's R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com 20% off bottoms, Q-zips, hoodies, and more with code N-L-U. Throwback season, go check them out. Before we dive into 2004, I think it's important to give some context about Vijay, particularly for some of our younger listeners. I called up my colleague, Tron Carter, and asked him a simple question. How do I explain Vijay Singh?

Tron Carter Yeah, it seems like he was almost one of those guys that was like the fabric of the tour. He's part of the furniture, right? He's got his visor on. He's got his glasses in his later years. He's kind of transitioned to comfier shoes. he lives, spends a lot of time in Hawaii now, but he always had kind of those, he's got those long, long arms, long legs. And that man, that swing was just so good. And it still is even to this day. It's just one of those things where it's, he truly feels like a singular golfer, like VJ Singh. When you think of a golfer,

you think of a Vijay, a Tiger, a Phil, an Ernie. He's one of the one-name guys, I think, which increasingly so. I think that's an increasingly rare thing. Vijay's journey, which started on the tiny island of Fiji in the South Pacific, is one of the most unlikely ascensions in the history of golf. He was born in 1963 in Latoka, the second largest city in Fiji. Much of what we know about Singh's early life comes from a profile that Sports Illustrated writer John Garrity penned in 1996. Garrity, curious as to why the greatest golfer to ever emerge from Fiji had never represented his home country in the World Cup of Golf, traveled to

the island, notebook in hand. Through a series of interviews, he unpacked a complicated relationship between the supporting hero and his homeland. Singh is not an indigenous Fijian, but a Fijian of Indian origin, a descendant of the Hindus and Muslims from the subcontinent who came to work in Fiji's Canefields between 1879 and 1916. Fijia's father, Mohan Singh, was a refueler at the Nandi International Airport. Fijia learned the game from Mohan, an accomplished golfer and a nine-time club champion at the Nandi Airport Golf Club.

As a boy, Gerrity wrote, Fijay would jump the airport fence after school and race across the huge runway to the course, where he practiced and played for hours, usually alone. From the shade of a large mango tree by the 14th fairway, he hit hundreds of balls a day, stopping only to grab a mango off a branch or drink from a nearby tap. At low tide, he hit balls on the flat, firm sand of the beach, a good place to learn the crisp contact needed to spin the ball off Fiji's water grass fairways. At home, Vijay studied photographs of Sam Snead and Tom Weisskopf.

It was $25 to be a member of the club and his family could barely afford it. In his Hall of Fame speech in 2006, Fiji would recall those days as some of the happiest of his life. That was Fiji, you know, and I didn't know any better and it was probably some of the nicest time of my life. I was beating balls all day and just trying to play this game of golf. And I love this game. I think it's one of the best games that I've ever known and I ever will know. By the time Vijay was 17, Garrity wrote, he was the airport club champion, the Fiji amateur

champion and the owner of practically every other cup and medal the islands had to offer. Fiji was cocky as hell, said Michael Lentz, the former Treasury Secretary of the Fiji Golf Association. He used to sell the prizes before he even played in the tournament. He was that sure of winning. The animus, however, went beyond Fiji's arrogance. Every time Fiji traveled around the South Pacific to compete in youth tournaments, he

would rack up hundreds of dollars in long-distance phone calls, bills that he skipped out on or others had to cover. Eventually it got him banned from playing tournaments on the PGA Tour Australia. It would be more than a decade before he paid off those debts. Unable to hone his game in Australia, Vijay plied his trade on the Asian Tour where he found some success, winning for the first time in 1984 at the Malaysia PGA Championship. But in 1985, in the second round of the Indonesian Open at Jakarta, the tournament director of the Indonesian Golf Association, Rudy Lisa Pahle, ruled that

Singh had improved his score by one stroke before signing his card and was therefore disqualified. Edmund Yong, the secretary general of what was then called the Southeast Asia Golf Federation, notified Singh that he was indefinitely suspended from the Asian tour. For years, Garrity wrote, Singh described the incident as a misunderstanding, and he blamed Indonesian golf officials for punishing him unfairly. But Garrity found an American pro who played the Asian tour at the time who contradicted Singh's account.

