"Tiger Woods's nasty push into the burn on 16 is one of the worst shots I've seen him hit in a major. Ever."
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Alan Shipnuck says that shot and his opening 71 add up to a "pretty ominous sign."
More importantly, Shipnuck notes this about his playing partner:
Round of the day might have been Ryo Ishikawa's 68, accomplished playing in front of his hero Tiger Woods and his nemeses--the hundred or so Japanese reporters that obsessively chronicle his every twitch. For his first spin around a true links course, to say nothing of the holy Open, the kid displayed admirable imagination and tremendous poise. Take that, Rory!
Bob Harig runs though the round highs and lows and the link also features video of Tiger's post round press conference.
For the day, he hit just 8 of 14 fairways, despite using mostly irons off tees. He did hit 12 of 18 greens and needed 30 putts.
Ian Chadband in the Telegraph offers a, uh, more detailed account of the round's saltier moments.
His confidence with the driver seemed so low that he used it just three times and found himself in the rough each time. Yet even his long irons from the tee let him down.
At the third, when he hoiked his drive left, he cried "Godammit!". On the 13th, when he ploughed one into a bank on the right of the fairway, the expletive was shorter and sharper.
Jim McCabe on Lee Westwood and the circus surrounding the pairing:
“I can say a couple of times I stood off,” Westwood said, and for sure there were two moments when he shot an icy stare at the photographers. “But I didn’t play a shot where I wasn’t concentrating and wasn’t ready to play that shot.”
It was a head-scratcher when R&A officials announced the Woods-Ishikawa pairing. (Westwood was no surprise. After all, it’s the fourth time he’s been grouped with Woods in the opening two rounds of a major. Must be a “w” thing.) Woods easily commands the huge majority of camera and reporting interest no matter where he plays. Ishikawa? If he were paired with Happy Gilmore and Judge Smails the Japanese photographers would be out there three and four dozen strong.
So mixing the two media-magnets together, especially on a links golf course where so many of the pathways are narrow and demand slow, cautious travel . . . well, let’s just say that the R&A lads have made wiser decisions. (Of course, it must have thrilled the Japanese TV entity, but surely that’s a coincidence, no?)
