Friday, July 20, 2001
Tiger's tale — five bunkers,
a six-stroke deficit
By DOUG FERGUSON
AP Golf Writer
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England (AP) — Those
who wondered whether Tiger Woods could stay out of the 196 bunkers
that dot the links course of Royal Lytham & St. Annes didn't
have to wait long.
By the fourth hole Thursday at the British
Open, he found his first.
He wound up in five of them during a round
of even-par 71 that left him six strokes behind Colin Montgomerie,
his largest first-round deficit in four years at the British Open.
And bunkers were the least of his concerns.
Woods stretched his arm out to the right
and yelled “Fore!” on three occasions. He failed to
birdie any of the par 5s, two of them with the wind at his back.
The putts that fell on command when he was winning four straight
majors seemed to defy gravity.
“I didn't really hit the ball the way
I wanted to,” Woods said.
It was much different than last year on
the Old Course at St. Andrews, where Woods posted four rounds
in the 60s, set a major championship record at 19-under par and
won by eight strokes to complete the career Grand Slam.
Most memorable of all is that Woods never
hit into a bunker, one of the best defenses on the Old Course.
Royal Lytham is another story.
“There are bunkers for everybody,”
Tom Lehman had said.
Woods was no exception. His streak ended
with an iron off the fourth tee that flared out to the right and
rolled into a pot bunker with steep, sodded walls, leaving Woods
no choice but to blast out to the fairway.
He never thought he would avoid every bunker.
Besides, that wasn't his problem.
Woods saved par from four of them, including
a bunker shot to tap-in distance on No. 18, and another shot that
caromed off the wall at No. 12 and stopped 2 feet away.
Such was his round that Woods was pleased
it wasn't worse.
“You have to understand, if you miss
the ball in the wrong spot, you're probably going to make bogey,”
he said. “But at least you keep it at that. Don't make anything
worse than bogey. That's what I tried to do today.”
His round started out with much greater
promise.
Walking to the first tee with his hands
in his pocket, Woods hit a 7-iron to 18 feet on the opening par
3 and rolled it in for birdie as the gallery, standing six deep
down the fairways and perched on the mounds of Royal Lytham, watched
with anticipation.
Among them was his biggest fan — Mom.
“C'mon, Tiger, on the green,”
Kultida Woods shouted as the ball took flight from the second
fairway and stopped 12 feet away. “That's my boy. Birdie
putt.”
No, two-putt par.
And it didn't get much better from there.
Woods should have been able to reach the
494-yard sixth hole with a 3-wood and a wedge. Instead, he hit
into the left rough and then went into a bunker, and was fortunate
to clear the steep face for an 18-foot birdie putt that missed.
Ditto for the next hole, which measures
557 yards but was still easily reached in two. Hitting driver
for the first of only three times, he needed a marshal's umbrella
to find his ball in the right rough, scattered the gallery lining
the left side of the fairway, and then hit a flop shot to 8 feet
that brought the same results: a two-putt par, which felt like
a bogey.
Time and again, Woods stood to the side
and worked on flaws only he could see.
“I really did not feel I could hit
the golf ball consistently,” he said. “Sometimes, you
need to gut it out and get around. I was able to hang in there
and persevere.”
Woods was eight strokes behind after the
first round at Southern Hills and was never a factor in the U.S.
Open, tying for 12th.
It was his fourth straight tournament in
which he failed to break par in the opening round, dating to the
Memorial, which he won by seven shots.
He headed for the practice range as soon
as he was done, and remains a threat.
“Tiger is only three off second place,”
Montgomerie noted. “There's nothing wrong with that score,
at all.”
It only seems that way when it comes from
Woods.
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