After the
second round of the 131st British Open at Muirfield last
week, Jim Littke of the Associated Press devoted an entire column to
explain that the championship was, for all practical intents and
purposes, over. He said,
bluntly and without qualification, they should just hand the trophy to
Tiger Woods. Woods, he
wrote, was just where he needed to be, a couple of shots out of the lead
and ready to lay waste to the field over the weekend.
It didn’t seem to mean much to Littke that there were a number
of world class golfers in the field who were ahead of Woods, not just
one or two, but a bunch. Nor did it apparently occur to him that Woods’s wins at
Augusta and Bethpage were not the result of his charging to the front,
but rather his few challengers going south faster than ducks ahead of
winter. Instead, reminding
us that there’s a reason today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s bird cage
liner, Mr. Littke so much as said, don’t even bother to watch the
thing on TV; it’s over.
As you know, a funny thing happened to Tiger’s quest for his
third major trophy of 2002: He came unglued, shooting 81 on Saturday.
Give him credit, though. He
rebounded with a remarkable 65 on Sunday to finish at even par for the
Open — still tied for 28th, well down on the list.
Tiger made a lot of new fans after his round Saturday, submitting
to what must have been painful interviews about his horrific 81.
He refused to make excuses and said he was grinding to the very
end. He answered questions with a smile, even though he knew his
dreams of winning the Grand Slam in one year — what he calls the
“Calendar Slam” as opposed to his own slam of holding all four
titles at once — were gone. Obviously,
he took a page from Arnold Palmer’s book and realized that, in the
world of sports celebrity, giving back means taking the bad with the
good.
As for Mr. Littke — whom I don’t mean to pick on, because
he’s a fine columnist — his column on Monday morning paid homage to
Ernie Els’s playoff victory over Lavet, Appleby, and Elkington without
ever mentioning his bold — and now embarrassing — prediction that
Tiger would romp through the field. Unlike Tiger, I guess it was just too hard for him to admit
he had a bad day.