I was there, says the player, who asked not to be identified. It was not a misunderstanding. BJ was accused and suspended for altering his own card. All of us who are around are very upset that Vijay denies this. Since he was suspended from multiple tours, Vijay began work as a teaching pro in Borneo. At Kanagaw, Gerrity wrote, Vijay gave lessons to lumberjacks and truck drivers from a shell oil drilling station. The closest civilization was a two and a half hour drive away down a dirt road. You're hitting the ball in a hundred degree heat trying to make some money,

Vijay would say years later. I never thought I'd come to America or anything like that. He was, however, happy. He and his wife, Ardina, looked back at that time in Borneo fondly. You'd get up in the morning and hear the birds, the sounds of the jungle, Vijay said. Nothing to worry about. You had a roof over your head and something to eat. And we had each other. I learned a lot about life. Vijay's journey from Borneo to the European Tour could be a novel in its own right. He

quit his club pro job in 1987 and traveled to Scotland, hoping to qualify for the Open Championship. But he didn't have enough money to just play golf, so at night, he worked as a bouncer at a nightclub. The worst part of the job was telling people they couldn't come in because they were too drunk. It's always tough to be the bad guy, BJ would say years later. I remember walking to my car. I had an old jalopy at two in the morning and I would worry about getting attacked. My car was fine if it started right away, but it often didn't. So it could get a bit scary, wondering if a gang of guys were waiting for me. When he failed to qualify for the Open,

he signed up for the African Safari Tour, playing, according to Garrity, in smoky chaotic outposts like Nigeria's Benin City, which he described to Sports Illustrated as unbelievable, a Mad Max kind of place. But when he won the 1988 Nigerian Open, he vaulted to the top of the African Safari Money List and that led to other opportunities. The same year, he won an event in Sweden, then tied for second in European Tour Qualifying School. He won the Volvo Open in Florence, Italy, and the El Bosque Open in Spain the following year.

Success came slowly but steadily. He made it to the PGA Tour in 1993 and won the Buick Classic as a rookie, defeating Mark Weeby in a playoff. He developed a reputation as someone who was not interested in socializing. All he wanted to do was hit golf balls, often for hours at a time. He would go back to his hotel after playing his rounds and get bored, so he would go back to the practice range and hit balls until there was no light left. "'When my wife and my boy are not traveling with me, what do you do?'

Singh said. "'After you finish your round, you've got the whole day to do nothing. I'd rather go hit balls than go to the hotel room and lie there and watch TV.'" Even when he was forced to go back to his room, he'd keep practicing there, too. "'The first thing I do when I check into a room is rearrange the furniture so I could practice, VJ said. But when I check out, I try to put it back the way it was. His range sessions became the stuff of legend.

He once cracked a rib because he refused to stop hitting balls while squeezing a soft nerf ball under his left armpit, even though it was causing him discomfort. Even though it was raining. When he missed the cut at the memorial in 1994, he didn't pack his bags and head home, nor did he travel to the next tour stop. Instead, he stayed in Columbus through the weekend and hit balls in the range for eight hours, first on Saturday and then again on Sunday. I was working on something and wanted to get it fixed, he said.

I don't like to get it fixed next week. I like to get it fixed now." Years later, PGA Tour player Zach Blair bumped into Singh during one of his epic range sessions at the Colonial. Singh, who felt like Blair had poached his coveted spot on the range, loomed menacingly a good six inches above Blair, who was just a rookie at the time. But Blair learned firsthand that Vijay, if you gave it right back to him, was more bark than bite. And that range is kind of weird.

You know, it's there's two sides to it, but there's it was like a Monday afternoon, maybe even Sunday before the event started. And it was like late afternoon, so hot, like ridiculous. And there's kind of like the one side of the range has a couple of trees that overhang. And he was kind of over there beating balls and he'd clearly been there for kind of a long time. And I went over and was hitting balls and then he kind of left and I kind of went over

to where he was because he had the kind of shade that was the only part that had some shade and then he had come back and was kind of like, hey, you see those divots right there, they make a V, that's like, that's my spot. And the only reason any of this kind of worked out the way it did was was my agent or somebody had kind of told me something about Vijay, how he kind of likes to, you know, try to intimidate people a little bit, maybe the first time they're meeting. And, you know, he kind of likes when people give it back. So he ended

up kind of hitting some balls just behind me, I didn't, I didn't really move because I was almost done, but I hurried and made a line full of divots that kind of made the V a Z and kind of went over to him and was like, hey, it's a Z now, that's my spot. And he definitely loved it. I thought it was pretty funny. And, you know, we didn't really cross paths too much before that. It's not like he knew who I was or anything like that, but he definitely was pretty cool after that. And, you know, would always, you know, give me a, give me a, hey, what's up or something like that. If I saw him out there on the course or on the range.

