Time to Ignore Tiger, Focus on Real Golfers
Jay Mariotti
Lead Columnist
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland -- "Out along the ropes on the 14th hole, grown adults still were running and jostling for viewing space Saturday, even as Tiger Woods continued to shrink in relevance and golfing girth. They followed him by the thousands, not concerned that he has become a non-contending wannabe and that a third-round duel between two legitimate challengers -- including Paul Casey, an ENGLISHMAN trying to win THE BRITISH OPEN -- was much more compelling. Others just wanted to be voyeurs, consumed by his personal misery and the systematic demise of his once-impenetrable game when they should have been doing something more productive, like ordering the greasy fish and chips. Like rubber-neckers staring slack-jawed at a burning building, they couldn't wait to catch a peek of this flawed man they read about in the British tabloids, staring in silence as Woods served up more bland mediocrity and gagged on another major opportunity. What they saw amid the high rough and unusually sunny skies only confirmed the trail of torture that has been his life since his infamous SUV crash last November. After trading in his decade-worthy Scotty Cameron putter for a Nike Method 001, in a desperation move lampooned by the British media, Woods followed a promising first round with two awful rounds on the greens. Shockingly, he needed 35 putts to salvage a one-over 73 and fall 12 strokes behind the steady leader, Louis Oosthuizen, whose name was pronounced correctly by the news-conference moderator Saturday evening -- he was called "Peter Oosterhausen'' on Friday -- and will have the sports world enunciating the proper "Louie West-hi-zen'' if he wins the Claret Jug.
Who ever thought an obscure golfer from South Africa, nicknamed "Shrek'' by his friends for the gap in his front teeth, would stand on history's doorstep as Woods takes another tumble toward post-scandal oblivion? He never looked older as he lumbered off the Old Course, still four majors behind Jack Nicklaus' record, his face etched in pain. The Tiger Woods who ruled St. Andrews in 2000, then won again five years later, has melted into a has-been.Last time he was here, he was a newlywed buoyed by enormous wealth and fame, vowing to settle down as a family man as he soared toward status as the first billion-dollar athlete. Five summers later, thanks to a ravenous sexual appetite, he has lost his wife, rarely sees his two kids and might never regain even a smidgen of his former golf dominance. For months, he was a laughingstock, a social pariah and a corporate red flag, and now, he is becoming a portrait of pity everywhere he goes, a man living in his own prison with no foreseeable parole.................Eldrick Woods, who is miserable and about to fade from the radar screen. Do yourself a favor, as I am, and devote your attention span to Louis Oosthuizen. Whoever he is."
