Sunday, June 18, 2000
Tiger in complete control of
his golf, but not his mouth
By Tim Cowlishaw
The Dallas Morning News
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — On a dusk-to-dawn
Saturday of golf, Tiger Woods proved to be all too human.
And he did so even while turning a three-shot
lead into a record-shattering 10-stroke advantage.
When Woods snap-hooked a drive into the
rocks alongside the Pacific Ocean at No. 18 on Saturday morning,
he unveiled not only a flaw in his game but his personality.
If, as George Carlin once explained, there
are seven words you can't say on television, Woods came within
five of running the table. His first utterance would have earned
the early morning NBC telecast a PG-13 rating if the motion picture
board had been monitoring.
His second would have downgraded it to an
R.
These aren't words you can print in a newspaper.
They aren't words your kids are accustomed to hearing while watching
Rugrats(AT) on Saturday morning.
They may be words Mike Modano or Troy Aikman
or your other local sporting heroes use in the heat of the moment,
but no one's ever referred to hockey or football as gentlemen's
pursuits.
Woods may have believed he was far enough
removed from the gallery out there on the edge of the Pacific
that his words would be heard only by seals.
But NBC's microphones picked them up loud
and clear.
Most PGA tour members learn early in their
careers to avoid, in particular, a word Woods has chosen to shout
before. He had a similar incident while losing the Andersen Consulting
match-play championship to Darren Clarke this spring. Unfortunately,
he used the word again at the U.S. Open.
“It's not the first time for Woods
,” past Open champion Tom Kite said. “I never heard
Jack do it. I never saw Arnie do it. I never saw Watson do it.
“I just hate to see Tiger do stuff
like that. I hope he shows remorse later for what he did.”
Woods apologized late Saturday, saying he
hated to end a round on such a poor tee shot. “I can apologize
until I'm blue in the face,” Woods said, “but I'm pretty
intense out there. I was frustrated, and I let it go a little
bit.”
If you're thinking that maybe Woods is being
held to a higher standard, that a burst of profanity from, say,
Lee Westwood would have gone virtually unreported, you're right.
But it's a standard Woods acquired the moment he signed on as
a multi-million dollar spokesman for Nike, for Buick, for American
Express.
Role model arguments aside, once you agree
to pocket millions on the premise that your words are worth hearing,
you can't turn down the volume at your own discretion.
There was an unconfirmed report that Woods
apologized to NBC officials before Saturday's third round.
Remorseful or not, Woods showed the field
no mercy and proved decidedly inhuman on the golf course.
While others vanished from sight (84 for
Jim Furyk, 81 for Hale Irwin), Woods expanded his lead. A triple-bogey
7 on the third hole did not prevent him from shooting a par 35
on the front.
Woods' game exhausted all superlatives long
ago, and he has clearly exhausted the field in this Open championship.
A lead that was one stroke after one round, three at the end of
play Friday and six shots after the completion of two rounds grew
to 10 by sunset Saturday.
At 8-under par, Woods leads Ernie Els by
10, Padraig Harrington and Miguel Angel Jimenez by 11.
The scariest sight for competitors Saturday
was the smile that creased Woods' face after his triple bogey
on the third hole. It was as if he knew it had been a fluke, as
if he wished to let fans, enemies and critics all know that this
was not the initial signs of a choke in progress.
Woods followed with birdies at six and seven,
a bogey at eight, then another birdie at nine. That's four birdies
on the front side of a course that was just devouring others (81
for Sergio Garcia, 83 for Hal Sutton.
Woods' spectacular play on the golf course
is what fosters such scrutiny away from it. It was a controversy
at the Ryder Cup when he didn't place his hand over his heart
during the Star-Spangled Banner.
Never mind the fact that plenty of others
didn't. In the Associated Press photo that went around the world,
Woods was the only American player with his right arm at his side.
It was a controversy here four days ago
when Woods did not participate in a ceremonial salute to Payne
Stewart in which golfers hit balls into the ocean from the 18th
fairway. Never mind that Woods and Mark O'Meara already had a
practice time scheduled before the ceremony was announced.
So now Woods will deal with this issue of
whether he can control his temper on the occasional errant shot.
His ability to rebound from bogeys with birdies in Saturday's
third round showed that this is a concern strictly for his image.
His golf game is under control. And it is
heading out of sight.
(c) 2000, The Dallas Morning
News.
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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