SAN FRANCISCO, CA – When the journalists, broadcasters, and oddsmakers were asking, “Which Tiger Woods is going to show up this week?” they had the right wording, but weren’t asking the right question. When asking “Which Tiger?” most people were wondering whether we’d see the Tiger who won at the Memorial or the Tiger who tanked at the Masters. They were wondering if Tiger would play well.
But after a 1-under 69 at the fearsome Olympic Club Lake Course to begin the 112th U.S. Open leaves him a five-way logjam tied for second place, the real analysis may be “Which Tiger?” as in “the one who uses blunt force to overpower a golf course leaving scorched earth in his wake, or the one that surgically dissects a course with clinical precision?”
We knew the answer as soon as Woods tacked his way around the golf course, carefully balancing three birdies against two bogeys. He is just one shot behind the usual puzzling stranger we inevitably get on U.S. Open Thursdays, this time one “Michael Thompson.”
In doing so, Woods looked more like the clinician we saw systematically deconstruct Royal Liverpool and Southern Hills. “He Hoylaked the place,” said one journalist, and he was right.
“Some holes were set up for a driver and 3-wood, others set up for irons,” he explained. Today it was quicker and the tees were somewhat up from where we played our practice rounds…that’s 20 yards…and all of a sudden we’re in the steeper part of the slopes or now we’re through dog-legs. I had to make an adjustment.”
Woods’s analysis of a course is, as usual, impeccable. When studying a course to find its weak points Woods has the discipline and precision of a Soviet chess player. He butterfly-filleted Southern Hills, playing the 10th hole 7-iron, 7-iron. As Jim Furyk would ask, “Who does that??!!” In the second round Woods fired a major championship record-tying 63.
Then of course in his interview he tried to pass it off as “62-and-a-half,” but nobody bought that funky jazz, but I digress.
“I tried to hit to the flat part of the greens,” he asserted. “On these greens, I’d rather have a flat 20 foot putt than a curvy ten foot one with five feet of break.” It worked: He rolled in birdie putt after birdie putt. He even chipped in once.
A year earlier at Hoylake he did the same thing, keeping the driver in the bag over a rather pedestrian stretch with flat greens and where the main defense was obnoxious internal out of bounds, (Puke-a-tronic), cutting thoroughly dismembering and disemboweling it: 2-iron, 4-iron, 6-iron.
“I don’t like greens with elephants buried under them,” he once confided to an R&A official, and he’s right. Medinah anyone?
Sometimes Woods like to rely on what he refers to as that nine-hole stretch where he goes shockingly low and surges ahead. Happily for the field, that’s not coming here at Olympic Club. It’s too brutishly long and relentless. Instead, he once again hit 7-irons off tees to position himself to approach more easily to the flat part of greens. He hit driver only three times today: at 9, 10, and 16.This wasn’t trying to out-wrestle the Minotaur – this was trying to tiptoe past it.
“This is one of those Opens where it’s just really hard to make birdies. This is not like it was last year, this is a tough one,” he confirmed. Players won’t surge to the top, they will, instead, slowly percolate downward, and whoever hits the least bad shots will win rather than the risk-taking swashbuckler. That means it will stay close, as it always does at Olympic Club, so stay strapped in. The forecast is for bad turbulence.
As for Michael Thompson, if this weren’t Olympic Club, I’d say he’d disappear like a rabbit in a conjuring trick at the first opportunity. But Olympic Club did what it always does, surprise us, and in San Francisco…”Well, well, well…you can never tell….” Digest this stat with your toast and tea: The field played the course to an average of 74.88, so that 66 is more like a 63. He thumped the entire field by three shots. And most importantly, he putted lights out. Sound familiar? (Cough! Cough! Scott Simpson…Scott Simpson…)
But it also looks like Tiger will certainly play well all week too – he won’t hit it sideways like at Sawgrass. After all, he birdied four and five, which Tom Doak called, “the two hardest back-to-back holes” anywhere. Woods played the opening stretch of six holes in 1-under – that’s three strokes better than the 2-over figure U.S.G.A. Executive Director called “doing really good.” Control is the Rosetta Stone to solving the Lake Course, and with Woods beginning to control his game – finally – he’ll have a great chance on Sunday. It’s possible the putts may refuse to drop, but if he keeps playing to flat spots below the hole, we may have another paint-by-numbers masterpiece a la Hoylake and Oklahoma. Last night the San Francisco Giants’ Matt Cain pitched a perfect game. That’s essentially what it’s going to take to stay on top at Olympic Club. And you have to admit, the guy who does “perfect” most often is Tiger.
NEWS NOTES AND QUOTES
Michael Allen, a member of Olympic Club, not only shot 71 today, he eagled 14 for the 1st time in over 2000 rounds here.
Nick Watney carded a double-eagle on the par-5 17th hole, hitting a 5-iron from 190 yards out. “It was kind of disbelief, kind of joy. It was exciting.”
There were 5 birdies today at the 670-yard 16th. It played to a stroke average of 5.57, possibly a record. By contrast, 17th – also a par-5 – had 4 eagles and an albatross.
