Tiger becomes fair game as matchplay levels playing field

There is a certain dichotomy between the strokeplay and matchplay records of the world's pre-eminent golfer. Tiger Woods is, well, below average when it comes to the mano a mano conflict of matchplay. Give him a pencil stub and a scorecard and, likely as not, he will make sure that the opposition's number is up. Things are a lot different in the hole-by-hole format and this will surely be a source of encouragement to the European captain, Sam Torrance, whose team are supposed to be going to The Belfry to be wiped out by golf's superpower.

Woods was hardly out of knickerbockers, as our American friends describe plus fours, when he won the green jacket that clothed his first major. Still only 26, he has added a further seven titles and won another 31 tournaments worldwide. Since turning professional in 1996 he has missed precisely one cut, five years and 93 events ago. When it comes to tournament golf he is an animal. Put him in a Ryder Cup team, however, and his pedigree is no better than his chums'. He becomes human after all. He has won just three of his 10 games.

Here is someone who can reduce his nearest rivals to a state of stupefaction simply by giving them one of those hard, wide-eyed stares. It was once commonly accepted that no other player would ever rival the mental strength of Jack Nicklaus. Tiger does. At least with a card in his hand. He is also a superior golfer in almost every other respect to Nicklaus. But beyond a swing that is machined poetry and a short game now as precise as anybody else's on tour, Woods is also a prolific accumulator of titles because he maintains levels of focus and sheer bloody-mindedness that often seem primeval. These scary qualities appear to allow him to will the ball into the hole when it really matters in a way no one else has ever been able to do.

Make him play for his country, put some stars on his stripes and ask him to place his right hand over his heart, and he suddenly becomes a pussycat by comparison. In 1997 the Italian Costantino Rocca beat him 4&2. With his great friend Mark O'Meara, Bernhard Langer and Colin Montgomerie beat him 5&3. In 1999 partnering David Duval, he lost to Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood. He has never been on the winning side in a Ryder Cup fourballs match.

His record in professional matchplay is in stark contrast to that as an amateur. Before he took the dollar, Woods won three successive US Junior Amateur Championships and then three consecutive US Amateur titles in an unprecedented fashion. One of the few men to have experienced victory over Woods in amateur matchplay is Gary Wolstenholme. The finest unpaid player in Europe over the past 20 years, Wolstenholme took on Woods in a 1995 Walker Cup singles match at Royal Porthcawl.

"The way I approached it was that Tiger couldn't influence me directly," Wolstenholme said. "He couldn't shout during my backswing or put me off. I knew I was capable of getting round in four or five under par, and that if I did, he'd struggle to beat me. When I beat him at the last I was two under for the day. He made some mistakes and I capitalised. But the key is not to play Tiger but to play the golf course."

Woods avenged his defeat the following day, but by then the match was over. In his only Walker Cup, he took two points out of four, including a foursomes defeat at the hands of one Padraig Harrington.

Woods may be a man who frequently performs at uniquely high levels in the major championships and next to whom the world's best golfers often quiver embarrassingly. But every two years, somehow, suddenly, he becomes almost malleable. This seems incongruous to the point of being some sort of weird joke. If ever a form of golf existed where it was possible to intimidate one's opponents directly, it would be matchplay. Applying Woods' phenomenal strokeplay record to matchplay, and taking into account his psychological domination of the world's best players, logic dictates he should never lose. But he does. It is as though he cannot break a bad habit.

"What you have to remember is that anything is possible in matchplay," Wolstenholme explained. "If you get ahead early, then you can put a match out of the reach of your opponent very quickly. And if Tiger's behind, then the pressure builds on him. That's how Rocca beat him at Valderrama. Rocca's an emotional player and he got on top and was on the crest of a wave.

"Players of the calibre of those on the European team believe they can beat Tiger over 18 holes of matchplay, even if they don't feel the same way over 72 holes of strokeplay. They know the pressure is all on him. It's their chance to be a hero and they know they're capable of firing the five or six birdies that would really stretch him."

Woods did win his most recent Ryder Cup game, a singles match against Andrew Coltart. But observers as shrewd as the former European captain Tony Jacklin have questioned whether the Scot was in any frame of mind to take on the world No 1 after Mark James had failed to pick him during the first two days.

"Coltart was overwhelmed and that can happen against Tiger," said Jacklin. "But I believe the younger players, like [Justin] Rose and Sergio [Garcia], really fancy their chances against him, and so do the experienced guys such as Langer and Montgomerie.

"Tiger's Ryder Cup record will improve eventually. He's too good for it not to. But you can be sure that they'll try to set up the course so it doesn't suit him, with the rough grown in at around 280 yards from the tee. One reason Tiger didn't do well at Valderrama was because it really didn't suit him, with it being so tight off the tee. But he's better equipped to cope with that sort of thing now."

Europe's answer to Woods is Garcia. In 1999 the Spaniard produced his miracle shot from behind a tree at Medinah on his way to finishing runner-up to Woods in the USPGA. Later the same year, he delivered an inspired display at Brookline in partnership with Jesper Parnevik. Since then, he has failed to scale the heights and the last time he faced Woods directly was during the final round of this year's US Open. Woods won easily. Garcia has often said how much he wants to take on the world No 1 in the singles of the Ryder Cup. He might just get his wish at The Belfry.