Sport
The new Tiger Woods is pretty good
But if Woods proved anything in an opening round felt all the way from the locker room to the driving range, it’s that the new Tiger is still better on any given day than anyone playing against him.
Certainly better than his playing partners, who couldn’t make sense of the sloping fairways, tiny greens and thick rough on the Lake course at Olympic. Mickelson never found his first tee shot after hitting it into one of the towering cypress trees that line the fairways, and shot a 76. Watson was even worse, insisting on banging his driver off nearly every tee and paying the price in wildness with a fat 78.
“I know I can hit the ball this way and I know I have been hitting the golf ball this way,” Woods said. “And I was able to put it together in a major championship.”
The last point can’t be emphasized enough because the majors mean everything to Woods. They always have, since he was a kid pasting the record of Jack Nicklaus on his bedroom wall so he would have a daily reminder of what to shoot for.
He’s got 14 of them so far, but it’s been four years and 15 majors since he won the Open at Torrey Pines, the longest drought of his career. He’s 36 now, and if he is to catch or surpass the record of 18 majors held by Nicklaus he needs to start picking off a major here and there.
“Second best player in the history of golf, after Jack,” said Stephen Ames, who played in the group behind Woods.
If Woods keeps hitting the kind of shots he hit on Thursday, Ames might have to change his rankings.
