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Westwood will sleep well June 14: Knowing he is in a position to win the U.S. Open, Lee Westwood doesn't think he'll have any trouble sleeping the night before the fourth round.

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SAN DIEGO - Lee Westwood makes the most awkward journey in sport Sunday in the final round of the 108th U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

He steps to the first tee in the final pairing of a major championship with Tiger Woods.

This is sport's abyss.

It's a journey upon which there's no happy return.

Woods has taken the lead or a share of it into the final round of a major 13 times and won every time.

No matter how well the unfortunate chap who draws this short straw is playing, it always feels like he is being sent into a deep, dark cavern to slay an undefeated dragon.

What's awkward but always entertaining is the interview on the eve of this quest.

You wonder what bold story are these guys going to come up with to convince themselves they won't meet the same fate that every other poor soul has met in this circumstance.

Westwood chose a quite common path to his inevitable fate.

He chose denial.

"It's not any concern who I'm playing with in the last round," he said. "Because you've got to play with somebody."

This answer is akin to whistling through a graveyard. There's something comforting about the sounds coming out of your mouth. They're distracting.

"You pretty much accept when you come to a major championship and you're in the last group on the last day that you're probably going to be playing with Tiger Woods," Westwood said.

Westwood did not say that you're pretty much accepting defeat, though that is what it sounded like he said.

The fun of sport is that nothing is certain. The New England Patriots got beat by the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. Big Brown got beat in his bid to win the Triple Crown. The titans of sport do get upset, but Woods is the surest thing going in sport now with a lead in the final round of a major.

The way Woods charged on Friday, scorching his final nine with a 30, and then conjured more magic Saturday with two eagles fueling another back-nine charge, fate seems at work here.

The fact that he's limping like Kirk Gibson going around those bases after his dramatic pinch-hit home run for the Dodgers in the 1988 World Series adds to the intrigue.

The story is almost ruined if Woods doesn't win.

Woods is vulnerable, there's no question. He admitted his left knee is getting worse. He used a pair of clubs like crutches to get out of the bunker along the third green. After making a hard swing at the 15th tee, he winced and doubled over, pausing to gather himself. He winced hard again after pushing his drive right at the 17th and after hitting his approach at the 18th.

There's the possibility his knee gives out.

That seems like the only way Woods loses Sunday.

He walks away with the U.S. Open trophy, or he doesn't walk away at all. He loses only if he leaves on a stretcher. He looks that determined.

Jack Fleck, the man who orchestrated one of the greatest upsets in U.S. Open history, was here this week. He patrolled the driving range early in the week. Fleck beat the unbeatable Ben Hogan in a Monday playoff at the Olympic Club outside San Francisco in 1955.

I asked Fleck if he thought there was another Jack Fleck on the range this week?

"Yeah, maybe," Fleck told me. "You never know, do you?"

Fleck said something strange happened when he was shaving the morning before the 36-hole Saturday that made up the final rounds of the U.S. Open back in '55. He said he was standing in front of the mirror when a voice came out of it and told him: "Jack, you are going to win the Open."

That Westwood would hear such a voice seems as unlikely as Woods losing.