Tiger Woods was able to finish 9 and 8 in a record match against Stephen Ames during the Accenture Match Play Championship. “It’s been a while since I played one like that,” Woods stated.

However the way Woods played was due to earlier comments by Ames who had stated to a reporter from the Golf channel, “How he goes about scoring from where he hits it — that’s the amazing thing. That’s the mark of a true champion. As bad as he hits it, he still manages to win golf tournaments,” Ames had said. Ames had gone on to remark to the Associated Press, “Anything can happen, especially where he’s hitting the ball. “Clearly Woods’ “bad hitting” resulted in him winning the first nine holes with at least seven of these being birdies, with an 18 foot birdie on the second hole.

As the first event of the World’s Golf Championship, Ames was able to enter as the last of 64 players after Thomas Bjorn withdrew with health problems, and provided the words to motivate Tiger’s game.

Even though Ames did not withdraw his words, player David Toms had this to say about Ames’ comments, “I don’t know if you give the best player in the world any incentive to want to beat you,” Toms said.

Ames went on to state memorable phrases such as, “Nobody thought I’d win”…”I don’t live in a warm climate”…finally ending with, “Tiger played very well.”

When Woods was asked to give a response to Ames’ comments he simply replied with the phrase, “9 and 8″.