Woods Hasn’t Taken Their Freedom ... Yet

Ernie Els didn’t exactly sound a battle cry Monday that would have rallied William Wallace’s troops to fight to the last man.

The two-time U.S. Open champion and world’s No. 3 player almost seemed to run up the white flag and concede the 131st British Open to Tiger Woods three days before the first tee shot has been struck at Muirfield in the game’s oldest national golf championship.

Woods, who has won seven of the last 11 majors, is trying to become the first player since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open in the same year and the first player to win the modern Grand Slam.

“When I’ve played well, Tiger still has beaten me. What do you do?” Els said. “You have to play better....

“You know he’s going to be in contention this week, so you can beat the field by a couple of shots, but you might not beat Tiger at the end of the day.”

Els said Woods’ presence in a major field changes the dynamics of the stroke-play competition, when players like to say they are competing against the course, not other players.

“It seems now when you play a major tournament, you really play the golf course and you play Tiger,” he said. “It seems like he’s there every time and he just knows ... that even if he’s not playing very well, he’s still going to be there.... I think this guy is just a totally different talent than the world has ever seen.”

In those last 11 majors, Woods has won each of the seven times he has been in contention heading into the final round.

Despite the lack of success Els, David Duval and Phil Mickelson, still looking for his first major championship, have had derailing Woods, Els still bristles at the notion--offered by Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player just after the U.S. Open--that today’s players have failed to provide the kind of intense challenge that marked their heydays.

“If it wasn’t for one guy, I think Mickelson would have had two or three by now, and I think David would have probably won the Masters a couple of times, and who knows, maybe I could have won four or five, so there you go,” Els said.

So, perhaps Nicklaus, Palmer and Player are lucky they played when they did?

“I think so,” he said.

Still, there are others who think Woods’ biggest challenge might have come from the past. Nick Faldo, who won the last two Opens held at Muirfield, in 1992 and ‘87, said he thinks Seve Ballesteros and Greg Norman, in their prime, might have been a stiffer test for Woods than Els, Duval and Mickelson.

“Seve’s biggest attribute was he had a big heart,” Faldo said. “He was a great competitor, and same with Greg. They were just slightly fiercer competitors. They really enjoyed the battle.”

So did Wallace in “Braveheart,” and we know how that ended.

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How high is the rough at Muirfield? In a practice round Sunday afternoon, playing with close friend Woods, Mark O’Meara didn’t bother trying to hit out of knee-high rough after hitting two errant drives off the first tee.

Later in the round, O’Meara, winner of the 1998 Open at Royal Birkdale, dropped a couple of balls in the deep rough surrounding the 17th green, took several ineffective swipes at them and eventually picked them up.

“I think I’m going to need a weed-whacker out there this week,” he said.

Several players in their practice rounds aren’t even bothering to try to battle the tall grass, tossing their balls--when they can find them--out to the fairway instead.

Waist-high rough is nothing unusual for an Open course, though the unusually wet summer even by Scotland’s standards has helped make it thicker and deeper than ever. The fairways are narrow, often little more than 20 yards wide, with a few yards of playable rough before the really deep stuff closes in.

“It’s excruciating,” said Tom Lehman, who won the 1996 Open at Royal Lytham. “I just hacked it back into the fairways with a sand wedge.

“It would have to be a miracle to hit it 150 yards out of this stuff; mostly you’ll just see people hitting it sideways.”

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Woods, who spent time relaxing in Ireland before making his first trip to Muirfield to play Sunday, had an eagle and several birdies in his first round over the narrow fairways of this storied links layout.

“It’s a heck of a golf course, the rough’s up and it’s pretty tight,” he said after his inaugural round here. “It’s going to be a great challenge.”

Woods and O’Meara were the first to tee off, at 6:40 a.m. Monday, and finished their round in three hours, after which they headed to the range.

There, Woods spent considerable time hitting low, fading long irons that bore through the wind and dropped on his target about 250 yards out, the kind of shot he’ll depend on if the weather worsens. Sunday and Monday were mild with moderate wind.

Woods appeared Sunday with a neatly trimmed goatee. The goatee lasted one day at Muirfield before it disappeared, about as long as the oddsmakers here figure the field will stay with Woods once the tournament begins Thursday. The odds on Woods are an almost unheard-of 7-4. Mickelson is second at 14-1.

How did Woods play Monday? “I broke 100 out there,” he said as he quickly left the grounds.

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Lehman, coming off a sixth-place finish in the Scottish Open on Sunday, has been using a new long putter for three months. “I like it. I’m putting much better,” he said of a club with an unorthodox head that looks like it might be better suited to plumbing than golf. Lehman, who has made $627,000 this year, has his only two top-10 finishes in full-field events since going with the new club.

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Paul Azinger pulled out of the tournament because of an undisclosed minor injury.