Search Results Still some positive signs in Tiger's first round By Mark Purdy Knight-Ridder Newspapers (KRT) SAN FRANCISCO - You have to admit one thing. Tiger Woods always makes it interesting. On a partially foggy Thursday morning at the Olympic Club, Woods played a partially great round of golf, as he and the United States Open continued their strange and wonderful relationship. It was strange because, for the third year in a row at the Open, the Tiger looked like a million bucks for most of the round, but he self-destructed on a few key holes and looked like whatever type of currency it is that suddenly four-putts a green and takes a double bogey. And it was wonderful because Woods' round of 74 - which places him eight strokes out of the lead - was a golf score with a message. And the message was this: Beware the power lip. To the lingo-challenged, a "power lip" is what happens in golf when someone strikes a putt with too much juice into a corner of a cup. So instead of rolling around and dropping into the hole, the ball spins around the edge and picks up momentum, spinning back out and rolling across the green like a cockroach scurrying across a kitchen floor. An ugly sight, to be sure. Thursday, it occurred twice to Woods. A few other times, he didn't quite get the ball to the hole. As a result, on four greens he took more than two putts. "They were just a little off," he said. "You know, a little here, a little there, and they just never seemed to fall in." Yessir. It was like the old golf one-liner. When Tiger was good, he was very, very good. And when he was bad, he sounded like a rent-a-wreck clunker. You know: Putt. Putt. Putt. Putt. And that was just on one hole. The ninth. That's where Woods took four strokes on the green and went from 2 under par to even, in one horrible five-minute sequence. A four-putt green? We'll get to the gory details in a few paragraphs. But when was the last time Woods did that? "It's been a while," he said. Yet if you can believe it, there were several positive signs in Woods' round. In the days before Thursday's first round, it was a matter of speculation whether Tiger would be able to handle the claustrophobic fairways at Olympic. His long-driving game was supposed to be negated by the cramped, relatively short layout. Well, that quickly has become a non-issue. Woods played almost perfectly from tee to green, slamming the ball when necessary and tenderizing it when that was the better strategy. Butch Harmon, the personal instructor who sometimes travels with Woods to the bigger tournaments, watched his pupil and pronounced himself satisfied. "He didn't play that bad," Harmon said. "He was just a little too aggressive with the putter." Some of the trouble was pin placements. At one green, Woods noted, it would be possible to "power lip the ball into the rough." At other holes, Tiger claimed the flagsticks were standing "at an angle" because the cups were on the sides of hills. That was an exaggeration, though not by much. And the way it looks from here, there are some good vibes for Tiger. One came courtesy of John Daly, the wildest and longest driver in the business. He showed Thursday that a big banger could score at Olympic, by shooting a 69 and finishing the day in a tie for seventh place. Daly, it turns out, didn't even bring his driver to the course, keeping the club locked inside his car to avoid temptation. Tiger couldn't quite go cold turkey. His driver did come with him to the course. But he only used it three times, on the first, 11th and 17th tees. On those three holes, he made birdie, par and bogey. So you would have to call the experiment inconclusive. But if Daly can shoot under par here, you can damn well bet Woods can. He still has the crowd on his side, for sure. The Tigermania Scene remains impressive. The ball still sounds like a gunshot coming off his clubs - and the galleries are just as huge and loud in worshiping his power, as his appeal shows no sign of waning. And when he birdied the first hole with an eight-foot putt, the crowd adrenaline was rolling. Given all that, it was doubly impressive that Woods never got out of control. He birdied two more holes on the front nine and was on the leader board when he came to the ninth hole, a 433-yard par-4. That's when his day hit a low point. As promised, here's the gory play-by-play: After a good drive, Woods' approach shot landed 25 feet below the flagstick. So he rapped it uphill and saw it go about two feet past the cup. One putt. Woods knew it was a downhill putt for a par, so he made up his mind to put enough mustard on the stroke so that the ball wouldn't drift out of a straight line toward the hole. But he was too generous with the mustard. The ball hopped over the hole - bringing a gasp from the crowd - and rolled 10 feet downhill. Two putts. If the Tiger was trembling after this bad turn of events, he didn't show it. Woods' face remained stoic as he lined up his next stroke. It rolled gently up to the hole ... and stopped inches away. Three putts. At this point, the silence around the green was deafening, even with a thousand or so people looking on. Woods silently walked up and tapped the ball into the hole. Four putts. After that, Tiger's round never regained momentum. He bogeyed four more holes on the back nine. But he didn't blow up totally, which was his most impressive move of the day. He showed his temper only once - when he missed a green on an approach shot, not after a bad putt. "I've just got to keep hitting fairways," he said, "and give myself a chance to either attack or play safe." And as always, it will be fascinating to see how this adventure proceeds. Tiger's history in our nation's golf championship is not what you would call stellar. In the 1995 Open at Shinnecock Hills, he withdrew because of a wrist injury during the second round. The next year at Oakland Hills, he finished in a tie for 82nd place. Last year at Congressional Country Club, Woods had only one under-par round. The bottom line: Thursday was Woods' 10th round of U.S. Open golf and he has only finished two rounds under par. His average score is 72.8 strokes. By way of comparison, defending champion Ernie Els' average is 70.6 strokes after 20 rounds, even including the 75 he shot Thursday. It's no wonder that Woods allowed himself a bout of nostalgia when speaking about his days at Stanford when the golf team would play at Olympic and he didn't have to worry about close-cropped fairways that send drives bounding into the rough - and closer-cropped greens that caused his problems Friday. "When I played here in college," explained Tiger, "I used my driver more because we usually played it in the fall and the course was wetter. You know, the fog was always in, so the grass was always damp and the ball wouldn't roll." Tiger isn't rolling in this tournament, either, so far. But remember, it's still early. It's not too late to unplug the power lips. (c) 1998, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.). Visit Mercury Center, the World Wide Web site of the Mercury News, at http://www.sjmercury.com/ Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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