And it really just only worked out, like I said, because I had kind of heard you know make sure you give it back to him if he kind of you know tries to big dog it Singh made few friends and offered few, if any, apologies as he climbed the rankings and emerged as one of the world's best players. When he won the PGA Championship at Sahelik country club in 1998, it was seen as a major breakthrough but it was also another opportunity for the media to resurface his cheating allegations

from Jakarta. It hardened his feelings about the press. When he won the Masters in 2000, he gave the press very little to work with in his victory press conference. As he got up to leave, he mumbled, kiss my ass everybody. And the press seemed to share the sentiment. A good chunk of Sports Illustrated's game story about his Masters win focused on his past cheating allegations, and writer Alan Shipnuck quoted an anonymous American writer cupper saying, once a cheater, always a cheater, when referring to Singh.

The article and the quote so incensed Ernie Els, whom Singh had just outlasted to win the Masters, Els took the unusual step of writing a letter to the editor that Sports Illustrated ended up running in full. "'My reaction to reading this,' Ells wrote, "'was disgust.' "'Why would someone say that about Vijay "'as he triumphed in the Masters? "'Why would SI's article in the first major

"'of the 21st century not confine itself "'to Vijay's magnificent victory? "'Why did instead the writer dredge up an unsubstantiated allegation about an event that may or may not have occurred 15 years ago? Why paint an unflattering picture of Vijay by saying he is quote thought to have as much personality as Iron Byron and calling him quote unapproachable and quote the worst interview in the sport? I've probably played more with Vijay over the past 10 years than anybody else in all parts of the world and I

know and respect him as a good friend, a great family man and an ultimate professional. Sure, he works long and hard at his game but that is something to be admired. Anyone who knows Vijay would tell you that there's a lot more to the man. I take people as I find them, and each person should make his own judgment. But let's make those judgments based on the facts. I know Vijay, and the fact that I often choose to play my practice rounds with him is enough evidence of how much I enjoy his company. The bottom line is that Vijay Singh won the Masters. He beat the best players in the world, and he has done it before at the 1998 PGA at Sahale. We should be congratulating Vijay on being a great champion.

Golf, Ells said in closing, should be proud of Vijay Singh. Vijay had little interest in debating or defending his reputation. He just wanted to play golf, win money and trophies, and get better at his craft. People could take him or leave him as far as he was concerned. But he didn't do himself any favors in 2003 when the Colonial announced it was giving a sponsors exemption to LPGA player Annika Sorenstam. From Stockholm, Sweden, please welcome Attika Sorenstam. Singh told Associated Press reporter Doug Ferguson that he hoped Sorenstam would miss

the cut and if he were to be paired with her, he would withdraw. What is she going to prove by playing, VJ said? It's ridiculous. She's the best woman golfer in the world, and I want to emphasize woman. We have our tour for men, and they have their tour. She's taking a spot from someone in the field." The backlash was significant. The New York Daily News said that Singh had the sour disposition of a snapping turtle.

One newspaper columnist, Gary Shelton of the Tampa Bay Times, called his comments sexist, elitist, and boorish, then suggested that his half-hearted apology was insincere and lacked conviction. What a wiener, Shelton wrote. Rob Duker of the Cape Cod Times said that Sing was about as boring as a Wall Street suit, and that if he could be bottled, he'd be Nyquil. At least Sorenstam, a ten-time major winner and arguably the greatest female golfer in history, was compelling.

No one was going to get excited about Vijay playing the Colonial, even if he had just won the Byron Nelson the previous week. When Vijay Singh won the Masters in 2000, you needed a cattle prod to wake up the reporters in his post-round press conference, Duke amused. Singh said he was sorry it sounded like he was personally attacking Sorenstam. It wasn't personal, he insisted. He felt it was important for him to stick up for the player whose spot he believed that she was taking.

He'd been that guy once, desperate for opportunities. This is a man's tour, Singh said. There are guys out there trying to make a living. It's not a lady's tour. If she wants to play, she should, or any other woman for that matter. If they want to play the man's tour, they should qualify and play like everybody else. Singh might have become a pariah in certain circles, but a large swath of public resentment didn't seem to faze him.

What bugged him is that his son, Cass, had to see it. There's a lot of negative written about me, Vijay said. I can take care of that when I read it, but when my son reads it and he asks questions about it, it's very hard to explain to a 13-year-old what's going on. That was hard for me to deal with for the first month or so, but after that it was fine." His golf game continued to flourish. Singh finished second at the Open Championship in July, then won twice more at the end of 2003, capturing the John Deere and the Funai Classic.

