Uncomfortable Tiger falls short of passing the Bear's driving test

Poor Tiger. Still without a win from six starts this year after dumping a 150-yard approach into water on the 72nd hole in Dubai last Sunday. Did his nerve fail him? Is this the end of a dream career? American concern this week reflects his enormous value to their tour, particularly with television ratings.

In their telecast from Doral last weekend, NBC mentioned Woods 25 times, though he was playing several thousand miles away. Meanwhile, Dave Anderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter with the New York Times, devoted last Monday's column to Woods, who also led the sports section of the Washington Post.

And what was all the fuss about? It seems the world's top player hit two poor shots on that crucial, par-five final hole. The first was a blocked drive into trees, the other a nine-iron from rough which he caught high on the clubface, causing the ball to die some way short of the desired distance.

There have been suggestions that he choked - an expression, incidentally, which I detest. This has to be dismissed as rubbish, if only on the basis of his performances last year. By his admission, he didn't feel as comfortable as he needed to feel on the final day in Dubai.

With regard to losing tournaments, Jack Nicklaus, who was runner-up 58 times on the US Tour said: "You never have a problem when you don't play well." He went on to point out that he could remember squandering a winning chance in only one major championship. That was the British Open at Royal Lytham in 1963, when he finished with three bogeys to miss out by a stroke on a play-off with Bob Charles and Phil Rodgers, which Charles won. "That's the only one I gave away," said the Bear.

Clearly, the key error from Woods on that fateful 72nd was using the driver when he wasn't feeling 100 per cent confident. As Nicklaus remarked: "I've always told my kids: if you stand on the tee with a driver in your hand and you don't think you are going to put it in play, for God's sake put it back in the bag and pull out another club."

Woods didn't do so and paid the price. Meanwhile, the US Tour were left to ponder on the wonderful television it would have made, had the drama occurred on American soil. As one leading US scribe put it: "Tiger doesn't really need the tour, but the tour needs Woods and misses him when he's away." Which means they are girding themselves against further withdrawal symptoms, when he plays in the Deutsche Bank Open in Heidelberg in May.