Maverick McNealy’s Incredible Tiger Tale

Recent Stanford grad Maverick McNealy shares alumni status with Tiger Woods. In fact, McNealy co-owns the Stanford record for most collegiate wins ( 11) with Patrick Rodgers.

He recently told Golf.com’s Jessica Marksbury about watching Woods do something fairly epic.

“When I was 5, my aunt, who went to Stanford, knew Tiger,” McNealy said. “And he came over to our house. We had a little chipping area in the backyard. And so Tiger came over, and my dad says, ‘I hit golf balls down into that canyon. You can’t reach anything down there.’ And Tiger says, ‘Can I try?’ ‘Sure.’

So my dad goes out, pulls out a brand new glove — ’cause it’s Tiger — brings out an old TaylorMade bubble shaft driver, tees up a ball, and, no warm-up, no waggle, Tiger hits one. And he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s about 10 yards right.’ My dad said, ‘Yeah, 50 yards short of anything.’ And he had a little house, a little roof, way down there [in the canyon]. And Tiger was like, ‘Give me another ball.’ So he gets another ball, tees it up, hits it and says, ‘That’s right on it.’

And it’s a dead quiet, dead still evening. And the ball’s going, going, going. Then I hear, bam! Right off the roof. And so we all run inside, giggling and laughing. The roof had to have been 400 yards out there and 50 feet, maybe more, dropped down into a canyon valley. And Tiger says, ‘Oh, I’m going to do that again.’ So he gets out, puts another ball down, rips it. And bam! Rips it off the roof again. We said, ‘OK, we’re done. We’re done.'”

It’s yet another reason why so many golf fans (and media) desperately want Tiger Woods to return to anything close to his once-prime form.