You imagined Tiger Woods, Saturday round completed, back on the couch at his rental estate, sharing cold ones with his buddy Charles Barkley, rolling his eyes at Phil Mickelson and David Duval as they agonized on TV.
“Betcha dinner he makes it,” Barkley said as Mickelson stood over a 10-foot eagle putt on the par-5 13th.
“You’re on,” Woods said. Mickelson’s attempt failed to touch the hole and rolled six feet past, prompting Woods to add, “Double or nuthin’ he misses this too.”
“I accept and raise you one of my Porches,” Barkley said. Mickelson missed again, turning an eagle into a par.
“Chokin’ dog,” you imagined Barkley saying as Woods rubbed it in with a told-you-so grin.
Surely Woods took some consolation in what happened to the two most notable Tiger wannabes late Saturday afternoon at what became Southern Hills Country Club and Kennel. As U.S. Open courses go, this one played fairly easy. The greens didn’t get impossibly hard and slick. Conditions didn’t get unplayably hot and windy. Most pin placements were begging for birdies, not choking dogs.
This day was begging for Mickelson and Duval, who have won a combined zero major championships, to render Tiger Woods a Sunday-morning warm-up act. Woods hit the ball well enough Saturday to shoot 64, but six or eight on-line putts seemed repelled by the hole. The golf gods have spoken: This will not be Tiger’s week. His one-under-par 69 left him plus-four for the tournament. A 64 by Mickelson or Duval would have put laughing distance between them and Woods, who would have been 12 shots back.
As Mickelson said, “Today was the day to go low. Tomorrow will be very difficult with so many pins where you can’t get at them.”
But Mickelson and Duval can’t beat Woods eye-to-eye and they can’t beat him when he’s in their rear-view mirror. It was as if he drew his six-guns, handed one to Mickelson and one to Duval and said, “Go ahead, shoot me.” And both missed.
Both seemed to be seeing Tiger’s face on their ball, on their woods, on the flags, in the bottom of the holes. You would have thought Woods was caddying for them and saying after every shot, “You can run but you can’t hide.”
The day began with this general media-center sentiment: “Ignore everyone on the leaderboard except Mickelson and Duval.” Both were one under. For three or four years they have taken turns being the most “due” to win a major. As they teed off just before Woods finished, the smart money said one or the other would soon seize control of the 101st Open.
Yet all that either seized was his own throat. Duval winced and whined his way to a one-over 71. Mickelson alternated between becoming Tiger and turning back into Rover with a great-bad two-under 68. After a front-nine 32 nearly drove a stake through Woods, Mickelson canceled two back-nine birdies with three bogeys and the eagle-turned-par. If Mickelson had the killer instinct to match his talent, Woods wouldn’t own golf.
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Instead Mickelson often looks like a frat boy looking for a way out of a dark alley.
Man, I missed Woods’ fist-pumping fury on Saturday. Duval turned back into a golf geek, wearing a pencil upside down in the back strap of his cap, then wearing his sunglasses upside down and backward on his head. His new “soul patch” of hair beneath his chin looked like a corn flake he had missed with his napkin. He wasn’t exactly the picture of intimidation.
Now I can’t believe I was such a golf fan before Woods arrived. Now an Open without Woods on the leaderboard seems as if it belongs in Stillwater, Okla. Now we’re left with co-leader Stewart Cink in his Deloitte & Touche cap–he looks as if he should be working for them–and co-leader Retief Goosen from South Africa. Goosen, who hasn’t won in America, missed the cut at the Masters and Tour Championship. Three of his four wins on the European Tour have come in France. Vive Tulsa?
Only Sergio Garcia, who plays in his own kid-in-a-candy-store world, holds your attention and respect. He’ll be the last man–or boy–standing on Sunday.
Mickelson predicted “a shootout, but with pars instead of birdies.” You could almost see him glancing over his shoulder as he said it.
Obviously even Woods can’t birdie his way past 22 players from nine back. But he might scare nearly all of them to death.