Saturday, September
28, 2002
One
record Tiger would like to disown
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
SUTTON COLDFIELD,
England (AP) - Kidding or not, Tiger Woods said last week there
were a million rea$on$ why he'd rather win a tournament than the
Ryder Cup.
On Friday, he added
two more.
Back-to-back losses
in opening-day matches dropped the best player in the world to
3-8-1 for the Ryder Cup. It's the kind of record that defies spin.
U.S. captain Curtis Strange didn't even try.
"Sometimes,"
Strange said at the end of a strange day, "there is no answer
to a question."
Not that it stopped
people from trying to find one.
Some argue it's because
Woods always gets every opponent's best shot; others, that he's
been handed too big a burden in events like the Ryder and President's
Cups.
Still others insist
team competitions don't fit Woods' definition of greatness (Quick:
What's Jack Nicklaus' Ryder Cup record? Or Ben Hogan's?) and that
he doesn't bring the same intensity to them as he does to the
majors.
Cynics point to the
lack of a paycheck, a theory Woods fueled last week when he said
it meant more to win the American Express Championship, with its
$1 million purse, than the Ryder Cup _ even though he later claimed
it was said in jest.
Paul Azinger, who
played with Woods in a best-ball loss to familiar foes Thomas
Bjorn and Darren Clarke, offered this explanation for Woods' vulnerability:
It was the way their European hosts set up the golf courses _
here and at Valderrama, Spain, in 1997 _ to take the driver out
of Woods' hands.
"Here, there's
nothing he can do," Azinger said.
"People think
that to Tiger-proof a golf course, you have to lengthen it. That
doesn't Tiger-proof it. If you force Tiger to hit it the same
distance as everybody else, then you've Tiger-proofed it."
Mark Calcavecchia,
who played with Woods in an alternate-shot loss in the afternoon
to just-as-familiar foes Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood, took
the opposite tack. He thought the Europeans ambushed Tiger on
the greens.
"We made some
putts," Calcavecchia said, "just not quite as many as
they did."
Woods didn't give
either excuse so much as a sniff.
With good reason.
He and Azinger combined to shoot 63. They just happened to run
into Bjorn and Clarke on a day when the two European stalwarts
shot 62.
"I've played
well and gotten beat in this thing and I've played poorly and
won matches," Woods said. "In match play, with just
18 holes, anything can happen. It's not a 72-hole event, where
usually attrition wins."
He is right about
this much: Send Woods out by himself in any four-round tournament
anywhere and at some point, the 150 or so opponents arrayed against
him feel like they're wielding garden hoes.
But hand him a partner
in a team event, limit it to one round, and you know how Superman
felt when somebody slipped Kryptonite into his boot. Helpless.
In singles matches,
Woods is respectable, but just barely. He's 1-1 at the Ryder Cup
and 2-0 at the President's Cup, which uses the same format but
pits U.S. players against their counterparts from everywhere but
Europe. In best-ball matches, he's a combined 1-8; in foursomes,
4-4-1.
By luck of the draw,
European captain Sam Torrance wound up sending out four players
against Woods who had beaten him at least once in one format or
another. But Woods gave them a helping hand, missing back-to-back
putts inside 4 feet in the afternoon match that led to a stretch
of three bogeys in four holes and and easy point for the Europeans.
"He doesn't
feel real good right now, and that's good," Strange said.
"He's disappointed, which is good. He probably feels as though
he let the team down a bit, which is good. It makes you come back
hungrier the next day."
How deep those failures
have shaken the best player in the world is anyone's guess.
Woods came out Friday
morning determined to reverse the record. By the end of the day,
his eyes were smoldering and the deficit was even larger.
Woods' Ryder Cup
record has become his albatross, a mini-version of Phil Mickelson's
failure to win a major. But his stubborn streak is already wider
than any fairway. He'll be back at the course madder and more
determined than ever to start turning this thing around.
"You go with
your horses," Strange said, explaining his decision to bring
Woods back in the first set of foursome matches Saturday. "If
you get beat, you get beat. But you go with your horses and that's
what I intend to do."
Besides, it's not
as if Woods would let him get away with anything else.
___
Jim Litke is the
national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him
at jlitke(at)ap.org
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