At the Funai, he out-dueled Tiger Woods, beating him by four shots, and passed him on the PGA Tour money list. Woods pithily dismissed the accomplishment. He pointed out that he, not Singh, had been voted the 2003 Player of the Year by his peers. Anyone would much rather have the Player of the Year honors than the money title, Woods said. He plays a lot more than I do. If it were important, I'd play 25-30 events every year.

In an era when so many of Tiger's rivals seemed to be shrinking from the challenge, Vijay was embracing it. He'd climbed to number two in the world rankings, his highest ranking ever. When the 2004 season began in Hawaii, the 40-year-old Singh stated his intentions clearly. He planned to end Tiger's four-year streak as the top-ranked player in the world. I don't think I can catch him this year, Singh said, but maybe in a year or so. His points are so far ahead of me that even if I win a few times this year, it's not going to be easy for me to catch him. But in my mind, 40 is just a number.

I'm physically much stronger than I was when I was 25. I feel like I'm a stronger person physically and mentally. I've learned a lot through the years. BJ wasn't kidding around. He was on the precipice of something special. After the break, we'll dig into one of the most interesting, if unlikely runs in the history of the PGA Tour. This episode is also brought to you by the Ness, NoLangups community of avid golfers.

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There is another piece of context you need if you really want to appreciate VJ's 2004 season. It was the first year the PGA Tour was able to use Shotlink to keep track of strokes gained metrics. Strokes gained, if you're unfamiliar, is a golf stat created by Mark Brody, a mathematician and a professor at Columbia Business School. He reshaped the way lots of fans and players would understand golf statistics. Brody correctly identified that a 20-foot putt should not be viewed the same as a 3-foot putt when it came to calculating putting stats. You had a 15% chance of sinking a 20-footer and a 96% chance of sinking a 3-footer,

so we needed to come up with a stat that weighed them differently. Total putts was meaningless if you were always flagging your irons. Strokes gained was able to determine the average outcome from any distance on the green using millions of simulations. If you made a long putt, you gained a percentage of strokes against the average. If you missed a short putt, you lost strokes. Add up all those gains and losses and you truly know whether you putted well that season or not. A good player might be half a stroke better per round than the field average over the course of an entire year. It wouldn't become an official PGA Tour statistic until 2011, but the Tour kept track of the

numbers, then released them years later. What we eventually learned is what the eye test already told us. Vijay Singh was a bad putter, at least relative to his peers. It wasn't for a lack of trying different stuff. Throughout the course of his career, VJ tried just about everything. Putting with a broomstick, putting cross-handed, putting left-hand low.

He anchored, he split his hands, even putted with a glove on. He putted with a light grip, a heavy grip, a flat grip and a round grip. He used a blade, a mallet, putters with toe hang, and putters that were face balanced. He tinkered with different weights and different lofts. Even good putting runs didn't satisfy him. In 2000, he won the Masters using an unconventional putter from a small company named Dandy that

was designed by a former concert pianist. He ditched it a month later. I think putting is always my problem, Vijay said. I'm not a bad putter, but I'm not a great putter. The statistics told a different story. For the 2004 season, Sing ranked 129th on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gain putting, losing.089 strokes per round. Tiger Woods ranked number one that year in Strokes Gain putting at plus.853, meaning every tournament, Vijay was giving up almost three strokes on the greens to the best putter in the world.

If I told you you had negative Strokes Gain putting for that season, would that be a surprise to you? Wow, yeah. I wish, you know, even to this day, everybody said, man, if you only could putt it, you know, putt it well. I said, well, if I putt it well, probably I wouldn't have struck the ball that well, you know? So it kind of goes hand in hand. But, you know, I was, all my life I wasn't, I wasn't the, you know, worst putter, but I wasn't the best putter. So, you know, hey, you don't win nine tournaments putting badly, right?

