On a midsummer day in 2007, as the young Argentine golfer Andres Romero boarded a hotel elevator in Akron, Ohio, an unexpected passenger trailed him in. "I froze," says Romero, who just two days earlier had won the European Tour's Deutsche Bank Players' Championship, his then-biggest victory. "He congratulated me, but I could barely speak." Romero stood like a statue at the back of the elevator, too nervous to even press the button for his stop, and rode straight to the top-floor suite. Ding! The doors opened and out strolled Tiger Woods. "See you on Thursday," Woods said.
Cute story, but it doesn't end there. Romero and Woods were in town to play the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational — Romero's fourth-ever PGA Tour start — and, wouldn't you know it, they were paired together. When the two men shook hands on the first tee, the Argentine was like a giddy teen meeting his favorite pop star. "I wanted to ask him for his autograph," Romero says. "I couldn't believe I was going to spend five hours for two straight days walking beside Tiger Woods."
CUE SWEATY PALMS, shortness of breath and a wicked case of the shanks, right? Not so fast. When Romero slips on his spikes, the nerve-wracked kid in the elevator transforms into a radically different animal, a supremely confident player with a nose for birdies and a knack for saving his best game for the biggest stages. Romero coolly posted a pair of 71s — to Woods's 68-70 — and went on to tie for sixth against one of the strongest fields of the year.
"Romero's got an aggressive style, which, when he's on, will take him anywhere," says Sergio Garcia, a bold shotmaker in his own right. "But what's most important is that he plays sin miedo." Without fear. Which helps explain how Romero won just his fourth start as an official PGA Tour rookie, the 2008 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, and how in four of his eight career major appearances he has finished in the top 10 (it took Woods 14 majors to match the same total).
Romero tied for eighth at both the 2006 British Open and 2008 Masters, and he most memorably finished third at the 2007 British, where after scorching the famously taxing Carnoustie for 10 birdies on Sunday, a double-bogey, bogey finish cost him the Claret Jug. At the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills in August he fired a third-round 65, tying the course record on what many consider America's toughest track. He eventually finished tied for seventh.
"Romero is of the Arnold Palmer-Phil Mickelson mode — always on 'go,'" says acclaimed instructor Jim McLean, who cites Romero, Anthony Kim and Ryan Moore as the twentysomethings most likely to win multiple majors. Romero sums up his approach to golf like this: "Todo o nada." All or nothing. Case in point: he missed the cut in his first three starts of 2008 (nada) before shooting 65-68 on the weekend to win in New Orleans (todo). "I go for birdie on every hole," he says, flashing a big, contagious grin. "That's the only way I play."
ROMERO'S go-for-broke style is apt in that he grew up just that — broke. Like his countryman and best amigo on Tour, Angel Cabrera, Romero had a meager upbringing, raised blocks from an elite Argentine country club where he caddied for the privileged few and nursed dreams of golf glory. Still, Romero had something Cabrera didn't: a big nuclear family. Whereas Cabrera was abandoned by his parents at age 3 and raised by his grandmother, Romero grew up in a crowded home, surrounded by eight siblings and two doting parents.
