For Tiger, a round that's nice - and rough
By JIM LITKE / AP Sports Writer
MAMARONECK, N.Y. (AP) - For sheer excitement, he is still your
man.
Nobody is talking Grand Slam any more, the way they did after
the kid smoked the field at the Masters by a dozen strokes. But
Tiger Woods can still raise a fuss on any golf course, anytime,
anywhere.
Because he never, ever does anything - cue Tina Turner here
- nice and easy.
Woods carded a second round of even-par 70 Friday at the PGA
Championship. That was good enough to make it into the weekend,
but too far down the leaderboard to make the Lees, Davises and
Costantinos perched near the top lie awake Friday night.
Still, they better sleep while they can. Anything is possible
in the next two days. He is still Tiger Woods.
"I left a lot of shots out there. I didn't make putts
when I needed to. But I'm hitting it well. All I need to do is
keep giving myself chances," Woods said, "and the ball
will start to fall."
Friday's round featured not just chances, but enough chills
and spills to make some golfers' weeks. At the first, a 446-yard,
par-4, Woods hit 3-wood and maybe wedge to a foot. One under.
At the second, a 411-yard, par-4, it was 2-iron and maybe wedge
again to 4 feet. Two under. Then the real fun began.
Hero shots are rarely smart shots, but when you're 21 and the
world is alive with all kinds of possibilities, there is plenty
of time to be smart. And so, at No. 3, after pulling an iron left
into the spinach 50 feet from the pin, Woods tried not one, but
two hero shots. The first, a full-swing flop shot, only got as
far as the light spinach on the collar of the other side of the
green. The second, a putt with a 3-wood that he fully expected
to make, left Woods to clean up a 4-footer coming back just to
save bogey.
Chastened?
Not.
On the very next hole, Woods drove the ball into the right
rough. But instead of the conservative play back to the fairway,
he took a vicious rip with an 7-iron from 168 yards. He dislodged
a divot the size of Long Island before the ball came to rest 15
feet from the cup.
So it went all the way around. Plenty of people inside the
game shake their heads when Woods turns holes into adventures,
but his galleries can't get enough of it.
Because of a grandstand erected alongside the 11th green, after
putting out, the players head for the No. 12 tee while their caddies
take a shortcut through the crowd to make their way down the fairway.
So well-known is Woods' caddie, Fluff Cowan, that he needed his
own police escort to get there. So big was the gallery by that
point that Woods' own mother had no idea whether her son was still
on the tee.
"Fluff," she called out from behind the ropes, "has
he hit yet?"
"Yeah," the caddie grunted, "left rough."
And with that, Cowan stubbed out a cigarette, swung the bag
around and took off in pursuit of his man. As it turned out, there
was no need to hurry.
No. 12 is a par-5, 540 yards, and Woods still had at least
230 yards to negotiate. He had a good lie in the rough, but a
stand of trees 40 yards in front of him and all along the left
side. He also had mischievous smile on his face.
On Thursday, Woods made double-bogey at the hole attempting
a different kind of hero shot. But he was clearly considering
trying another. First he asked Cowan where the pin was positioned
on a green he couldn't see. Then, when he motioned in the direction
of a marshall, there were mischievous smiles all around.
"John," the marshall whispered into a walkie-talkie,
"is the green clear up ahead?"
Assured that it was, Woods went through his checklist one more
time, but scrubbed the mission at the last moment. Instead, he
lofted an 8-iron over the trees, hit sand wedge onto the green
and left the birdie putt hanging on the lip. After all that, it
was just another one of those chances he failed to cash in.
"The important thing," Woods stressed again, "is
to keep giving myself chances."
With chances come possibilities, and with possibilities come
huge crowds. This being New York, Woods' crowd also contained
a sprinkling of celebrities. Heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield,
in town to promote a TV replay of his last title fight against
Mike Tyson, came out to Winged Foot to meet Woods before his round,
and Miss Universe stood alongside the clubhouse after the round
hoping to do the same thing.
The first time he breezed by, on his way to the scorer's tent,
Woods didn't so much glance in her direction. We can only assume
Mr. Universe had had enough excitement for one day.
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