Tiger Woods Grimacing his face. The pain or the scorecard, it was hard to tell. We know how hard he struggles to hide the first one, but there was no hiding the other.
Double bogey, double bogey, bogey, bogey, six over after seven. There comes a time when the patron of the Last Chance Saloon looks a man in the eye and asks with deadly serious sincerity, “Don’t you have enough, sir?”.
For Woods, this must have been how his initial progress on the Old Course felt. It can’t have been fun. It didn’t look like fun. At those low points, he must feel haunted by the player he used to be.
Tiger Woods had a horrible start to the 150th Open and grimaced throughout the day
Ted Hughes wrote a poem, The Jaguar, about another big cat. He depicted it in a cage but not locked in, still hopping in its mind, roaming, turning the world with its paw. Maybe that’s how Wood sees himself. Still strong, still the man to beat, always the one to watch.
In reality, here he will most likely be irrelevant to all but those craving a possible last look. At six over he was 14 shots from the lead and was barely a third of the way around the course.
When he finally reclaimed a shot with a straight birdie in ninth place, it caused a huge cheer from a packed gallery desperate for good news. They were delighted when he pulled another back on the tenth with an exquisite second shot that stopped just a yard from the hole. What a fighter he is. What resilience.
The 46-year-old finished the first hole of Thursday’s Open with a double bogey
But at the same time, what chance? The man hardly plays these days. Fingers could count the rounds of golf he’s played in a calendar year. As benign as St Andrews is supposed to be, a man can’t just show up armed with grim determination and historical genius and pin it on the world’s greatest golfers.
So sometimes he looks like the tiger of yore, and sometimes he looks like an old man with a reconstructed leg who makes mistakes and whose continued presence is in itself a gesture of defiance. He immediately returned one with a three putt on a par 3 11.
And then there’s the first. Woods’ anger against the dying of the light is embodied in the first. He practiced putting in front of a crowd that was more like a gallery for graduation day. Standing room only and some of it on the white posts protecting the TV studios. Smartphone cameras tracked his every move. Craning their necks to watch gulls wheel in the gusts overhead. Then Woods went to the tee, emboldened all the way.
Things didn’t get any better for the American as he fired more shots in third and fourth place
Here’s what Padraig Harrington said about the first in this paper on Thursday. “It’s such a harmless hole, it’s just a lob wedge approach and you’re going to see a lot of people making birdies. But three of the days the pin is right over the Swilcan Burn and you’ll see some players get too cute and end up in the snag.
I know how bad that feels. In 2010 I fancied my chances – after winning the Claret Jug in 2007 and 2008. But I found the burn on day one and took six. I just wanted to go home. It felt like a dagger to my hopes.’
Apparently, Woods is not a reader of the Daily Mail. Guess what he did? He put it in the burn.
Well, first he hit a perfect tee shot, the longest of his group and straight down the middle. Unfortunately, it stalled in a divot. Bad luck, but it’s golf. Happens.
Players often aim for the same part of the fairway. The odd phony lie is an occupational hazard and nothing to worry Woods in his prime. When he played his second, he caught the recoil of a face full of sand, but that wasn’t the worst of it. A hop, plop. That would have hurt.
Woods made a schoolboy mistake, just two shots in his open. He played his favorite course in the world like a beginner. That was double bogey number one. A most unfavorable start.
When he got off the fourth, the gulls were still circling, but they felt more like vultures now. Woods had made three bogeys when his second fell off the front of the green, and then the fourth with three putts.
At the fifth tee was Patrick Smith of Phoenix, Arizona. He wore a tiger onesie incongruously paired with a light blue hat. He said this was his bucket list trip, the 150th Open at St Andrews, and having his hero play Tiger was “icing on the cake”.
Woods had reason to smile after a birdie on the eighth was greeted by a roar from the crowd
But he wasn’t going in the same direction as Woods, who was now marching in search of the fifth fairway. Smith said he’s resting his legs, but they’re probably in better shape than Woods’.
He said he would catch up with him closer to the turn. It was difficult to observe the relationship between Woods and his audience. So much hope, so much expectation.
Woods drove to a roar of encouragement that died away in the wind as the ball drifted. He played approach shots to greens surrounded by exciting galleries that greeted the arrival with disappointed silence. And when he finally got that bird on the ninth, the cheers that greeted him had echoes of those who would praise Jack Nicklaus in his ceremonial years. And he smiled in a way he never would when fighting his peers and not his body.
The fans still love him, of course. They’re just glad to say they saw him, glad for a pinch of Tiger Stardust. Children who have only heard stories about the man they are watching yell “Go on Tiger” because he has been sold to them as golf’s true hero. At least that’s how he stays relevant.
Woods waved to the crowd after eventually signing for a six-over-par round of 78
Step away from the human excitement that follows Woods and you realize just how much of an attraction he still has. For other golfers, even the best, there are no five lines, no blasts of noise. Ropes hold back a crowd that doesn’t exist.
Then Tiger sweeps through and it’s a circus. First, a smartly dressed gentleman bent down for a better view. “Can’t stand there, mate,” said a TV technician. “We have a boom camera in position.” It was explained that the viewer in question had dispensations. “He didn’t,” he was told bluntly. ‘He will be hurt.’ That’s not often the way to address Prince Albert of Monaco.
Meanwhile, in fleeting moments, Tiger still turns the world with his paw. A 412-yard drive on the 14. Another bird. He would also have driven the 18th green if it hadn’t been for a bad kick. He also missed the birdie putt with a six over par 78. The gallery stayed with him until the end. Most of them. And, heavens, it was slow out there. The wrong side of six hours. But when will anyone get a chance to follow this man around this corner of Fife again? Friday. After that we will see.
