At the 1996 Quad City Classic (John Deere Classic), Tiger Woods was playing his third PGA TOUR event as a professional. Ed Fiori had made over 500 starts on TOUR. Woods was 20, Fiori 43. The 1996 season had not gone well for Fiori, who, by then, was in his 19th year as a TOUR pro.

Fiori had missed the first five cuts of the 1996 season before finally making a cut — a tie for 38th at the Honda Classic. He then missed four more cuts, withdrew from another tournament and counted a tie for 21st at the Texas Children's Houston Open as his best finish.

Then came that week in Coal Valley, Illinois. At Oakwood Country Club, the crowds were bigger than normal for the annual TOUR stop in the Quad Cities, with almost all the attention on the just-turned-pro Woods, who had left Stanford and amateur golf behind just weeks earlier.

Fiori, a three-time TOUR winner at that point in his career, entered the final round a stroke off Woods’ 54-hole lead. The duo would be playing together for a second consecutive round.

Going into the final round, Fiori, from personal experience, knew that Woods would blow his tee shots 75 to 80 yards past Fiori’s. He chose not to watch Woods’ shots, instead focusing on anything but the prodigy. Fiori bogeyed the first hole, falling two strokes behind. Woods birdied the second hole to Fiori’s par to take a three-shot advantage. The script seemed ready to play out as most people expected. The young hotshot would pull away and win his first tournament, while the journeyman pro faded away.

Then came the fourth hole. Woods made a quadruple-bogey 8, and suddenly, Fiori, glancing at a leaderboard, found him a stroke in the lead. Woods eventually faded, making a double bogey at the seventh and bogeying two more holes coming in. He shot a 2-over 72 to fall into a tie for fifth.

“You kind of root your playing partner on, he roots for you and maybe you can feed off each other and keep it going,” Fiori said of how his two days went playing with Woods. “Playing with Tiger kind of raised my intensity a little bit. It brought my game up with it, I guess.”

That strategy seemingly worked. With Woods faltering, Fiori still had to battle Steve Jones and a hard-charging Andrew Magee, who posted an 8-under 62 and was the leader in the clubhouse after starting the day eight back. All Fiori did was make five birdies after that opening bogey and play his final 17 holes in 4-under to beat Magee by two shots.

It was the final win of Fiori’s PGA TOUR career. He added one victory on PGA TOUR Champions at the 2004 MasterCard Classic. The player known as “The Grip” because of the strong grip he utilized, died on July 6, 2025. He was 72.

“Ed Fiori was a true gentleman in our sport, and is a player who would often be referred to as a pro’s pro," said PGA TOUR Champions President Miller Brady. "In three of his four wins on the PGA TOUR, he dueled down the stretch with future World Golf Hall of Fame members, most notably Tiger Woods in 1996. That grit and resolution in the face of immeasurable odds is incredibly admirable in every aspect of life, and I know he battled cancer with that same determination until the end. He will be missed by all of us at the TOUR.”

Born April 21, 1953, in Lynwood, California, Fiori signed to play college golf for legendary coach Dave Williams and the powerhouse Houston Cougars. Fiori was a solid contributor his first two seasons in Texas and earned second-team All-American honors his junior year.

His Houston squad won the 1977 NCAA Championship by eight shots over Oklahoma State, with Fiori, a senior and the No. 1 player on a Cougar team that also included future TOUR players Mike Booker and David Ishii, leading the way. Weeks earlier, Fiori was the Southwestern Conference individual medalist as Houston won its ninth conference title and fourth in succession.

Fiori turned pro immediately once his college eligibility expired, and he was the medalist at the 1977 PGA TOUR Fall Qualifying Tournament at Pinehurst’s No. 4 Course. Fiori’s Q-School finish earned him a 1978 TOUR card. He played a full rookie-season schedule, appearing in 25 tournaments, claiming one top-10 (a tie for fourth at the Doral-Eastern Open) and a 110th-place finish on the money list. That began a stretch of 20 consecutive seasons, where Fiori played in at least 15 TOUR events.

Fiori’s big breakthrough came in 1979 at Green Island Country Club in Columbus, Georgia, at the Southern Open. Fiori finished regulation tied with Tom Weiskopf but assumed he had lost to the future World Golf Hall of Famer when Weiskopf faced a three-foot putt to win on the first playoff hole. Inexplicably, Weiskopf missed, and on the second extra hole, Fiori rolled in a 13-foot birdie putt for his first TOUR title.

“I’m just still numb. I thought I had lost the tournament right there,” Fiori said, thinking back to Weiskopf’s missed putt.

Fiori would win two more TOUR titles before his final win at the Quad City Classic. Fiori won the 1981 Western Open, recovering from an opening 2-over 72 to coast to a four-shot triumph over Jim Colbert, Greg Powers and Jim Simons in a star-studded field at Butler National Golf Club outside Chicago. A year later, Fiori took down Tom Kite in a playoff at the Bob Hope Desert Classic.

After turning 50, and despite ongoing health challenges, Fiori made his presence felt on PGA TOUR Champions. He only played in 58 events spread over three seasons, his highlight coming at the 2004 MasterCard Classic in Mexico, where he beat Graham Marsh in a playoff for his lone Champions Tour title.