|
Tiger looking for ninth
Major title
Through the mystic chords
of memory, you can almost remember a time when a major championship rolled around,
and Tiger Woods was king of the world.
Think back a year, even.
At Muirfield, nestled in the moors of Scotland, Woods arrived with the Tiger Legend
roaring, full-force. With a Masters and U. S. Open championship in his pocket,
he eyed the Grand Slam, and the sports world swooned.
Then, cue the storm.
It wasn't just the Biblical
lashings of wind and rain that twisted Woods's dream into wreckage, into a third-round
81 for the annals of stunning, inexplicable golf history.
It was the beginning of
a yearlong storm that pelted Woods's legend.
His left knee had a cyst
and ligament damage, and December surgery was needed. Whispers of golf mortality,
for the first time in his career, surfaced.
Hawk-eyed Canadian Mike
Weir won this year's Masters, at a course that seemed Tiger's playground.
This year's U.S. Open never
saw Woods as a factor, and another world-class player used the opening to break
through. Jim Furyk joined the club of majors winners and, like Weir, had the look
of a man who could do it again.
Now, we come to the southeast
of England, to a raw and pure links course described as a wilderness untamed,
and for the first time in five years, Woods does not have a Grand Slam title.
That coffee table in his
Orlando home, with all four major trophies just two years ago? Now, it is so empty
Woods can stare into it and see only the reflection of his own face.
"You would feel the
players are closing in on Tiger, wouldn't you?" mused six-time majors winner
Nick Faldo.
And yet, here's the dichotomy
of Tiger's so-called demise. He came back from knee surgery to Torrey Pines and
won the Buick Invitational. He went to La Costa, to the Match Play Championship,
and carved his way through six matches, ending with a win against David Toms.
And he went to Bay Hill, Arnold Palmer's prestigious invitational, and smoked
the field.
Throw in a wire-to-wire
win at the Western Open in Chicago 10 days ago, and you have a quandary. So much
about the golf landscape says the gap between Woods and the world's best players
has closed; but four wins in 10 starts this year say that Woods is as good as
ever, and needs just a break or two to win his ninth career major.
He will only admit that
his knee concerned him in the winter, and then will just as quickly say that his
performance allayed all fears. Tiger says Tiger is OK.
"Maybe starting out
the year, yes (it was tough)," Woods said. "Starting out after coming
back and trying to get confident in my leg, yeah. There's always doubt anytime
you go under the knife. Then I got off to a pretty good start, winning three of
the first four after the surgery. So it was the right thing to do."
Email
this page to a friend | Return
to top of page | 
