So many years so many championships so many reasons to suppose that not even Woods can emulate Nicklaus's enduring fame

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So many years, so many championships, so many reasons to suppose that not even Woods can emulate Nicklaus's enduring fame.. Another bogey, another groan.The last brought a breath of the Nicklaus legend, gladdening the hearts of those who had made the pilgrimage. Long and straight from the tee, Nicklaus found the green with his second and sunk a 20-foot putt for birdie.Typically, he had left his mark as a reminder of past greatness. "You seemed to have birdied the 18th in so many majors," somebody said to him Nicklaus smiled No, he could not remember Was he disappointed? "Come on," Nicklaus said. "Do you think I came here to make a mess of things? Of course I'm disappointed On the first two days I shot 38 on the front nine. Tiger's caddie, Fluff, reckoned it travelled 435 yards, leaving the master with a nine-iron to the green on a par five of 557 yards. It's the back nine that sorts out the men from the boys and they don't come any tougher than the 11th, The Railway, a par five by birth but converted into a four.

In the first round, Tiger managed to convert it into a seven. After taking a penalty drop out of a gorse bush, he hit a two-iron about 100 yards into further trouble. What on earth was he thinking of? A two-iron? His priority had to be to get it back on the fairway. Under the circumstances, a 72 was fairly respectable.On Friday, the wind had dropped, but he failed to cash in. He missed a couple of short putts early on and at the 10th, which is not far short of the 11th in terms of difficulty, he racked up a quadruple bogey eight, during which the longest hitter in the world managed to move the ball all of six yards, in a 74.

Tiger was in hostile country, falling into carefully laid traps and he did not appear to have the experience to extricate himself without bearing a large thorn in his side. He maintained that he liked the links; he thought they were "neat" and that he just happened to have two bad holes.In his defence, nobody had entered an Open surrounded by such megahype and a lot of the stories in the build-up were apocryphal. He did not request an armed guard (are Nike going to make him a bullet-proof vest?) and the four minders he got were not ex-SAS but enthusiasts from the Army Golf Society. They wore identical blue coats and were armed with umbrellas. An old joke is that somebody who hits it left, right, left, right is playing military golf and Tiger's squad had their work cut out keeping tabs on him.Was he perhaps suffering from a cold, he was asked "I haven't got a cold," he said.