Golf: Woods' path littered with obstacles

If he didn't know it when his life and his golf began falling apart, Tiger Woods knows it now. Sometimes you just have to hold a line and remember that if you keep trying to do the right thing you might get through the worst of the toughest of situation. Who knows, you might just turn everything around.

There was a hint of that after what he described as one of his most gruelling days out on the course that in 2000 and 2005 - when his life was still on the trajectory which first rocketed him to the status of arguably the best pound-for-pound professional sportsman of all time - he not so much beat as engulfed.

The new possibility was hatched on Friday night when he finished a day geared for survival with a stupendous drive at the 18th, one that swept him beyond the Valley of Sin - in a manner of speaking - and set up an eagle attempt that failed by an inch.

"In the conditions, all the circumstances, that was absolutely my best round of the year," said the Tiger of that 73, which left him eight shots behind the unlikely South African pacesetter, Louis Oosthuizen. "I'm not where I want to be," he added, "but I feel things are getting better. I'm on the right track."

Unfortunately that track was littered with obstacles on Saturday when it was time to begin his first serious moves in the fight to re-establish himself as the man every golfer has to beat. Fourth in the US Masters and the same mark in the US Open spoke of a determination to ride the long squalls of a new notoriety, but it was here at the scene of two of his great triumphs that he was supposed to announce the recovery of his name, and his game.

In the event the best he could produce was another over-par round that failed to follow the principle he embraced so enthusiastically after taking himself to the fringe of the serious action on the first day with a 67. "The trick on a benign day," he had said, "is to let a round mature, to wait for your opportunities." On Saturdaythe delay finally began to wear at the Tiger's hard-won composure.

It first came under stress after four opening holes that were played at something close to the immaculate. The driving was solid, and on the fourth he produced a monster putt for birdie that missed by a fraction. Such are the margins, in this case, between earnest endeavour and some form of miraculous redemption.

The second development will now have to wait for the PGA tournament next month - or maybe Augusta in the spring, when the dogwood and azaleas are out and young men's fancy turns to ... well, that may be another story. In the meantime, Woods is simply obliged to make the best of his journey in the margins of the game he once dominated so profoundly. He hangs on to his No 1 status, but only because none of his rivals has had the sustained ability to down him when he has never been more vulnerable. Or less likely to take hold of this linksland and turn it into a personal possession.

The pattern on Saturday was established in a series of blows that seemed guaranteed to put down Woods just at those moments when he might have believed he had seen the first glints of light in the nine months of the great ordeal. Bogeys came at the fifth, the eighth and the 13th, and they might have broken a more fragile competitive spirit. But then if Woods can be surrounded, hassled and driven into evidence of extreme frustration, it is not so easy to make him accept the advice that he is staring in the face of defeat.

For every setback, there was another swirl of belief that he might just be back in some kind of business. He birdied the ninth, the 12th and the 15th and on the 16th he produced an approach shot that reminded you that much genius had been misplaced in the trauma of a personal crisis.

On Friday night he spoke of that eternally fine dividing line between win and loss, and how it can narrow so swiftly when the wind picks up in a place like this one.

"We never got what Louis [the obscure South African leader] got. He had 16 holes downwind but that's the way it can go. If you get a good break you have got to capitalise on it. He certainly did. For everyone else, we had to grind it out. You can have good shots that end up as bad shots, and hit some bad shots that end up in better places. That's golf."

At times it can also be life, as Woods now understands better than perhaps he did before he went for an early-morning drive while the rest of the US was sleeping off Thanks- giving Day. These last few days, his timing and his direction have, like all that genius, been at times not so apparent. But then as he reaches his mid-thirties he still perhaps has a little margin for error, something he suggested with a superb recovery after over-hitting his approach into the Road Hole. He had to come back over the wall, which he did rather exquisitely.

Unfortunately, that 17th hole left him with another bogey. It was not the most shining card he has ever handed in, but then he does have a little time - and, you have to suspect, enough resolution for something better somewhere along the road.

- THE INDEPENDENT