Pressure Really Off Woods Now

A relaxed Tiger Woods, who had shot 68 Friday to move within four shots of leader Colin Montgomerie, was theorizing afterward on why he was so relaxed, as opposed to, say, Montgomerie.

“I’ve won major championships, and I’ve won the Open, and that in itself relieves a lot of pressure,” Woods said. “If you haven’t won one, then it becomes a little more difficult, I think, because you are thinking about what does it really take. I know what the emotions are. I know what I’m going to encounter and it is just a matter from there of executing.

“It’s hard to explain unless you’ve really been there and can relate to it. There’s so many different things going on around you and you have to decipher it and know what is pertinent and what isn’t pertinent.”

Well, sure, Tiger is relaxed, a bemused Montgomerie said later.

“If I was as good as him and had the future ahead of me that he does, then I’d be quite as easy myself and so would you,” he said.

Then Woods went out Saturday at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club and shot himself into a tie for 28th place--five shots behind the leaders--with a two-over-par 73.

He was two under for the day and five under for the tournament, two shots out of the lead, when he double-bogeyed the par-five seventh, which played as the second-easiest hole on the course during the first two rounds. He hit three shots from the same spot, the second a provisional that didn’t count because he subsequently found the ball he thought he had lost.

He hit a drive under the grandstand at No. 16. His drive at 18 went over the gallery and into the bushes. He took a one-stroke drop near the hospitality tent and finished his round with a bogey.

When’s the last time you heard a player express sympathy for Woods?

“I felt bad for Tiger,” his third-round playing partner, Mark O’Meara, said.

O’Meara is Woods’ neighbor in Orlando, Fla., and his closest friend on the tour.

For a change, Woods hasn’t been accompanied by the largest and loudest galleries. That honor has belonged to Montgomerie since the middle of the first round, when it became apparent that he was playing particularly well and Woods wasn’t.

Montgomerie isn’t often a crowd favorite. That is especially true in the United States. Some of that is his fault. He is quick to anger and responds to even the slightest noise from the gallery. Some of that is not his fault. Some fans, recognizing he has rabbit ears, bait him.

There is a different dynamic here. Although fans are often cool toward him, they sympathize with him as a 38-year-old Scotsman who probably deserves to win a major tournament. They have been overwhelmingly supportive of him this week.

They may or may not have helped his cause Friday, when a ball he hit into the gallery appeared moments later trickling into the fairway.

“That looked a bit of a home advantage,” BBC commentator Laura Davies said.

Asked if he feared that the crowd might become raucous on his behalf, he couldn’t resist a shot at U.S. galleries.

“I think you only get raucous atmospheres in American tournaments,” he said. “We tend to be slightly more laid back.”

Jesper Parnevik, among nine players tied for second entering the final round, has twice finished as runner-up in the British Open, most frustratingly in 1994 at Turnberry.

He inexplicably failed to look at the scoreboard on the back nine, took unnecessary risks and lost by one stroke to Nick Price.

“Actually, I’ve always looked at leaderboards,” Parnevik said. “That was just a freaky thing. . . . I got so focused on making birdies or whatever it was that I just didn’t even think about it.

“The only thought I had in my head was to make birdie on every hole. I think the leaderboard there on 17 must be 60 feet wide. So I don’t know how I could have missed that one anyway.”