May 8 2009 Ken Lawrence
THE suffering just goes on for
Tiger Woods - and life isn't getting any better for Sergio Garcia either.
Woods, his standing as world No.1 under serious threat, putted like a pussycat yesterday.
While plenty of his rivals at the Players Championship were enjoying a birdiefest at Sawgrass - David Toms, for example, had eight of them -Woods looked like he couldn't hole out into a bucket.
And although Garcia started well, a double-bogey at the 17th pegged him back.
Woods posted a 71 and could hardly be described as being out of it even if he is already trailing the leaders by some way.
Yet his frustration was all too obvious as, time after time, the ball failed to drop.
He said: "I hit the ball well, I really did.But I just didn't capitalise on my opportunities. My first four holes, I got it inside 15 feet each time but didn't make any of them.
"I didn't hit good putts. My speed was off early and I kept lipping it.
You bet it was frustrating." Woods' opening round was a perfect illustration of how things have been going for him almost all season.
He did hole a 15-footer on the last to seal a comeback win at Bay Hill last month following eight months out after knee surgery.
Since then, however, the genius that made him so scary to the rest of the field has lain dormant, his touch with the putter gone.
His worst moment came on the famous island green at the par-three 17th - his eighth hole having started on the back nine - after he had just made a magnificent eagle three at the previous hole.
He had left himself around 15 feet to follow that up with a birdie and the show, surely, would have been on the road. But the ball horseshoed back at him and the momentum was gone almost before it had begun.
Woods, under pressure from Phil Mickelson who is bidding to be world No.1 for the first time in his career, knew he had blown it.
He said: "The course is pretty much suited for everyone.
"The speed of the fairways makes it a little tricky to hold then but the greens are pretty receptive - what you have to do, of course, is take your chances and I didn't."
Garcia, in an even deeper depression, also went through agony, just when it seemed he had banished the blues.
Standing at three under and feeling no pain, he double bogeyed the par-three eighth - his 17th having, like Woods, begun on the back nine.
He finished with a 71 but while
Tiger Woods videos managed to smile at the end the Spaniard, who is two places below him in the world pecking order, looked like thunder.
Before the start of the TPC much of the discussion had been about whether Woods would hang on to that top spot and after his downbeat performance yesterday that discussion is very much ongoing.
But Garcia arrived at Sawgrass in a worse state. At least Woods has won this season. The title Garcia is defending this week marks his only victory in three years.
He doesn't even have an injury absence to point to as part of the reason why he is in perhaps the worst slump of his career.
He missed the cut the previous week at Quail Hollow following a hugely disappointing Masters performance when he finished tied 38th then headed out of Augusta bitching about the course and life in general.
Once he was like the Zebidee of golf, bouncing around with the cheeky grin that won him as many fans as his brilliant shot making.
For too long however, there has been only a grim mask of frustration, his continuing failure to win a Major getting to him more and more.
Petulance and not passion - as illustrated by his outburst towards the Green Jackets last month when he suggested the course was tricked up - had become a trademark characteristic.
Yet for a long while yesterday things didn't look so bad for him.
He wasn't hitting the ball that well but was holing putts and making birdies - five of them before so much of his hard work was ruined by that double bogey.
He didn't make the green in three after dumping his tee shot in the rough and the disconsolate Spaniard said: "I was hitting the ball very poorly.
"I can feel that my swing is not smooth, I can't feel that it is going the right way and I'm trying to steer everything."
Glasgow-born Martin Laird, now based in Scottsdale, Arizona, and in his second season on the US Tour, also shot 71 - but he was a lot happier than the two superstars on the same mark.
Laird said: "I'm quietly pleased. I was disappointed to be one over after nine because I played better than that - but two birdies at 10 and 11 helped my confidence."
Although Toms made those eight birdies, he wrecked what was beginning to look like one of the great rounds of his career.
He roared through his first nine in 32 and just kept making putts .
The 2001 USPGA winner was on course for a sensational 64 before stumbling at the end, dropping three shots in the last four holes.
Toms said: "In the end I just wanted to get off the course."
Retief Goosen will believe he has an excellent opportunity after blazing through the back nine after an indifferent outward par 36 to finish with a five under 67.
Jobbing tour pro John Mallinger gave himself an unlikely share of the spotlight with a 66, as did unknown Swede Richard S Johnson while his countryman Henrik Stenson shot 68 to also be up amongst the leaders.
Woods, meanwhile, must be a worried man. There was a time when he generated a fear factor that gave him a two-shot lead over almost anybody.
Habitually a slow starter, coming back from an opening 71 was no big deal. But he has begun to look more and more fallible and right now, just like a pussycat, he's not scaring anybody.
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