Tiger fails to roar in Ryder Cup anti-climax
What a difference a few days makes eh? Last Sunday, Tiger Woods stood on the 18th green at East Lake, his arms elevated to the heavens in jubilation and a grinning beam that could’ve spanned the Atlantic.
The rejuvenated 14-time major winner was going to travel to Paris with a spring in his step after his first tour triumph in five years and Europe had been warned that the Tiger was set to bare his teeth in the Ryder Cup again.
Yesterday, he wore the face of a man who had just stubbed his toe on the clubhouse steps as his return to this team environment ended in a fourballs defeat and a stint on the sidelines as he was benched for the afternoon session.
Given all the emotion of that victory at the Tour Championship in Atlanta, a rigorous playing schedule coming into the Ryder Cup and the general hoopla and hullabaloo surrounding his every golfing cough, wheeze and snort, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised that the 42-year-old’s re-emergence on this particular stage was something of an anti-climax.
Woods was certainly not the same golfer who was, by and large, so imperious the previous weekend. There were even rumours that he was off to get intensive treatment on that bothersome back of his.
Speculation birls about at the Ryder Cup like cars going round the Arc de Triomphe. Woods’ back was fine, it seems, and any thoughts that he would miss today’s action were swiftly neutralised when he was listed for service in this morning’s session.
In tandem with Patrick Reed yesterday, Woods and his American partner went down to a 3&1 defeat at the hands of the terrific European double act of Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari.
“My game is fine,” Woods said in the aftermath of that morning defeat. “My cut really wasn’t cutting off the tee today. I was hammering it. The ball was going far. It was going straight, but it was not cutting.
“I can accept that. That’s really no big deal. My putting feels solid. I’ll be ready come tomorrow whenever captain (Jim Furyk) puts me out.’’
For the first time in his eight Ryder Cup appearances, Woods would sit out an opening day session after he was benched for the foursomes.
Indeed, he had only ever missed one session in his entire career and that was in the morning matches at Medinah in 2012 when, as he revealed recently, his dicey dorsal began to display the first hints of trouble and strife.
This latest reversal in a biennial bout that Woods has never prospered in took his all-time record in the event to won 13, lost 18 and halved three.