The reminder is there almost every day for Bob May.
It begins with a chase, continues with a finger point and ends with a golf ball disappearing into a hole.
You might remember the famous demonstrative chase and point from Tiger Woods 14 years ago at the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla — a moment that represents as much one of the most memorable video clips and iconic photographs in major championship history as it does the display of youthful exuberance we never see from Woods anymore.
Woods, needing to sink a birdie putt on the 72nd hole, rolled the ball, chased it toward the hole on tiptoes and pointed as it barely snuck in on the left side in to force a three-hole playoff with May.
“Every time I play with one of my friends at home, if they hit a putt and they know it’s going in they’ll take off running like that, pointing at the ball,” May told The Post. “No one realizes how much that point has haunted — not really haunted, but taunted — me with friends. I get that everyone that does it to me as a joke.”
May, a 31-year-old journeyman at the time, lost that playoff to Woods, who was at the absolute peak of his game and the world of golf back then.
That PGA Championship victory was the third leg of the “Tiger Slam’’ that Woods would cap off with his 2001 Masters victory the following April to own all four major championship trophies at the same time.
Some might view the fact May is so often associated with and reminded of that moment as a bad thing considering he went on to lose. May does not.
That playoff, which will forever be known as one of the great mano-a-mano duels ever in golf, is as much a source of pride for him as it is one of the great what-if questions in major championship history.
If May, who does not have a PGA Tour victory but has some two dozen runner-up finishes worldwide (including three on the PGA Tour), had gone on to beat Woods, it would have gone down as one of the greatest upsets in the game’s history and could have catapulted May’s career to greater heights.
But he didn’t.
Now, 14 years later at age 45, May is far from the PGA Tour spotlight after his playing career was derailed by back injuries.
Out of tournament golf, he quietly teaches at his own academy in Las Vegas.
More than ever since May’s biggest moment in the sun, he has been asked about that week, because the PGA Championship is being played this week at Valhalla for the first time since 2000.
Woods will be there, stuck on 14 majors since 2008 and struggling to find his game after a laundry list of injuries and off-the-course personal struggles sabotaged his journey to breaking Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18.
So, too, will the likes of Rory McIlroy — fresh off his British Open victory and looking to dominate the game the way Woods once did — Phil Mickelson, searching for his first top-10 finish of the year, and the rest of the game’s stars.
“People say to me, ‘Are you OK talking about it because you didn’t win?’ To me, there wasn’t really a loser in that battle,” May says. “I played great golf that day and so did he.”
All true, but what if he won that day?
“The only thing that would have changed is the financial aspect,” May says. “Other than that, I think I got just as much recognition for finishing second the way it happened than if I would have won it. There are the exemptions, of [other tournaments] course. But from the notoriety standpoint, I don’t think there would have been any changes at all.”
After an opening-round 72, May had shot three consecutive 66s to complete regulation play and was one stroke better than Woods in that fateful final round.
Both shot 31 on the back nine in the final round, though Woods was charging, playing his final 12 regulation holes in seven under par to force the playoff.
When it was over Woods called it “probably one of the greatest duels I’ve ever had in my life.”
That should have come to no surprise to Woods, because it was not the first time he had chased May, who is seven years older than him and had set most of the junior records in Southern California that Woods would go on to break en route to his record-setting amateur career.
Still, no one at Valhalla expected May to beat Woods. Not in regulation and not in the playoff, which Woods would go on to win by one shot, 1-under through those three holes.
May says one of his favorite memories of that week came after he and Woods hit their tee shots on the par-14 14th hole.
Yes, what about Bob?
At the end of the playoff, which Woods won by one shot with a birdie on 16 and pars on the 17th and 18th, he was three legs into his “Tiger Slam’’ and May was quietly on his way back to obscurity.
Before that obscurity set in, though, May recalls a moment at a Reno, Nev., restaurant the week after that PGA when someone anonymously paid his dinner bill.
The man left a note on the back of his handicap card that read: “Thank you for the show. We really appreciated it.”
May, even now, appreciates the attention that has come as a result of what ended up being his finest hour in golf — even in a losing effort.
Back then, May said he didn’t mind the Woods chase and point.
“I didn’t see it as anything disrespectful when Tiger did it,” he said at the time. “I mean, you’re in a battle there and you make a huge putt like that, you’re going to react. It’s not like he pointed at me and shoved it in my face, he was pointing at the ball.”
And now, May doesn’t mind the playful ribbing he gets from his playing partners who chase and point their putts in when they’re playing with him.
“Tiger and I are very friendly,” May says. “I’m going to ask him to sign a picture of him running and pointing with some funny quote he can put on it in jest, to have fun.”