Wednesday, July 19, 2000
Eye of Tiger focused on another
major
By Ron Green Jr.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
CHARLOTTE — The good folks at Ladbroke's
and the other wagering parlors around Great Britain have set the
odds of Tiger Woods' winning the British Open at St. Andrews this
week at 2-to-1.
As odds go, that's like a 4-footer, slightly
uphill with a gentle right-to-left break.
Not convinced?
Fine. Pick the player who's going to beat
him.
Colin Montgomerie?
The British Open gives him hives.
David Duval?
Maybe if it's a cross-training competition.
Davis Love III?
He can't make the cut in the Greater Hartford
Open.
Lee Westwood?
He shares Scott Hoch's disdain for the Old
Course.
Jean Van de Velde?
Allez, Jean.
This is Woods' moment and perhaps no one
in the history of the game has ever responded to the moment better
than the talented Mr. Woods.
You've heard of athletes and performers
who live for the moment. Woods was born for the moment.
Now comes his chance to complete the career
grand slam at the gentle age of 24 on the most hallowed ground
in golf. St. Andrews has more ghosts than Stephen King's imagination
and they'll all be floating in the wind this week.
Nothing against Royal Lytham, site of next
year's British Open, but it doesn't have the grandeur of the Old
Course. St. Andrews, where the bunkers have names like the Beardies
and Mrs. Kruger, is a place for heroes. It's the perfect stage.
Of course, it's entirely possible Woods
won't win this British Open. The Old Course is as quirky as your
weird uncle in Ohio. Hoch believes they got it backward. When
you look back from the greens to the tees, you can see all the
hidden bunkers and odd slopes that lurk like trap doors around
the windswept links.
Hoch, however, sees the world in black and
white, which means rainbows — like many of St. Andrews' charms
— are invisible to him.
Woods loves the place. He loves to hit knock-down
shots and bounce the ball into the green. He loves the mind games
that St. Andrews plays. If the wind blows, as it must, Woods loves
the challenge of matching wits with Mother Nature.
Not only is Woods better than everyone else,
he's tougher than the rest.
That doesn't promise a championship, though.
The pernicious nature of the game means
nothing is certain, especially at St. Andrews.
That's where Doug Sanders missed a 3-footer
to win the British Open on the last hole. It's also where Costatino
Rocco impossibly holed out from the Valley of Sin on the 72nd
hole in the 1995 Open to force a playoff with the most unlikely
champion of all, John Daly.
It's where the whisper of history will play
in Woods' ears and where everyone in the field will be watching
him.
Twice in his young career, Woods has produced
once-in-a-lifetime tournaments. He did it in his 12-shot victory
in the 1997 Masters and he did it again last month when he vanquished
the U.S. Open field by 15 shots at Pebble Beach.
Chances are, he will never do anything that
remarkable again.
But Woods has convinced us he's capable.
In fact, Woods arrives at the British Open
on a losing streak. He slogged his way through an uninspired performance
at the Western Open earlier this month, never challenging for
the title he was defending. It was meaningless, of course. There
was the inevitable comedown from Woods' Open performance and the
understanding that this is the week that matters.
The Road Hole and all its terror awaits.
So does the ghost of Old Tom Morris.
The old gray clubhouse, the church steeples
and the bleachers full of Scottish golf fans, cheeks reddened
from the wind off the water, are waiting.
The moment has arrived.
(c) 2000, The Charlotte Observer
(Charlotte, N.C.).
Visit The Charlotte Observer on the World Wide Web at http://www.charlotte.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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