 |
 |
 |
|
CARNOUSTIE, Scotland -- First-tee jitters, anybody?
| Advertisement |
|||
| |||
If Tiger Woods doesn't have them, it's not because the British Open hasn't given him the occasional reason to flinch over the years.
Woods walked to the first tee at Carnoustie Golf Links on Friday and hauled out a long iron, intending to keep the ball safely in play and ease his way into the second round. Instead, he carved a curving hook out of bounds and absorbed a two-shot penalty.
Technically, he hit the ball into the meandering, maddening creek called the Barry Burn, although crash-and-burn was more like it.
After the uncharacteristically sloppy start, the two-time defending champion sputtered to a 3-over 74 and fell seven strokes off the lead at 1 over entering the weekend.
Nothing like having to reload before stepping out of the first tee box, right? For Woods, it marked the second two-shot penalty on his opening ball at the British, joining the lost-ball punishment he absorbed after his first swing at Muirfield in 2002.
All Woods could do was watch the doomed ball topple into the burn and ... laugh? That's exactly what he did.
|
|
| Tiger Woods plays shots from here, there and everywhere on Friday. (Getty Images) |
It must have been contagious. One year after he surgically took apart Hoylake off the tee, Woods managed to find five of 15 fairways Friday. The penalty-stroke toll could easily have been far higher than the two-shot ding he absorbed on the first, too.
On the par-5 sixth, Woods' tee shot came to rest within six feet of the out-of-bounds fence. On the 10th, where he received what was perceived to be a favorable ruling Thursday after yanking his ball to the left off the tee, he instead fanned it to the right. Luckily, his ball rattled around in a tree, or it would have dived into the burn for another penalty.
"It's not like you don't make bad swings at major championships," he said. "That's part of the deal. The whole idea is to not make anything worse than a six and I didn't do that."
Still, Woods' total was his highest at the British since an 81 in the third round at Muirfield five years ago. It probably seems like small consolation at the moment, but since nobody pulled away Friday, Woods remains in reasonable range of the player he shared the final-round pairing with at the Open last year, Sergio Garcia.
Moreover, the last time the Open was held at Carnoustie, in 1999, the winner came from a record 10 strokes back in the final round to win.
With another wave of dismally wet weather and 50-degree temperatures in the forecast for Saturday, that creates the likelihood that the leaderboard will bunch up even more, Woods predicted.
"You can make moves tomorrow," he said. "You shoot anything around par tomorrow and you'll be looking pretty good."
