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Nick O'Hern has made history - the Australian becoming the first golfer to beat Tiger Woods twice in professional matchplay competition.
The 35-year-old O'Hern made himself the answer to a future Trivial Pursuit question yesterday when he survived a Woods comeback, dodged a large bullet at the first extra hole and clinched a shock 1-up victory in their third round clash at the $US8 million ($NZ11.5 million) Accenture Match Play Championship.
Left-hander O'Hern used his broomstick putter to brush in a 4m par attempt via the side door at the next hole and send the top seed packing from the World Golf Championships event for the second time in three years.
In doing so, he ended Woods' seven-event winning streak on the US PGA Tour, and probably caused executives of the presenting television network to contemplate jumping off one of the nearby mountains.
"It's something to tell the grandkids," said an excited O'Hern.
On a day when defending champion Geoff Ogilvy also advanced to the quarter-finals, 16th seed O'Hern thought he was a certain loser when Woods faced a winning putt from little more than a metre at the first extra hole. It's difficult to remember Woods ever missing such a short putt when it really mattered, but miss he did, blaming a ball mark that he did not fix for causing his ball to deviate to the right.
"I didn't see the ball mark," he lamented. "That's my fault for not paying attention to detail." He also bogeyed the next, leaving locals a little restless.
"They were pretty vocal," O'Hern said. "There were a couple of weird comments on some of the tees, but that's golf these days."
In difficult, cold and windy conditions, O'Hern didn't exactly bring the course to its knees, struggling to reach the green with his second shot at several par-fours, but Woods was simply dreadful early. He hit some shocking drives, making two double bogeys and conceding another hole without even reaching the green as O'Hern went 4-up after seven holes.
It was inevitable Woods would come back, and so he did, with four birdies in the next five holes, although O'Hern went to the last 1-up after a birdie at the par-five 17th.
But sure enough, Woods birdied the par-four 18th after a precise second shot to inside two metres, at which point you could have got pretty long odds on O'Hern prevailing in extra-time.
"The back nine was pretty stomach churning," O'Hern admitted. "When he's coming at you like that, you can lose your focus and play poor golf, but I still played solid golf."
O'Hern earned a quarterfinal match against Swede Henrik Stenson, who beat Australian Aaron Baddeley 4 and 3. US Open champion Ogilvy beat Swede Niclas Fasth to set up a quarterfinal against a good friend, Englishman Paul Casey.
Britain's Justin Rose was the first player to reach the quarter-finals with a 3-and-2 win over American Charles Howell III. Also going through to the last eight were South Africa's Trevor Immelman, who will play Rose, Canada's Stephen Ames and a sole American - Chad Campbell.
Rose has now beaten Masters champion Phil Mickelson and New Zealand's 2005 US Open champion Michael Campbell so far and went five up on Howell after nine holes.
