According to the nice lady at the tourist office, 200,000 people will swarm into Portrush for the Open Championship this week. Early on Tuesday great swathes of them were already tracking Tiger Woods as he scuffed around, hoping to find his groove and his game. Eight holes later he was still looking.
“It’s not quite as sharp as I’d like to have it right now,” the winner of 15 majors admitted. “I still need to shape the golf ball a little bit better, especially with the weather coming in and the winds are going to be changing.
“I’m going to have to be able to cut the ball, draw the ball, hit at different heights and move it all around. Today it was a good range session. I need another one tomorrow. And hopefully that will be enough to be ready.”
That assessment, while modest, represents progress. On Monday Woods was so out of sorts, one spectator promised to immediately stick £1,000 on him missing the cut – and another, the owner of the local surf shop, said that one rattling putt on the 18th aside, he missed everything.
Yet the 43-year-old winner of three Opens remains optimistic, despite having played only 10 competitive rounds since winning the Masters in April, because he believes his brain can interpret the wiles and winds of links golf quicker than anyone else.
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“There is an art to playing links golf,” he said. “It’s not – OK, I have 152 yards, bring out the automatic nine-iron and hit it 152. Here, 152 could be a little bump-and-run pitching wedge. It could be a chip six-iron. It could be a lot of different things.”
Another factor in his favour is that he likes the course. Woods had never played Portrush before this week, although in the first flushes of his career he would often come to Ireland with Payne Stewart and Mark O’Meara to golf and fish, but he has immediately liked what he has seen.
“It’s such a great venue,” he said. “Everyone who’s played it has always enjoyed it. I can understand why. You’re going to have a lot of either bump-and-run chips, chips, or quite a bit of slow putts coming up the hills. It’s an unbelievable golf course.”
That doesn’t mean Woods is averse to getting some extra help. During a press conference he was asked whether he had been given any local knowledge from Darren Clarke, Graeme McDowell or Brooks Koepka’s caddie Ricky Elliott, who hails from Portrush, Woods chuckled. “No, I have not,” he said, before a smile came across his face.
“Tell you a funny story. I texted Brooksy: ‘Congratulations on another great finish.’ What he’s done in the last four major championships has been just unbelievable. To be so consistent, so solid. He’s been in contention to win each and every major championship. And I said: ‘Hey, dude, do you mind if I tag along and play a practice round?’”
He and Koepka are good friends – and the clear implication was that Woods wanted to be able to enjoy his Ryder Cup teammate’s company and assimilate his caddy’s local knowledge.
But it turned out that he was out of luck. “I’ve heard nothing,” said Woods, laughing, although there maybe an innocent explanation given that Koepka admitted before the US Open that he recently changed his mobile number.
Woods also shrugged off concerns about his lack of match practice or the effect the forecast cooler weather might affect a body that has required multiple surgeries to fuse his back.
“I learned last year I played a little bit too much, the body was pretty beat up. Unfortunately, dealing with the procedures I’ve had, and being a little bit older, it just doesn’t move quite as fast when it’s a little bit cooler.”
Yet Woods isn’t overly downbeat, pointing out that Tom Watson and Greg Norman have challenged at the Open even during the flickering embers of their careers. “The great thing is playing in an Open Championship, you can do it,” he added. “Look what Tom did at Turnberry, what Greg did at Birkdale. Even if you don’t have the speed to carry the ball 20 yards any more, you can still run the ball quite a bit out there. You just have to navigate the bunkers and navigate around the golf course.”
And that, Woods believes, makes this the most open of Opens. “You don’t have to hit the ball very far. You can actually hear it land and still roll it out there far enough. You make a few changes here and there on equipment but it opens up for anyone to win this championship because it’s not overly long.”
And while his game doesn’t appear quite ready to scale another peak, Woods’s upbeat mood suggests that after making it back from injury to win in Augusta any success here will be an unexpected bonus.
“It’s exciting to be able to come back and play championship golf again,” he said. “I didn’t think I could. And to be able to do it again in major championships makes it that much more special.”