Putting woes driving Tiger to distraction

Come divorce or infamy, injury or ill-fortune, the one thing you could always rely on with Tiger Woods is that he would turn up at the podium after his rounds and speak to the media.

Never mind that it was in perfunctory tones half the time. Credit where it’s due.

So, no wonder there was a palpable sense of shock among seasoned Tiger observers at the WGC-mexico Championship when he declined to talk not only on Saturday but following his round on Sunday as well.

What could be eating Tiger (right) to cause such abnormal behaviour, given everything he’s coped with in the past and still spoken? Yes, a balky putter will do that to a man — particularly when his long game is in such sound shape.

Turn on the television and every analyst, with good reason, will tell you he’s swinging the club as well as ever. But on the greens? What a sad contrast to his reputation as the best clutch putter of all time.

‘I think that might be the worst putt I’ve ever seen him hit,’ said Sky’s ewen murray during Sunday’s final round. It has been the same in the three events Woods has played so far this season.

‘I’ve just putted as badly as a human being can putt,’ he said, after four three-putts during the first round of the Genesis open — yet last week in mexico was even worse. For the second tournament running there were six holes where he had three putts or more, and you have to go back to his early days as a pro in 1997 to find the last time that happened.

on Sunday he missed six putts inside 10 feet and three inside six feet. ‘my good putts didn’t go in and my bad putts were atrocious,’ Tiger lamented to a tour official.

The worry is that he is now 43, the age when most people see a deterioration. Not for nothing is it one of golf’s oldest adages: ‘Putting is the first thing to go.’ We will need to see a lot more evidence, of course, before thinking along such lines with Tiger. All three tournaments were played on poa annua greens, a strain that has given him fits in the past. His next event is the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, one he has won eight times and where he usually putts beautifully on surfaces made of Bermuda grass.

With the masters six weeks away and Georgia firmly on his mind, here’s what we can conclude: Woods will want to see a marked improvement at Arnie’s event to replace the sound of silence with a roar of relief.