Woods forced to play the stalking game as birdies prove elusive

One of the strengths of Tiger Woods is his ability to stalk the leaderboard even when he is not behaving like the king of the jungle. The world No 1, halfway towards a calendar grand slam, having won the Masters at Augusta and the US Open at Bethpage State Park in New York, has not, thus far, brought his A game to the home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

Even so, the shadow of Woods, who won the Open Championship at St Andrews in 2000, is hanging over the leaders despite the fact that he is finding birdies hard to come by.

After a 68 in the second round, by no means the shortest distance between the first and the 18th, Woods declined to visit the media tent, restricting himself to a brief green side interview. "I am going to work on my game right now, hitting balls for half an hour and putting for half an hour," he said.

"I hit some good putts out there that just didn't go in. It was one of those days but I had to stay as patient as possible. I told myself if I can't make a putt on the green then I'll make one from off the green and low and behold that's what happened on the 17th."

In the first round he used his driver three times; yesterday just twice, at the fifth and the 10th. "This course is a great challenge. It's fantastic and is set up very fair. I don't think I need to go out and shoot 62 in a major championship. That's not how I play. You play golf one shot at a time and this course is the epitome of that. It was an interesting day... Monty shoots 64 and Els goes out in 29 and struggles coming in."

In his first round score of 70, one under par, Woods had birdies at two of the par fives, the fifth and the ninth. Yesterday he duly birdied the fifth again but missed an opportunity at the ninth. It should have been the other way round.

Woods went for a turbo-charged overdrive at the fifth and missed the fairway by about 25 yards to the right. He was extremely fortunate to find his ball lying, not in the thick rough, but a pathway. He was able to hit a five-iron to the edge of the green from where two putts earned him his birdie, putting him at three-under.

At the ninth, a par five, he missed his customary birdie by taking three putts, failing to hole from four and a half feet for a four. That got to him. After another wayward drive at the 10th he slammed his club into the ground, but he was still in touching distance of the leaders. The same, unfortunately, could not be said for one of his playing partners, Justin Rose.

The young Rose, who had a field day in the first round with 68, found his form deserting him as he struggled in the second. On the first tee where Woods hit an iron and safely found the fairway, Rose chose his driver, ran out of fairway and was buried in deep rough. The result, a bogey five, seemed to set the tone for his day. He bogeyed again at the third and double-bogeyed the short fourth. He went to the turn in 38, dropped another shot at the 10th and at the 14th, missing a tiny putt.

Having been out-scored by Rose in the first round, Woods found himself out-scored in the second by another of his playing partners, Shigeki Maruyama, of Japan, who recovered from a five at the first with a birdie at the second and picked up a stroke at the ninth to go out in 35. Another birdie at the 10th got him to five under par and on the leaderboard, a stroke behind Ernie Els.

Woods, who complained that his first round of 70 was scant reward for the standard of his play, found it equally frustrating yesterday. He had to settle for par at almost every hole when he turned for home and putts for birdies kept lipping out of the hole. When Woods is in full flow, particularly in winning major championships, he never seems to miss a putt. Here he almost never seems to make one.

"I've always enjoyed playing in tougher conditions," Woods said, "because if you play well and shoot a good solid round you're going to move up.''

That is certainly the case here. Although the wind has not whipped in from the Firth of Forth, yesterday's conditions were damp and miserable. Woods moaned that the greens were too slow but it did not stop him charging four or five feet past the hole several times.

He birdied the long 17th despite playing his third shot from the mound of a bunker. The smile returned as he advanced to four under par for the championship, only two strokes behind Els and the unsinkable Maruyama, who also had a 68 to move to six under overall.

Meanwhile Rose, who, as a 17-year-old amateur, made such a huge impression in The Open at Birkdale in 1998, survived the halfway cut, but only just.