In a sense, VJ is right. He couldn't have putted that poorly in 2004, at least not on the weeks that he won. But the truth is it's not like he was hot some weeks and cold other weeks. He played in 28 PGA tour events that season and finished in the top 25, a remarkable 24 times. He was a runner up twice and finished in the top 10, 18 times. He was a runner-up twice and finished in the top 10 18 times. He also finished 15th and 18th in two events on the European Tour. He was a ball-striking genius, even though at every step it seemed like the crowds were pulling for somebody else. It started in Hawaii at the

Mercedes Championship where Singh was ultimately nipped at the finish by Stewart Appleby by one stroke. But for stretches, Vijay was as good as ever, birdying seven consecutive holes at one point in the second round. On the final day, even though the crowd was rooting hard for Appleby and Tiger, Vijay birdied four of his last five holes to make Appleby sweat down the stretch. He even had a lengthy eagle putt on the final hole. He left it on the lip. The putter took a lot away from me this week. I figured it probably owes me one, Vijay said. It looked good for a long time.

For anyone keeping score in their unofficial head-to-head duel, Vijay was six shots better than Tiger for the week. He followed it up with a 10th place finish at the Sony, then a 3rd place finish at the FBR Open in Scottsdale, his 11th consecutive top 10 finish. It gave him the longest top 10 streak on the PGA Tour since Greg Norman finished in the top 10 10 consecutive times between 1993 and 1994. I think going to the gym has been the biggest change in my golf swing, PJ said. I feel stronger.

I feel like I can hit the ball harder and firmer. My miss hits are very strong, so if you miss hit it and miss it badly, my bad shots are not so bad. That's because I'm strong right now. If I don't work out a day, I feel like I missed something. So it's come to a stage where I feel like I'm going to go out there and work out every day." At the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in early February, BJ captured his first victory of the season, winning by three strokes over Jeff Maggert and four over Phil Mickelson.

A win that was all the more impressive because he didn't feel like he played well. On Sunday, he hooked his first three drives in the rough and still made three birdies. It kind of reminds me of the streak that Tiger was on a few years ago when he won four majors in a row, Maggard said. It's like all he had to do was show up and he was going to shoot five or six under. That kind of reminds me of the way Vijay is playing. Once again, Singh crept closer to Woods in the world rankings, but he rebuffed questions asking if he believed he was already

the best player in the world. My ranking doesn't say that, Vijay said. I'm number two. I'm playing the best I can. I want to be number one before I finish, but it's a hard feat to take Tiger off the top because he's playing well. If I keep playing like I am now, I have a shot.

Maybe in a year or two. The best part of the win, however, was Clint Eastwood handing him the trophy. The outlaw Josie Wales singing Vest was one of his favorite movies. I don't believe that story about Josie Wales. You don't? No, sir, I don't. I don't believe no five pistolaires could do in Josie Wales. Maybe it was six. Could have even been ten. I think he's still alive. Receiving the cup from Clint was the highlight of my whole week, Singh said. He's my hero. He's been my hero for a long, long time. This is the first time I've actually ever

met him." If there's one cold streak to Vijay's 2004 season, it arrived in the weeks after Pebble and the lead-up to the Masters. His top-10 streak, just too short of Jack Nicklaus's PGA Tour record of 14 straight, ended at the Buick Invitational when he missed his only cut of the season. He had respectable but forgettable finishes at the Nissan Open, the match play, and at Bay Hill, but he wasn't able to climb into contention. His putting kept letting him down. His reputation, on the other hand, was evolving.

In May, Sam Weinman, who would eventually become the editorial director at Golf Digest, but at the time was a writer for the Westchester Journal News, penned a column reflecting on the one-year anniversary of Singh's comments about Sorenstam. In the 12 months since Singh e-hoped Sorenstam would miss the Cud the Colonial, Reimann wrote, Singh still hasn't been embraced as one of golf's cuddliest figures. But maybe he isn't quite the villain that he was. Fellow tour players insist that he's one of the most generous guys on the range. Pro-Am participants insist he's engaging and an active playing partner.

There doesn't seem to be a middle ground, but maybe there should be. Singh seemed indifferent towards the shifting opinions regarding his character. I'm always the same, Vijay said. I don't think I've changed a bit. You see the serious side of me when I'm playing golf tournaments. You cannot just switch off and on when you leave the golf course. You have to be in that frame of mind for a little while until you get out of this environment and get into your room. And then you can kind of relax.

You have to have that intense focus all the time. People take it the wrong way. But I'm a nice guy, I think. Singh's season began trending in the right direction again at the Masters, whereas 69 on Sunday helped him climb into a tie for sixth place, another step closer to Tiger, who finished 22nd. But the round was important for personal reasons. It marked the first time that Vijay's father, Mohan, was able to see him play a round in person in the United States. He also wondered whether it might be the last time. His father had recently undergone a quadruple bypass.

