Woods thriving in comfort zone
WHAT was that on Tiger Woods’s neck and what did it mean to the Open Championship chances of the icon who, even at 42, spent yesterday as the most followed figure on Carnoustie’s parched fairways?
Well, they have had moments of high medical drama here — not least in 1953 when Ben Hogan, rebuilt after a near-terminal car crash, was put on penicillin to beat a raging temperature so that he could produce perhaps the most courageous round ever to win the Claret Jug.
But Woods’s tell-tale signs of physical hardship came in the form of kinesiology therapeutic (KT) tape — an elastic sports strip which is designed, so their literature suggests, to relieve pain while supporting muscles, tendons and ligaments.
The strips were attached to his neck and only partly visible above his collarless T-shirt.
The reason this was such a big talking point is obvious. It has taken all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to put Woods back together in good enough condition to compete within driving distance of the player who won 14 majors several scandals and more operations ago.
Surgery fused his vertebrae, so allowing him to go from 666th in the world in January to 69th now. And neck and back are obviously close. Did the tape represent a serious problem?
After completing an even-par 71 that promised a little more than it delivered, Woods said: ‘It was just helping me support my neck a
little bit. The neck makes me feel a little bit more comfortable. It’s been bugging me for a while. Everyone acts like this is the first time I’ve been bandaged up. I’ve actually been doing this for years — braces and bandages. It’s just that this time it’s visible. It affected my swing here and there, but it’s all right.’
For the early part of his round, Woods was in fine form. He was relaxed. He stroked the ball around expertly. He kept his driver away. His trajectory was perfect. He was a mathematician as he calculated every angle. Serenity almost fell over him.
He was helped in this because there was not quite the same crazy hoopla around him as that which could be suffocating in his heyday. He was free to relax into the event in a way he never could when he was ripping up the records.
Still there was a sign that read: ‘The legend is back on the course. Mr Tiger Woods.’ He was cheered loudly at the first tee and could surely sense people willing him on to recreate the old magic.
He lived up to that with two birdies at the first four holes. As during his wonderful win at Hoylake on a similarly hard-baked surface in 2006, he gave his driver most of the day off. And when he did use it for the first time, at the sixth, he found his direction perfectly, dissecting the fairway with surgical neatness. Woods was through the back nine at two under — the first time he had been below par at the turn of the opening round of a major championship since 2013 — and sailing along nicely. But then he bogeyed two of the last six holes to take the gloss off his day’s work. ‘I had a better round than the score suggests,’ said Woods. Still, he is well positioned to improve on his last Open appearance, two years ago at St Andrews, where he missed the cut. He talked to his fellow players as he prowled around, including the awestruck local boy Russell Knox. The 26-year-old was obviously feeling the pressure, with Woods being his hero. ‘I’ve seen him on the range and he’s an almost mythical figure,’ said the Scotsman, who recovered from early petrification to end up two over par. Controversy always stalks Woods, even this new model, and he was in a spot of bother for supposedly ignoring autograph-hunting children. He denied any slight was intended, saying: ‘I signed on the way out to the range. It was no snub.’ Other than that, the new Tiger was smiling and relaxed at the close. He was just hoping for a good night’s sleep to rid him of his pain in the neck.