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They're playing something called the World Match Play Championship tournament in Carlsbad, Calif. Match play means the golfers play head-to-head and instead of winning on low score, they compete hole by hole. If you birdie the first hole and your opponent double-bogies, this puts you one-up, not three strokes ahead. At the end of 18, whoever has won the most holes goes on to play the winner in another bracket. Sunday is a showdown between the last two golfers standing. The way Woods has been playing — no bogies in the first two days — he should be one of them. You almost have to feel for the other guy — and it doesn't make any difference who that turns out to be. Head to head against Tiger when he's playing strong as onions after failing to win the previous week's tournament? That's like some sod farmer going up again Wyatt Earp. Woods got off to a bad start at the Nissan last week, after having won the Buick, his first tournament since returning to the tour following knee surgery. He missed some short putts, got mad, and talked ugly. First, to himself; then, to a spectator whose cell phone rang on Tiger's backstroke. Woods missed the four-footer and let the man — who was ejected — have it in language that would have melted the wax in Bobby Jones's ears. Tiger's caddy, anyway, was relatively restrained. In another tournament, he once snatched a noisy camera away from a fan and pitched it into the lake. While Woods did not make it two in a row, he played a brilliant round on Sunday, when he was out of contention, and worked himself up to another top-ten finish. The round was further proof — if any were needed — that while his golf game is sublime, it is the intangibles, those things that make him such an implacable competitor, that have turned professional golf into a game of Tiger against the field. On the last day of the Buick tournament, Tiger had played in the final grouping along with the man who's supposed to be his principle rival on the tour — Phil Mickelson. It was painful to watch, even on television. Tiger practically ran Mickelson off the leader board — you almost expected to see him turn to Mickelson and say, "This isn't personal, Phil; it's just business." On one long and tricky par three, Mickelson still had a shouting chance but then put his ball off in the weeds. Tiger could have hit to a safe part of the green and two-putted, which would have kept Mickelson comfortably at bay if he got it up and down — or even widened the lead by a length if, as seemed likely, he bogied. Instead, Woods went straight at the pin, leaving himself a four-foot putt and Mickelson with more grounds for his reputation as the man who chokes on Sunday. Woods is the kind of phenomenon that comes along and defines an era. He is a colossus, and the pleasure in following him is in watching him break records that were considered unbreakable. Which, truth be told, can get a little old. The prudent fan does not follow sports merely to be awed. You go out to see a competition, not an exhibition. The fan needs some suspense and what he craves, above all, is rivalry. The epics of sports are tales of rivalries, Hector and Achilles in jockstraps. You think, oh, Ali/Frazier, Dallas/Green Bay, Yankees/Dodgers, Magic/Bird, and, in golf, Nicklaus/Palmer. The great rivalries are about a fusion of skills and character. Green Bay, by this formulation, beats Dallas because it is fundamentally more sound and physically tougher, not because it is more talented. Only a warrior with the heart of Joe Frazier could stand up to Ali and his sublime gifts and keep things so close. Nicklaus had golf skills of an entirely new order ("He plays a game with which I am not familiar," Bobby Jones once said of him) and needed all of them to defeat Palmer. Tiger Woods, though, has no rivals. In these days of great coaches and lavish development (kids are playing golf practically before they're done teething), there are plenty of golfers who can match up with Woods purely in terms of strokes. A few years back, people made a big fuss over how far Tiger could hit the ball. But there are plenty of players today who are just as long and a few who are longer. From time to time, a potential rival to Tiger has appeared somewhere on the pale green horizon. But there always seems to be a flaw. David Duval could not will himself past some physical problems and also seemed to try too hard to press — as when he put it in the ditch at the Masters a couple of years ago, losing his chance at a win. Sergio Garcia is a little too much in love with himself as a gallery favorite. It probably doesn't help, either, that this is pure role-playing — that, off-course, he is more petulant adolescent than exuberant young man. Retiff Goosen is perhaps too phlegmatic. If Duvall presses, Goosen doesn't quite know how to turn it up that last notch. Colin Montgomerie has too much of a temper. Tiger might bless out a fan for taking a picture on his back swing, but then he'll forget about it. Montgomerie will fume for the next three holes. Justin Leonard is too dour: Whereas Tiger gets more pumped and exuberant as he pulls away on the leader board, Leonard appears to struggle under the burden of being number one. This leaves, finally, Ernie Els, who is longer off the tee than he has ever been and has been chipping and putting with uncommon accuracy. Els, these days, is hotter than a $3 pistol. In the past, it has been Els's burden to trudge along with Tiger on the last day of major tournaments where Woods was so far ahead that you needed binoculars to find him. Els looked like the affable sidekick who doesn't get the girl but manfully holds the ring. His usually amiable smile began to look like a wound. Els's failing has been a kind of insouciance you can almost see in his easy, effortless golf swing. Until this season, he has looked not like a hard competitor but like a serenely gifted natural. Some followers of the game — and of Els — think he may have wearied of his role as a place horse and is now ready to move up to the front. Woods and Els haven't played in the same tournament yet this season, and they won't this weekend — Els was bounced from the World Match Play Championship on the first day. But he will be back. We may find out at the Masters if Els is the legitimate rival to Woods. Tiger has said he's looking forward to it, and none could doubt him. Els will need to bring his "A" game and a little something more. Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson won his match play round on Thursday, keeping alive the possibility of a showdown with Tiger on Sunday. "Hang in there, Phil," you think. "It's just business." — Geoffrey Norman writes on sports for NRO and other publications. |
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iger Woods is dominating a professional golf tournament this week, which
is not exactly news. Oddly, he is not leading the tournament in
the technical sense. 