It was great to see my wife, my boy, and the whole gang here," EJ said. The Masters seemed to rejuvenate the magic he showed early in the season. The following week at the Shell Houston Open, he won for the second time, slogging his way through multiple rain delays to outlast Scott Hoke and John Daly on a Monday finish. As he walked off the 18th green, he bared hugged his trainer, Joey Diovasalvi, thanking

him again for pushing him during so many 6am workouts. I think today was the best I've played in a long, long time, Vijay said. The win pulled Singh to within 2.58 points of Woods in the official World Golf rankings, the closest that anyone had been in two years. Singh admitted he was no longer ruling out catching Tiger before the end of the season. If I keep playing like I've been playing, he said, I've got a chance. The following week in New Orleans, it looked like Singh was sliding out of contention. He trailed Joe Ogilvie and Phil Mickelson by six shots with eight holes to play.

His putter once again had gone cold. But a furious rally that included an eagle on the 15th hole saw him shoot 29 on the back nine. He clipped Ogilvy on the 18th hole with a 25-foot birdie putt to win for the second straight week. Maybe if I win another four or five events this year, maybe I'll get a little bit more attention, Singh joked. The following week at the Wachovia Championship, Woods sounded, for the first time, at peace with the idea that he might get tracked down by Singh. "'VJ certainly should get all the respect in the world,' Tiger said, because he's worked

at his game to a level where he's consistent and he's able to pretty much contend in every tournament he plays in, and that's a lot. It's a fact that I won't be number one in the world forever. Either someone flat out outplays me or I might not play at the same level or old age takes over. Whatever the circumstances are, I don't know, but whatever they are, it's going to happen. Every street comes to an end. That's just a fact of life. Tiger didn't know it, but as it turns out, Vijay's best golf was yet to come. So how did Vijay, at age 41, track down a 28-year-old Tiger Woods? Vijay played the best golf of his career, but there's some nuance to this tale. Tiger was in the midst of some significant swing changes that would bear fruit in 2005,

when he returned to form and win the Masters in the Open Championship. And he'd also finished second at the US Open and fourth at the PGA Championship. But Vijay struck right when Tiger was vulnerable, and he did it with some swing changes of his own. As he later detailed to Golf Digest, he made a decision late in 2003 to shorten his driver's

swing in an attempt to get not only more consistent, but because he believed he could produce more power. Everyone used to believe that you needed a long, loose backswing to hit the ball far. It isn't true, Singh told Digest. "'I've worked to make my backswing more compact and controlled, and I'm 10 yards longer with each club, not to mention straighter than I was three years ago.'" He also made a strategic decision to try to eliminate the left side of the golf course. He would have his caddy stand behind him during his epic range sessions and make sure his

club face was either square or slightly open at the top of his backswing. With his short irons, he vowed to be as aggressive as possible. I've heard people say it's better to take more club and swing easy, but I like to play the opposite way when it comes to club selection," he told Digest. My colleague Tron Carter was a senior in high school in 2004. He admits now he was not the biggest fan of VJ. There was a respect there, but never a genuine appreciation. I think to the golfing masses, it didn't engender any feeling, right?

It was just, man, this guy's really good. This guy's really good. It's kind of a shrug of like, yeah, like we don't really have a whole lot to say about him. But over time, those feelings have softened. How could TC not appreciate someone who hit great drives and approach shots, but was fated to be flummoxed by putting watching VJ grind and tinker brought about a new appreciation? I think that's something that's going to age well with him too is he always felt like

an underdog or he just felt like an outsider and he acted accordingly. He never got too comfortable. He never got complacent, even out on the champion's tour. The guy just wants to compete. He likes the process. And I really, really respect that. And I don't think 2004, 18-year-old me necessarily understood what that took, but I think 38-year-old me has an immense amount of respect for that. At the Buick Open in August, Vijay played some of his best golf of the season but he had to contend with a red-hot John Daly who had massive support from Michigan crowds. When the duo was paired together for the final round, fans greeted Daley with a huge roar on the first tee.

