Tiger's regal revival halted by human frailty

James Lawton
Monday 14 April 2003 00:00 BST
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It has been said of Tiger Woods that he can hit, Ben Hogan-style, a "wind-cheating" three-wood under a Buick from a distance of 200 yards. The point is not whether it is true but that it is so easy to believe. Until yesterday.

Here on Saturday that tendency to assume the Tiger is capable of anything was enhanced, as he would say, "big-time", when he moved from the jaws of the cut to serious contention. Certainly it reinforced the idea that his standing in the game has passed the point where it can be seriously compromised by the occasional ambush.

However, what happened on the third, fourth, seventh and eighth holes of the final round amounted to rather more than an ambush. It was the golfing equivalent of discovering Crazy Horse and a full Sioux war party galloping through your psyche.

The Tiger wasn't coming down to earth so much as burrowing into the centre of it. He dropped five shots in six holes after a magnificent, birdie-yielding assault on the second hole.

There he produced two drives which might have been fashioned and weighted in the golfing heavens. Then hell.

At the third he embedded his drive so deeply into the azaleas he had to play a left-handed shot to the approach of the green. He chipped clean over the green, choked on the return shot and two-putted for double-bogey. It was an eviscerating descent from the surreal recovery of Saturday.

It seemed then that the meaning of Woods was encapsulated on the ninth hole ­ the last of his second round. He was five over and he needed the par to stay in the tournament he had already won three times and was, before the first ball was struck on Friday morning, confidently expected to include in an historic "three-peat" run.

He was, by his own admission, playing badly, and nor was he getting any breaks. The pattern continued. He pushed his drive into the trees. His second shot found a greenside bunker. There was no precedent for believing that even he could turn that position of staring at the cut ­ and an 11-shot gap between himself and the second-round leader Mike Weir ­ into a serious chance of winning the tournament.

He shot 66 in the third round, underpinning his revival with a 50-footer on the 11th green. "That was momentum at last," Woods said, "and it made me feel I would be able to keep things going." The roar went into every corner of the course and returned the rest of the field to their normal work assignment. It could be described as Waiting for Tiger.

Yesterday however, the Tiger was unaccountably missing ­ and along with him a whole set of assumptions.

Barbra Streisand once described Andre Agassi as a Zen God of sport. What did that make Woods?

Until mid-afternoon yesterday simply the greatest, most complete sportsman of the modern age ­ and maybe all time. Tom Watson, who is 53 years of age, has won eight majors and was the one rival who brought a genuine touch of terror to the soul of Jack Nicklaus, said recently: "I watch Tiger and I learn about the game." Yesterday, he looked as is he had forgotten it all.

We can make formidable cases for the supremacy of a battery of epic sportsmen. We can talk about the relentlessness of Bradman; the peerless, sustained quality of Pele; the other-worldly brilliance and panache of Muhammad Ali.

But Bradman played his game within the borders of the old British empire... Pele had a shifting cast of frequently superb assistants... Ali hated to train, and consequently lost some fights he should have won. Woods just outstrips himself from year to year and with an application, and a love of what he is doing, that can only inspire awe. Yesterday, he was astonishingly vulnerable.

He is untouchable by commercial pressure, soaring expectations and even the old racism. His mother, Tida, points out: "It is calm at the centre of a hurricane." Yesterday, her son was caught in the storm.

When Darren Clarke subsided, rather pitifully, on Saturday, you couldn't help remembering that earlier in the week he overslept when due to share a practice round with Woods. It seemed to say everything about the difference between mere recipients of talent and those who embrace it and work it and push themselves into new terrain of achievement. Clarke once beat Woods in match-play, and it is something he may wish to dine out on for the rest of his sporting life. He can say, after all, that he beat, on one shining, unlikely day, a man from another planet. But maybe he will have to put the boast on the shelf for a little while at least. Yesterday, suddenly, it didn't seem much at all.

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