As he stared at his ball, perhaps he was already thinking that the game was up. There it sat, under a gorse bush. In fact, he had been lucky. It was hittable, after all. But here, almost exactly on the spot where, seven years earlier, he had come unstuck in the opening round of his first Open Championship as a professional, Tiger Woods had a pretty shrewd inkling that he was about to extend what has become the most famous losing record in sport.
Then something happened that put any notions of sporting failure or success into perspective. A moment that chilled the blood, a blunt reminder that this ceremony taking place on a pleasant afternoon on the Ayrshire coast was indeed part of the wider world.
Woods had already waited for a big jet, taking off from Prestwick airport, to fly away and take its noise along with it. Now the third and final hazard of Royal Troon’s notorious 11th hole made its appearance.
From a northerly direction, the afternoon train from Glasgow to Ayr came into view. Again Woods waited for the distraction to pass. But as the train rattled by a few yards away, a man poked his head out of the second carriage with a message for the world’s number-one golfer.
‘Come on, Tiger, you black bastard!â€
From a vantage point across the fairway, Woods appeared to make no acknowledgement. Not a flicker crossed his face. He bent to his task, played the shot, and watched it come to rest 35 yards from the hole. A chip through the green and two putts from about 25ft gave him his first bogey of the round.
No doubt the shout and the bogey were unconnected. Woods has spent most of his 28 years shutting out the various noises that might deflect his concentration from the task of playing the perfect shot. And he would probably be insulted by the suggestion that one more mention of the colour of his skin could have an effect on the quality of his game.
It was, nevertheless, a hideous moment for everyone within earshot, and it said something pretty horrible about the culture whence it came.
Just try to imagine the same thing happening in the United States. At the US Masters, say. There is a railroad running close to Augusta National, too. Nowadays it carries only freight. But if it still carried passengers, and if it ran a bit closer to, say, the 11th hole, leading up to Amen Corner, and if some American citizen leaned out of a carriage and shouted a remark at Woods that included the phrase ‘black bastard†— try to imagine what kind of a fuss there would be.
Woods was the first black golfer to win the Masters and thereby to win membership of Augusta National, a club where the only black faces belonged to waiters, cooks and cleaners. Georgia was among the last of the states to accept formal desegregation, not half a century ago. Racism of an informal kind remains close to the surface. But the idea of someone shouting ‘black bastard†at Woods and thinking it funny is inconceivable.
He is taking a lot of flak just now, most of it from people once ready to lick his golf shoes. Flak for being worth millions. For being the only golfer to surround himself with security guards on the course. For falling out with his coach. For not being as good as he was, and refusing to admit it. And even, if some references are decoded, for being a black man with a blonde Swede on his arm.
There was a glimpse of what I like to think of as the true Tiger Woods on a remote putting green behind Troon’s tented village at a few minutes past seven o’clock on July 16. The day before, his opening round had been studded with missed putts. Now here he was, all by himself, trying to put it right.
No coach, no caddie, no family, no friends. Just a man, his putter, and half a dozen balls, struggling to rediscover his touch. It was a mesmerising sight, but also a painful one, like watching Michelangelo trying to remember how to draw a perfect circle. In the end, it seemed right to turn away and leave him to his solitary business.
What did he once call himself? ‘Cablinasianâ€, I think it was, an attempt to reflect the diversity of his bloodlines. But some people have a much clearer idea of who he is, and one of them shoved his head out of the Glasgow to Ayr train last Sunday afternoon. —