Tiger Opens Up, Jack Shuts Down

By THOMAS BONK

July 22, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland —

This is getting monotonous. The U.S. Open, the British Open, the Tiger Woods Invitational, what’s the difference? Once again in Friday’s second round of the 129th British Open, the sun shone brightly over the Old Course and Woods proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can flat-out scorch this place.

After two rounds, the only sight more certain than long lines at the ice cream stands is Woods trampling the most hallowed ground in golf.

He followed his first-round 67 with a six-under 66, opening up a three-shot lead after 36 holes.

Woods made six birdies, saved par on the Road Hole from behind the green and increased to 62 his number of consecutive holes in major championships without a bogey.

What is this anti-bogey mentality anyway?

“What you try to do at any time is not make mistakes,” Woods said. “Bogeys aren’t good for your scorecard.”

If you think this is starting to look a lot like Pebble Beach and the U.S. Open, you’re right. Woods led by six after two rounds at Pebble Beach and went on to a 15-shot victory. That can’t happen here . . . can it?

Reasonable people say there’s not a chance, but it is never a good idea to sell Woods short on anything.

Somebody asked Woods if the tournament is already over.

“Well, I don’t have the trophy sitting next to me,” he said.

Closest to Woods right now is David Toms at three shots back. Sergio Garcia, Loren Roberts and Steve Flesch are tied for third at seven-under 137, with Fred Couples, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson, Thomas Bjorn and Tom Lehman at 138. Mickelson pulled himself back into the hunt with a 66 that matched Woods, Davis Love III and Jose Coceres of Argentina for low round.

It was another unusually calm and sunny day at the Old Course, where the players took one look at the conditions and probably risked injury by leaping out of bed as quickly as they could.

And once Woods got going, no one could catch him, not even the topless female spectator who ran onto the 18th green after Woods finished his round.

Unless the wind starts blowing, the scores could get really ridiculous. The cut was at even par.

“I want it to blow 25 miles an hour,” Darren Clarke said.

Woods said the same thing, because it’s not really a British Open without some big breezes blowing golf balls all over the place.

Toms turned in a bogey-free 67 and sank two huge birdie putts on the front. At No. 5, he made a 60-footer and rolled in another one from 35 feet at No. 9. But as difficult as those putts might have been, Toms faces a bigger challenge, trying to become the first player to win the British Open in his first appearance since Tom Watson in 1975.

Maybe because he is eight under at the midway point, Toms says he enjoys the Old Course experience.

“In the U.S., we play bomb the drive as hard as you can, then you hit the next one as high as you possibly can to stop it on the green, then you try to make a putt on a perfect surface,” Toms said. “This is totally different.”

Actually, the big difference is that everybody is trying to beat Woods on a different continent.

The closest Woods came to making a bogey was at the 17th, when his second shot landed on a narrow patch of grass behind the green. From there, Woods took his 60-degree sand wedge and banked the ball off the slope of the Road Hole bunker and rolled it back to within eight feet of the hole. He made that putt to save par.

He said that although the putt was only eight feet, it broke right to left and then left to right at the end.

“A putt that short and having it break two ways is not exactly easy,” Woods said.

But he’s making almost everything appear easy these days.

“That’s a nice compliment,” he said. “When anyone is playing well, it makes the game seem a little easier, but I guarantee you it is not.”

If the weather during the second round was like a day at the beach, it seemed logical that Couples would make it look like a walk in the park. That’s just the way he does things, turning golf into a simple stroll down the fairways and picking up birdies along the way.

He reached eight under with a birdie at the 15th when he rolled in a 40-foot bomb, but ran into trouble at No. 16 when his second shot landed in a bunker. Couples wound up three-putting from 150 feet for a double-bogey six.

Still, he wasn’t all that upset.

“It happens,” Couples said.

What hasn’t happened lately is for Couples to contend in a major. The last time was at the 1998 Masters, when he led on Sunday only to falter on the 13th hole with a triple bogey.

Couples, 40, has seven top 10s in 12 British Open appearances, beginning with his first in 1984, when he tied for fourth at the Old Course. Even though he has a victory in the Masters, Couples knows what a victory here would mean to him.

“It would mean everything in the world,” he said. “It would be the greatest win I ever had if I could win this week.

“I don’t know anyone who would sit in here and say that to win the British Open wouldn’t be a big deal. For me, it would be absolutely incredible.”

He certainly had the ball rolling the way he wanted in the early going. Couples made an eight-footer to birdie No. 2 and another eight-foot birdie at No. 4. Then he had consecutive birdies when a sand wedge got him to within 10 feet at No. 7 and from 20 feet at No. 8 after a seven iron.

Flesch packed most of the excitement in his round into back-to-back holes. He eagled the 14th and followed it up with a bogey at the 15th. First, the good stuff. At the 581-yard No. 14, Flesch hit a low three-wood from 280 yards and rolled it to eight feet from the hole.

Said Flesch: “I managed to run that one in.”

Garcia wishes he could have run a few more in. He didn’t have a birdie after the 12th hole and three-putted the 17th from 45 feet for a bogey. Even this sort of frustration isn’t going to change Garcia from his new cross-handed putting style.

“It is working so far,” Garcia said. “This way, my right shoulder is a little backwards and that gives me a better line. And I feel a lot better on the short putts than the other way.”

Whatever Garcia manages over the weekend at the Old Course, he is secure in the knowledge that it can’t be worse than his experience last year at Carnoustie, where he shot 89-83, 30 over par, missing the cut by 18 shots.

“This is a new British Open,” he said. “No one is going to shoot 89 and you have to realize that and that’s what I did.”

There were few adventures for first-round leader Els in his routine 72 that featured two bogeys on the front and two birdies on the back. He did manage to get up and down from the bunker at No. 17 to save par, but Els couldn’t really get much of anything going all day.

“I was struggling with it and it just wasn’t a comfortable day,” he said. “It was just one of those funny days.”

Funny, sunny, calm, you name it, the day was another routine one for Woods.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

ON TOP

Tiger Woods: 67-66--133 -11

David Toms: 69-67--136 -8

Sergio Garcia: 68-69--137 -7

Steve Flesch: 67-70--137 -7

Loren Roberts: 69-68--137 -7

OTHERS

Fred Couples:70-68--138 -6