It takes a cool hand

Golf great Tiger Woods and top snowboarder Tina Basich face off in a no-holds-barred battle on Sony's PlayStation 2, the hardest-to-find gift of the Christmas season.

by Dennis McCafferty & Bob Makela

y now, Sony's PlayStation 2 -- the Next Big Thing of video game players -- has sent holiday shoppers into a panic. How do you get your hands on it? Try spending hundreds at a Web site auction. Possibly thousands. Or, as USA WEEKEND has done, invite the biggest star in sports -- and video game fanatic -- pro golfer Tiger Woods to take an exclusive, trial spin on PS2 against an opponent of our choosing.

This face-off is so intense, it makes a ninth-inning World Series duel look like a horticulture debate on PBS. Woods' passion for video games is as legendary as his dominance on the links. And he lets the magazine in on a secret: These games provided the kind of professional-cool karma he needed for his first, historically monumental Masters win at age 21.

Before the 1997 tournament, he entered a digital "zone" -- he simply could not be beaten in playing his favorite sports titles. "It lasted the whole week," Woods remembers. "I never lost in video games."

So Woods is eager to chuck his golf clubs for a joystick. Clearly, it isn't fair for him to play someone in his own game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2001. Instead, we present to Woods a game he's never played, an X-treme downhill snowboarding challenge called SSX. His formidable opponent? Tina Basich. Considered one of the world's top snowboarders, she's also a roomie with Beastie Boy Adam Yauch at her Utah home. (They're just friends.) And she snowboards with Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters. How cool is that?

We bring the two athletes to a ritzy suite at a southern California hotel and wish them good luck.

"See ya!" Woods says. "Blew right by you!" He's guiding his video alter ego -- a snowboard-savvy, ponytailed blonde named Elise "Boom Boom" Riggs -- down a snowy chute. "Get outta my way!" Woods barks. Hmm. He appears confident. Maybe it's because he's in the middle of arguably the greatest season a pro golfer ever had.

Then Woods really gets into the zone. He's morphing into the giddy boy who used to play video games at convenience stores. "Ohhh nooo," he giggles, trying to maneuver his snowboarder into a stable landing. His parents never discouraged this side of Woods; after all, it helps his hand-eye coordination.

"You don't really realize where they're going -- you just kinda go there," he explains.

Besides, golf is too, ahem, genteel. With video games, the smack flies when Woods plays against his famous buds, including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Ken Griffey Jr. "In golf," Woods says, "you're trying to repress everything. But with video games, you can let all that repression go. That's pretty neat."

During our challenge, Woods hits some rough snow in the early going. After several nasty tumbles, he drops out of first place. "I keep wiping out," he mutters. But it doesn't last long. He commands the slopes' twisting turns, breakneck speed and gravity-defying leaps as if he were sinking a 4-foot putt.

That's it. Basich is toast. Stick a fork in her alter ego, Moby "The Mouth" Jones, a fearless Trinidadian with shoulder-length dreadlocks. Woods whoops it up on the snow and wins by several seconds. It's the first of three-straight victories.

"Yes!" Woods shouts. "I beat the pro!" His arms fly up in the air in his familiar victorious pose. Basich can only shake her head. "I can't believe this," she says. "I'm letting my sport down."

"It's OK to lose," Woods says.

But there's that funny tone in his voice -- like the dripping, sarcastic one a bratty brother uses when he beats his sister. In triumph, he points to the game screen.

"See all those fireworks and people cheering?" he deadpans. "That's for me."

Tiger ... you're a terror.

Game, set, match

Sony's new product is just a start: Get ready for the Platinum Age of video games. Microsoft's X-Box and Nintendo's GameCube system are expected in 2001. Meanwhile, with SegaNet now out, video games can be played online. That means little Suzy can crush her friend Billy even if they live 2,000 miles apart.

Industry watchers say Sony will likely have online game access for PS2 in late 2001, to go along with the player's already installed multimedia capability to play music CDs and DVD movies.

Bottom line: more techno-treats, better animation and livelier game play all around. Says Michael Goodman, senior analyst on media/entertainment for the Boston-based Yankee Group, a market research outfit: "They're evolving into home entertainment systems, far beyond just being games. The online component -- that genie has been released. The systems are incredibly powerful. The games can do things that have never been done before."

PS2 is simply the most rabidly sought gift of the holiday season, selling out months in advance of arriving in the USA in October. Factory snafus resulted in just 500,000 units being available for the big launch, or, half the number previously announced. The player has absolutely sizzled at online auctions -- where it sells for at least twice its list price of $299.

Demand will build from here into the holidays -- and beyond. "Consumers know a good thing when they see it," Goodman says. "I expect to see more and more online auctions. I see people paying $800 to $1,200 for these things. They'll pay more closer to Christmas. People who have cash will do what it takes to get it."

-- D.M.

Photo by DAN MACMEDAN for USA WEEKEND