James Lawton: Tiger loses menace as fresh face takes his territory

Victory for an unheralded American challenger in his first major raises questions about the enduring strength of the multiple champion

On a day of haunting beauty beside the English Channel the world of Ben Curtis - and the big-time game of golf into which he was supposed to be making his first tentative steps - took an unimaginable turn.

It was a shock which had two elements. Curtis, who might have escaped recognition at his local county fair before the shadows accompanied his walk down the 18th fairway here last night, won - and Tiger Woods lost, again.

The victory opened up a dazzling horizon for a young man who grew up on the campus of Kent State University where, 30-odd years ago, America was torn apart when National Guardsmen shot and killed students protesting against the Vietnam war. That was a low point of American life; this, on the golf course, was something far happier - sporting legend. But, at the back of it there was a wider golfing question. It asked what the defeat said about the enduring strength of the Tiger's aura.

Here, in the bright sunshine of early afternoon, Curtis and all other rivals seemed at the mercy of Woods. When the great man scored his first birdie on the fourth hole, a great cheer was filled with the conviction that an old formality had been put in place. The Tiger was surely marching home to his ninth major victory.

But it has been some time since such an assumption has carried true validity and Curtis walked beyond even the giant footsteps of another man from Ohio, Jack Nicklaus, and won the 132nd Open at his first attempt at the great event.

Indeed, it was his first major tournament; his first sniff of glory, and it came to him in a scarcely believable rush.

The 26-year-old, whose previous best was 13th in the Western Open, was as stunned as the man whose implosion at a greenside bunker on the 16th hole will be remembered as more than a routine crucifixion.

Thomas Bjorn, the 32-year-old Dane who had waited so long for his moment of breakthrough, was almost everybody's idea of the winner before he twice failed to get the ball out of the trap. That lost Bjorn the lead, the tournament, and, for some time if not forever, the gathering conviction that he had the nerve and the game to win one of golf's greatest prizes.

But then between the sublime excitement of Curtis and his fiancée, Candace, and the nightmare of Bjorn, there was that other story - one which had to be filed under mystery.

It was the tale of another failure by Woods to inflict the killer instinct that until last summer seemed to be driving him to surpass, at an astonishing rate, Nicklaus's record of 18 major titles. Some say it is absurd to talk of the Tiger's dwindling empire, that what he is suffering is not a slump but a pause, a time when he has to recover fully from knee surgery and gather together again his competitive resources after the extraordinary run which brought him all four major tournaments up to the 2001 Masters and victory in last year's US Open.

They may be proved right when we come to examine the full sweep of Woods's career, when we note that, like all the great ones, Nicklaus, Player, Palmer and Hogan, Woods suffered his highs and lows. But that optimistic view was not exactly enhanced these last few days.

In each phase of this tournament there were surges from the Tiger, but never sustained evidence that he could produce the kind of withering performance which has marked so many of his major triumphs. If it is not a case of burying his competitive heart, for the moment at least, around the circumstances of Wounded Knee, it may be that he is experiencing a different kind of crisis. Maybe it is that he has so primed the competitive levels of his sport that the old ascendancy will never again be so comfortably gained. Maybe Tiger is now an object of respect rather than outright fear.

The evidence is certainly accumulating. Rich Beem refused to be cowed at last year's PGA tournament. He came from the shadows, but when the light shone on him, when Woods came alongside him in the final stages of that tournament, he did not wither away. Nor did Mike Weir in Augusta in April, nor Jim Furyk at the US Open. Maybe Tiger Woods has alerted the entire world of golf too well, maybe his message that old standards will no longer prevail is beginning to work against him. Maybe he has drawn for himself more demanding terrain.

Yesterday, when he scored an even par 71 to add to rounds of 73, 72 and 69, he did everything well but not quite well enough, and when he came through the last holes there was a look of resignation, and very little joy, on his face. Later he made clear his irritation at being put on the clock, which was just another imposition on a day when his genius was becalmed.

When his second shot at the 17th failed to yield the birdie-striking possibility that would have kept him in the tournament, he scowled and uttered the kind of oath which is not supposed to come to the lips of the world's most impeccably-controlled winning sportsman. But on this day it was language that scarcely provoked a shrug. Anyone could see that these were hard days for Tiger Woods. Days when players whose names he scarcely knew were tearing at his empire.

Sympathy, however, was less than universal - and particularly scarce in Bjorn's corner of the clubhouse. Two years ago the Dane believed he had passed his golfing Rubicon when he beat Woods at the Dubai Classic. Because of first the draw, then the scores, they were locked together for four days, and it was Woods who cracked - finding water on the 18th hole of the last round. Then Bjorn said, "I know I can be very good under the cosh. I put the pressure on at the right time. This was the best experience of my life."

Bjorn plainly believed that if you could beat Tiger Woods you could do anything. That may have been true two years ago. But last night, as an agreeable young man from Ohio wrapped his hands around the Old Claret Jug, there was at least the beginnings of a question mark.