VJ, in contrast, received only polite applause. It was noisy and the crowd was all for him, Singh said. I've never seen crowds like that, unless John was playing in his backyard. I asked him if he paid the crowds to be so noisy. The more they made noise, the more calm I became. I'm just growing up I guess and handling the pressure better." Vijay was so confident he couldn't resist talking a little trash to Daley on the first tee. It was so funny Vijay when we got started he says, Daley I know

you're playing good but I'm gonna kick your ass today. And then John Daly stopped. I mean, just totally blew everybody away, especially me. We're on the third team. He goes, maybe I shouldn't have said that. You know, he starts birdie eagle, birdie birdie. I mean, nobody does that. I mean, me and Veej are pretty good friends. We'll tell each other like it is, and we have a blast. Seeing close with a 67 on Sunday to win, thanks in part, and stop me if I've said this before, to a new putter he put in the bag. It was a standard length putter,

the first time he went away from using a long putter in two and a half years. The way I putted for the last two months, I could not possibly have putted worse, Vijay said. If Vijay had failed to capture a major in 2004, it's hard to imagine we'd view this season with the same reverence we do now. And Singh, even at the time, seemed to grasp that. He also tried to downplay its importance. I don't think it's as important to me as it is to Ernie or Tiger, he admitted.

The PGA Championship at Whistling Straits would represent his last chance. First on the tee, the 1998 PGA champion from Fiji, Vijay Singh. I'm going to try my hardest to win this one, Singh said. Not winning from 2000, obviously

I'm disappointed that I have not won more majors, but there's always the next one. I always keep telling myself that and this is another good opportunity right here. For the first three rounds at Whistling, Singh's game was magnificent. He was in complete control of his golf ball, and his putter was on fire. He and Woods were paired together, but exchanged barely 10 words over two days. Singh opened the tournament with a 67,

then followed it up with a 68 on Friday. Tiger, on the other hand, barely kept his five-year cut streak alive and trailed Sing by 11 shots going into the weekend. Who cares about the number one ranking, Wood said. Yeah, it's great to be number one in the world, but what's really great is to play consistently. Singh shot a 69 on Saturday, meaning he would take a one-stroke lead over Justin Leonard going into Sunday. The last seven times Singh entered the final round with a lead, he'd managed to hold on for the win.

The wind, however, was howling on Sunday. No player in the final 15 twosomes would break 70. Singh's putter was suddenly ice cold. He wouldn't make a single birdie in the final round, and after he'd doubled the fourth hole when he couldn't escape from a greenside bunker, he trailed Leonard by two strokes. It felt like Leonard's tournament to win. He should have put my man away when he had the chance, sings caddy Dave Renwick would say afterward. Leonard responded with a putting performance so dreadful,

only someone who had suffered on the greens like Singh could truly understand it. Leonard missed putts of four feet, four feet, five feet and eight feet on the back nine. Then he missed a 12 footer for par on 18 that would have given him the win. There would be a three-man playoff between Vijay, Leonard and Chris DiMarco. On the first hole, the 361 yard 10th, Vijay nearly drove the green, then hit a beautiful pitch in close and rolled in

his only birdie of the day. On the next hole, the 236 yard par 3 17th, he hit a three iron that muscled through the air like it was Thor's hammer, stopping six feet from the cup. One of the greatest shots in major championship history, Renwick, sings caddy, said afterwards. And in fitting VJ fashion, passion. He missed the putt. In the end, it didn't matter. Leonard and DiMarco couldn't make a birdie on either of the final two holes. Vijay had captured his third major championship. In his victory press conference, a reporter attempted what he hoped would come across as a lighthearted question. Singh's relationship with the press had thawed a bit in recent years. The reporter prefaced that he hoped this would be received in the spirit it was intended, but

he wanted to know, is this the ugliest win you've ever been involved in? Singh grinned. It's the prettiest one, I think. one I think. The win, remarkably, was still not enough to vault him to the top of the world rankings, which made Vijay throw his hands up in mock exasperation. Or else I'm going to be number two for the rest of my life. After two years of gradually reeling Tiger in, Vijay would finally catch him a few weeks later at the Deutsche Bank Championship. Fittingly, the two were paired together in the final round, but the crowds in Boston were massively partisan in Tiger's favor.

Singh estimated that 95% of them were pulling for Woods, and maybe 5% were pulling for him. Before the round, he couldn't resist teasing the media a bit. Fortunately for all of you, Tiger is paired with me, so you'll have a lot to write about, he said. For most of 2003 and much of 2004, Singh had been obsessed with this moment. What once seemed impossible was now there for the taking. He had not come to the United States with the dream of ever becoming the best golfer in the world. All he really wanted initially was to make cuts and provide for his family.

But as the poet Robert Browning wrote, Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? B.J. Singh birdied three of his final four holes To slam the door on any hopes of a tiger comeback And win by three strokes. The Hartford Current noted as the final putt dropped, Woods's reign officially ended at 5.44 pm as he shook hands with Singh.

