Woods could win Open because he can think and
improvise and manipulate
By Bill Lyon / Knight-Ridder Newspapers
BETHESDA, Md. - Always, this has been the tournament that determines
our national champion of golf. This time, though, it is the measurement
of just one player that consumes us.
The first question will be: What did You-Know-Who shoot? The
afterthought question will be: Who won?
This isn't the U.S. Open as much as it is the second leg of
the Grand Slam for You-Know-Who.
What you hear from the clubhouse is a loud meowing. The other
players are saying that this course, brutish Congressional, isn't
Augusta National. There is rough here, thick and gnarled. There
are bunkers here, enough sand to confound Lawrence of Arabia.
And while we all know that You-Know-Who can make the ball fly,
how are his landings?
They sound mostly like they are trying to convince themselves.
"If he copes with this and wins here, too," Colin
Montgomerie conceded, "then we are all in trouble."
They are all in trouble.
When last seen on American sod, Montgomerie was talking trash
at You-Know-Who. And then the Scot got paired with You-Know-Who
in the third round of the Masters and was destroyed.
"I know we're all human here, but there is no way he isn't
going to win this tournament," a chastened Montgomerie said
after his whipping.
A voice from the back of the room asked: "How can you
say that?"
And in a response for the ages, Montgomerie asked in his best
burr: "Hallo, have you just arrived?"
We know You-Know-Who can drive and putt. Now the question is,
can Y-K-W think his way around the course?
Can he maneuver the ball? Can he manipulate it?
Can he rein in the natural exuberance that comes from being
21 and and incomprehensibly long, and make himself throttle down
off the tee?
The irony is, the game's longest hitter is going to play the
longest course in Open history, and yet this tournament has never
been won by strength or length - Jack Nicklaus being the exception,
as he frequently was. But even then, Nicklaus knew when to keep
his driver in the bag.
Nor is the Open often won by swashbucklers. Greg Norman hasn't
won one. Seve Ballesteros never won one. Arnold Palmer won only
one.
The Open cannot be overpowered; it has to be finessed. Recklessness
only gets you killed because there is no place from which to recover.
You try to force a 3, you are apt to take a 6. Or worse.
Having said all that, yes, You-Know-Who can win the Open.
Frankly, the surprise will be if he doesn't.
Because he can think and improvise and manipulate.
And because he reminds you of Nicklaus in another way: He knows
he can win even on a day when he doesn't have his best game.
He can will himself, and that separates him from the rest.
Golf is more often a matter of how you deal with failure than
with success. Your game can change, after all, from one swing
to the next. Almost always, that change is for the worse.
In golf, you spend a good portion of your life trying to gather
yourself.
The Open, more so than any other tournament, involves a subject
near and dear to Flyers coach Terry Murray. The choke factor.
"We all choke," Tom Watson said. "The key is
to be the last guy who does it."
No one is choke-proof. Nicklaus came closest. Y-K-W, off all
the available evidence, seems to possess the same invincibility.
Plus - and this is crucial - he doesn't know what it feels
like. Every time he has been in contention in a major tournament,
he has won: three U.S. Amateurs and a Masters.
You hope that he gets in trouble in this Open, because you
want to see if all your suspicions and instincts are right. You
want to see how he reacts.
He can fail. In his two previous appearances in an Open, he
was nonexistent, withdrawing in 1995 with a sprained wrist, and
finishing a desultory 82d in 1996. But that was when he was a
part-timer. That was before he had become Y-K-W.
The Open requires inordinate patience. Twenty-one-year-olds
are supposed to be notoriously impatient. In temperament on the
golf course, Y-K-W was 21 about 30 years ago.
And more than anything else, the Open measures your ability
to adjust and adapt, to manufacture swings as you go. I'm suspecting
all we needed to know about Y-K-W's abilities in these areas was
revealed at the Masters after he had opened with a fat 40 on the
front nine. He was spraying the ball through the pines and azaleas
and into virtually unplayable lies on a course where an unplayable
lie is considered a bowl of grits on a countertop at the Waffle
House.
And then Y-K-W, in free-fall, found the emergency chute. He
made a mid-round correction. Before the 10th tee, he determined
what he had been doing wrong (mostly letting his backswing go
too long), and he corrected it.
It was like seeing Mario Andretti pull into the pit, and then
hop out and adjust his carburetor.
On the back nine, Y-K-W shot 30. Your basic 10-stroke improvement.
He played the final 63 holes in 24 under par, and golf historians
are struggling to find a comparable stretch of such exquisite
play.
Just before the Masters, I rhapsodized in print about Y-K-W
and how he had shot 59 in practice, and a man called to huff that
"plenty of people I know have shot 59 and never bragged about
it."
Yes, but after their 59, they still had to play the 14th, 15th,
16th, 17th and 18th holes.
The man's main complaint was that we ought to let Y-K-W win
a little something before we swooned so.
It is a valid enough point.
So, fore, Y-K-W, and show us a little something.
(Bill Lyon is a sports columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Write to him at: The Philadelphia Inquirer, 400 North Broad Street,
Philadelphia, Pa. 19130.)
(c) 1997, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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