By CHARLES HAPPELL
There might have been more effortless 66s in Australian tournament golf, but if that’s the case I’m struggling to think of them.
Tiger Woods’ six-under-par opening round in the 2009 Australian Masters today was a masterclass in clever, strategic, conservative golf. He used his driver maybe five times, birdied all three of the par fives, stuck to the long irons on most par fours, invariably left himself with uphill putts, and above all, didn’t blow himself out of contention with a couple of reckless shots into the ti-tree.
After starting at the 10th, in a group with Craig Parry and Rod Pampling, the world No.1 put together a solid but unspectacular inward nine of two-under 34, his birdies coming at the two par fives, 12 and 14, the kind of holes that he devours in his sleep.
Dressed in striped blue polo shirt, lightweight beige slacks that Richie Benaud would have been proud of, and two-tone pair of white Nike spikes, Woods certainly looked the part. Alongside the rotund and slightly rumpled figure of Parry, the everyman hero of local golf fans, Woods strutted the fairways looking like Beau Brummel.
But he’d clearly taken Parry’s Kingston Heath lessons to heart from earlier in the week: don’t be too aggressive at the flags, and always leave yourself on the underside of the hole.
After the turn, though, he began to warm up, blitzing the front nine in the same way he did in Wednesday’s pro-am.
He made a birdie at the first - a 462-metre par five - with a three wood and then a long iron from 200m to the front of the green. He missed the eagle attempt by centimetres.
But his best shot came at the par-four fourth, the controversial hole that has a deep bunker plonked in the middle of the fairway, right at most players’ driving distance. Parry, Pampling and Woods all took irons off the tee to lay up short of the trouble and then the American rifled a mid-iron to within a metre of the flag, setting up his fourth birdie.
An exquisite chip at the short sixth, where his three-wood finished barely 20 metres short of the green, set up another birdie and he followed with a five-metre putt for birdie at the seventh and another from two metres at the par-three eighth to make it three in a row. Suddenly, he had vaulted into a share of the tournament lead – with Victorian Cameron Percy and someone called Branden Grace, who we discovered hails from South Africa.
Woods’ only mistake came at his final hole when he pulled his drive into the ti-tree, chopped out into the rough and took two putts from 15 metres for his lone bogey. That left him with a 66, a score matched by Grace and, later, New South Welshman James Nitties.
The world No.1 was immediately reeled into a $1.75 favourite by TAB Sportsbet, with Mathew Goggin on the second line of betting at $13. In other words, the bookies are predicting Woods to win comfortably, with daylight coming second.
There had been talk that Kingston Heath’s tightish fairways, penal rough and lightning greens might blunt Woods’ clear edge in class. But there was barely a breath of wind and the greens had been hopelessly overwatered from the previous evening, clearly as a safeguard against the forecast hot weather. Balls were regularly sucking back off the front of greens and the characteristic run of sandbelt greens in the middle of such a heatwave was non-existent. They were as harmless as a geriatric moggie.
Woods commented on how benign the surfaces were at his post-round media conference, prompting the Kingston Heath captain to sycophantically ask the American whether he’d like them any faster. It was a silly question: the course is not set up to cater for the whim of any one player. Everyone is bending over backwards to please Tiger this week as it is; if the course was manicured to his specifications as well, that would make a complete mockery of the whole event.
So if the rest of the field is any chance to catch Woods now, the grounds staff will need to put away the hoses and let Mother Nature do its worst. But we fear the horse has bolted. It will require a remarkable performance from someone to overhaul the game’s greatest player now.
The gallery following the Woods threesome was as large as expected, easily in excess of 10,000 and possibly as much as 15,000. But they had not a hope in Hades of seeing him play every shot, or even every second shot. The best strategy was to park yourself behind a tee, or at the back of a green, watch him come through and then take a up a similar position two holes ahead. For anyone under about 180cms, the morning would have been a hot and bothersome test of endurance because they wouldn’t have seen much action at all.
It was towards the end of his round, when he holed that long-ish putt for three at the par-four seventh – his 16th hole – that Woods let his game face slip for a brief moment. The gallery went ballistic as he posted yet another birdie and, in response, he doffed his cap and beamed an enormous smile.
For many in that amphitheatre around the green who had battled heat, dust and flies for four hours, that brief show of emotion would have just about been the highlight of their day.