For the first time in five years, or 264 consecutive weeks, there was a new number one ranked golfer in the world. Afterwards, Jeff Jacobs of The Current wrote, Tiger did everything to deflect the conversation from the number one ranking. He wanted to talk about his swing. Fine. The truth is this day presented another challenge to Tiger. If it wasn't a wake-up call, it is certainly the bank statement in the mail. He isn't the best golfer in the world anymore. That's not an argument. It's a statistical fact.

A few columnists couldn't hide their dismay. statistical fact. A few columnists couldn't hide their dismay. This was a worst-case scenario, an in case of emergency break glass development. On ESPN's page two, columnist Jason Whitlock went so far as to suggest that Vijay was killing the sport. Nothing could be worse for golf than Vijay Singh as the PGA Tours's number one player," Whitlock wrote. As much as Tiger Woods needs a nemesis, a hated rival, Vijay is the wrong guy for the job. Vijay has no sex appeal, no charisma, no nothing. He's the one golfer on tour who could get unbelievably hot, win seven tournaments including a major, whip Tiger heads up for the number one ranking, and not create a ripple of conversation among sports fans.

VJ, Whitlock concluded, was the ultimate golfing wet blanket. Singh, as one might expect, did not seem to care. I've never thought I'd be sitting here the best player in the world, Singh said. Obviously, it's been a journey and something that cannot be forgotten. In fact, he didn't stop there. said. Obviously, it's been a journey and something that cannot be forgotten. In fact, he didn't stop there. He won his next two tournaments, breaking the hearts of Canadians by beating Mike Weir in a playoff at the Canadian Open, then capturing the 84 lumber classic over Stuart Sink for his fifth win in six starts. It's a run I hope never ends, Vijay said. I'm enjoying it so much. I feel like every time I enter a tournament, I should win it."

At the Chrysler Championship in October, Singh won by five over Tommy Armor III and Jesper Parnevik, surpassing $10 million in prize money for the first time in PGH Tour history. Parnevik was left in what can only be described as slack-jawed wonder. It's amazing, he said. It's just as amazing as Tiger was four years ago. Tiger would eventually reclaim his number one ranking in 2005, and he would hold it for another five years, making a compelling case as the greatest player of all time by winning six of his majors between 2005 and 2008. But what Vijay accomplished,

particularly after he turned 40, might never be duplicated. Without the run he went on, Tiger likely would have held the number one ranking for an entire decade. Vijay never won another major, but his devotion to squeeze every last drop out of his talent didn't fade either. He won 10 more times

after 2004. He didn't fall out of the top 10 in the OWGR until June of 2009 when he was 46 years old. In 2013, the PJ Tour suspended Singh for use of a banned substance, deer antler spray. Singh was furious, and he sued the tour, claiming he'd been subjected to public humiliation and ridicule for months as part of the investigation. The tour dropped the suspension, but for five years, Singh refused to settle his lawsuit, vowing to go scorched earth on the tour once they got to court. A week before his defamation case was set to go to trial, the two sides finally settled. Vijay was adamant that his success was simply a product of hard work, not performance enhancers. He would not stand by and let his character be questioned without a fight.

In one final act of career defiance, Singh nearly won the Honda Classic in 2019 at the age of 56, playing his way into a tie for the lead on the final day before finishing solo sixth. That VJ refused to let age diminish his body and his game ought to serve as both an inspiration and a challenge for today's current stars. Consider this piece of trivia. VJ Singh won more times in his 40s, 22, than Tiger did in his 30s and 40s combined. Or how about this one?

As great as Xander Schauffele has been, VJ still won more times in 2004 than Xander has won in his entire career. It's true, fields are deeper now and equipment is more forgiving, which likely makes it difficult for any one player to separate. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a greater appreciation for just how great Vijay Singh was in his prime, even if his prime didn't arrive until he was 41 years old. Is there one moment you look back on especially following that season? What's the thing you're most proud of with that season? You know all the wins that I had, you know having nine wins in a

season is pretty incredible, you know just looking back now how the hell did I do it, you know. Give me some of the talent that I had then, you know, but it was something that you just don't forget. Thanks for listening. I'm Kevin Van Volkenburg. This edition of NLU Special Projects was researched and reported by me and Chris Solomon, and edited by DJ Pajowski and Todd Schuster. Sound and Music Editing by Justine Pajowski. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find more on our website, NolangUp.com.

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