PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Ernie Els laughs as the question arrives.
Of course he remembers. You remember your great moments at the major championships like you remember your loved ones. When you have a score better than 154 players in the field at the U.S. Open, you don’t forget it.
But Els also laughs because he knows nobody has really thinks about his better-than-154-players score at the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. They think only about the name that appeared above Els’ on the enormous manual scoreboard on 17 Mile Drive on that June Sunday — Woods. And yes, they think about how the only guy Ernie Els didn’t beat changed golf forever.
“I had that question for about 20 years of my life,” Els said on a chilly Friday afternoon in Pebble Beach 26 years later. “Playing with a guy the way Tiger played that whole week, but especially on that Sunday, I don’t believe he really missed a shot.”
History lingers everywhere, but especially in golf, and especially at great golf courses. It lingers a bit more this weekend at Pebble Beach, where many of the greatest stars from that 2000 U.S. Open are among the players in the field at the PURE Insurance Championship — a 54-hole PGA Tour Champions event played annually from the cliffside golf course.
Els was one of a handful of players in the field in both 2000 and 2026, and he was one of a handful of players to underline an interesting throughline in Woods’ 15-shot victory, that largest in the history of major championship golf: We don’t appreciate it nearly enough.
“I knew way before that happened that he was going to do it,” said Rocco Mediate, who finished T32 that week. “What he did, did not surprise people that have a brain.”
In Mediate’s memory, playing against Tiger at the peak of his powers was like playing Red Rover against a rhinoceros.
“He had everything. Mentally he was ridiculous, but physically he was also ridiculous too,” Mediate said. “The shots he played, none of them surprised me — because they couldn’t be played, and he played them a lot. Crazy stuff.”
It can be easy to understate greatness, to sweep it under the generalization of “The GOAT” and move on. But those who witnessed Woods that week saw something today’s highlight watchers don’t: they saw a player who had accomplished complete and total victory, who had beaten the best in the sport so summarily he faced a cakewalk into a major title — and who kept pushing anyway.
“I’ll never know how he did it,” said Stuart Appleby, MC in 2000. “It was like he conquered it. And yet he just kept making pars. He didn’t let off the gas when he was up by 8. It was miraculous.”
“Well, I after that week, I I felt that I was inferior,” said Justin Leonard, T16, with a laugh. “When it gets firm, the greens get really firm, and the rough is as deep as it is — you know, it can make you feel pretty human. Tiger wasn’t a lot of weeks, but certainly not that week.”
In the end, nobody had a better view of the action than Els, the tournament runner-up who shared each of the final 18 holes with Woods already leading by a million and still pouring it on.
“The intensity he walked on the first tee, I’ll never forget,” Els said. “He kept that up all the way through 18 holes, even winning by 12, 15, whatever it was.”
Els remembers his performance that week. He remembers pride in how he played. He remembers something else more vividly: The sense of certainty that finished his round. Not in himself, but in the knowledge that he had just witnessed his profession change forever.
“I knew the game changed especially that day,” Els said. “He obviously won some big events before that, but that was kind of a really seriously the changing of the guard in sports. Lucky to have been around to see that from up close.”
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