ST. ANDREWS, Scotland -- Out along the ropes on the 14th hole, grown adults still were running and jostling for viewing space Saturday, even as Tiger Woods continued to shrink in relevance and golfing girth. They followed him by the thousands, not concerned that he has become a non-contending wannabe and that a third-round duel between two legitimate challengers -- including Paul Casey, an ENGLISHMAN trying to win THE BRITISH OPEN -- was much more compelling. "I LOVE TIGER WOODS!'' read a message on the back of a young boy's t-shirt.
"I LOVE TIGER WOODS MORE!'' read a one-upped message on his friend's t-shirt.
Others just wanted to be voyeurs, consumed by his personal misery and the systematic demise of his once-impenetrable game when they should have been doing something more productive, like ordering the greasy fish and chips. Like rubber-neckers staring slack-jawed at a burning building, they couldn't wait to catch a peek of this flawed man they read about in the British tabloids, staring in silence as Woods served up more bland mediocrity and gagged on another major opportunity. What they saw amid the high rough and unusually sunny skies only confirmed the trail of torture that has been his life since his infamous SUV crash last November. After trading in his decade-worthy Scotty Cameron putter for a Nike Method 001, in a desperation move lampooned by the British media, Woods followed a promising first round with two awful rounds on the greens. Shockingly, he needed 35 putts to salvage a one-over 73 and fall 12 strokes behind the steady leader, Louis Oosthuizen, whose name was pronounced correctly by the news-conference moderator Saturday evening -- he was called "Peter Oosterhausen'' on Friday -- and will have the sports world enunciating the proper "Louie West-hi-zen'' if he wins the Claret Jug.
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