Tiger Woods holds up the championship trophy after winning the US Open against Rocco Mediate after a sudden death hole following an 18-hole play-off round at Torrey Pines Golf Course yesterday in San Diego. - AP

SAN DIEGO (AP):

With a throbbing knee and a pounding heart, Tiger Woods made one last improbable escape and won the US Open in a 19-hole play-off over Rocco Mediate yesterday, his 14th career major and maybe the most amazing of them all.

One shot behind after a collapse no one saw coming, Woods birdied the 18th hole to force sudden death at Torrey Pines against a journeyman with a creaky back who simply wouldn't go away. But that one extra hole was enough to doom Mediate, trying to become the oldest US Open champion at 45 years, six months. He put his tee shot in the bunker at No. 7, knocked his approach off a cart path and against the bleachers, chipped some 18 feet past the hole and missed the par putt.

On the verge of one of golf's greatest upsets, Mediate instead became another victim.

"Great fight," Woods told him as they embraced on the seventh green.

Woods, who delivered so many spectacular moments over four days along the Pacific Ocean bluffs, needed only a two-putt par at the end to win the US Open for the third time, and the first since it last was held on a public course at Bethpage Black in 2002.

It capped a remarkable week for the world's No. 1 player, who had not played since the April 15 surgery on his left knee and looked as though every step was a burden.